The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 9.5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, February 19, 2021. 10:35. AM.
Chapter 9: The Classification of Society- 5.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)

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Your relationship to things in the world, and your obligation to the world in terms of these relationships, will be dependent upon the extent of the manifestation of these gunas which constitute you, and you will be fit to act only in that manner, to that extent, as would be permitted by the preponderance of any one of these gunas or any two of the gunas, etc., because you cannot be other than what you are. You cannot try to do something differently than what is permitted by your nature. The word ‘nature’, prakriti, is sometimes used in the Bhagavadgita. Prakriti in a cosmical sense is ‘something’. It also means ‘the natural tendency of a person’. You cannot go contrary to your natural tendency.

Now, here is a very peculiar mandate before us. ‘You cannot go contrary to your tendency’ does not imply that you have a sanction or a license to do as you like. It does not mean that. It means something very subtle. Very careful we have to be in understanding what it means. Who can go against one’s own nature? This does not mean a license to act as one likes. It is a caution exercised: Beware! Red light! The red flag is shown there; be cautious. There is a road breaker or a tollgate or some such thing. Beware!

What is meant by this bewareness? It shows that inasmuch as your conduct is decided and determined by your nature, and you cannot act contrary to it – you can act only in accordance with it, not more, not less – your contribution to the solidarity of society will be to the extent of the permission granted by your nature at that given moment in that state of your evolution. It is not a license to act in a libidinous or a selfish way, but it is a concession given to you to do only that much as you can under the conditions in which you are placed because of the preponderance of the gunas. Nobody will ask you to lift an elephant’s weight. You have not got that strength. Only the elephant can lift a larger weight, but you can also lift some weight. That will depend upon what you are.

IIt has already been noticed that human society is an interrelated, interconnected, interdependent organism. It is one person, as it were, and humanity, therefore, may be considered as one thought in a general sense. It is not one thought in a detailed or particular sense, just as the legs are not the head, the nose is not the eyes, yet they all constitute one body, and we can consider them as one organism. I am not you; you are not another. Everyone is different from everybody else. Yet, in spite of this difference in detail, we are the human species. As humans we are categorised under a particular class of thinking. We think as human beings. We do not think like trees and hills and reptiles, and so on. Therefore, the human way of thinking is considered here as the standpoint of the observation of duty and the performance thereof.

To be continued...

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