The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 14.3. Swami Krishnananda

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Tuesday, September 21, 2021. 8:00. AM.
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita
Chapter -14.The Coming of God as an Incarnation -3.
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti)
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Now, what are these threats which God would be conscious of? God would be very, very aware and very vigilant about anything that is happening anywhere against Himself because the value of the whole of creation is nothing but the value of the recognition of God’s presence in creation. God is the health of the cosmos. The physique of the universe is God’s presence. The strength of the whole world is nothing but the extent of the presence of this universal significance inside it. The milder is the presence felt, the lesser is the health of that organism. Materialistic forces and atheistic forces, anti-divine forces, can operate in different ways. It does not mean that there are no materialists in this world today and that there are no atheists or undivine elements, but the manner of their manifestation and the extent of the threat that they can yield to humanity’s existence varies. God’s presence will not be felt as a necessity unless God’s presence is entirely denied or it is about to be totally denied, as the entire action of the bodily forces is summoned to operate when the whole body is threatened as if it is not going to exist at all. Then there will be an upheaval in the whole system, like the rising of a fever to a high pitch or any kind of cumulative action of the sustaining powers of the body.

Many an answer has been given by theologians, philosophers, saints, sages and mystics in regard to the nature of the coming of God as an Incarnation upon the Earth, and we have endless expositions of this facet of the coming of God, all of which mystify us and make us feel helpless about the way in which we can comprehend how such a thing can take place. We can only have analogies, comparisons, illustrations, but an actual logical explanation of it is beyond us. We can only console ourselves by accepting that the coming of God as an Incarnation for redeeming humanity to establish righteousness may be something like the working of the human body to maintain itself as a healthy totality. Whenever such a necessity is felt, an Incarnation takes place.

Now, as was pointed out, whenever it is felt necessary, the Incarnation comes, as it is told to us in the Bhagavadgita. This means to say that there is a perpetual effort on the part of God’s creation to maintain itself as a healthy total, as is the case with our own physical organism, for instance. There is a sleepless effort put forth by our body to maintain itself, and certain processes of the body never sleep. Even when our mind sleeps, the vital energies in the body never sleep. The pranas, which sustain the body, do not sleep. We breathe even when we are asleep. These vital breaths that we take in and out are the sentinels that guard the whole system against the entry of any kind of adverse elements. Likewise, there seems to be a guardian of the cosmos. Who else can it be than the Creator Himself? So there is no permission granted to the entry of any force which is adverse to the recognition by the world, by the whole creation, of an adequate percentage of the presence of this total health-giving existence, God’s presence.

What we called materialism in a spiritual sense is an acceptance of a condition as adequate, totally contrary to the organic character of things. An inorganic existence is considered as adequate for the purpose. The inadequateness of this system comes into relief when we discover that there cannot be anything inorganic unless it is divested of intelligence, or consciousness. Actually, the total crass theory of materialism cannot hold water. It defeats its own purpose. A wholesale outside materialism is the doctrine of there being matter only, and nothing else. It is externality taking possession of everything else as if externality only exists, because matter is nothing but a name we give to the extreme form of externality where consciousness is dead.

To be continued...

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