Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 19-3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday, March 21, 2022. 21:00. 

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti).

Chapter-19. Knowledge and Action are One - 3.

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The problem arises due to the relationship that obtains between the universal and the particular. There is what is called universal action and particular action. We are used to particular, individual, sophisticated, egoistic action, and we are not acquainted with universal action. We are not universal persons. The whole problem here hinges on that. We are so-called particular individuals. We are this, and not more than this. That which is this cannot be that. Hence, we cannot absorb into our localised individuality circumstances which are transcendent to the individuality, which is another way of saying that we cannot be really friends of anybody in the world. No man can be a real friend of another person as long as that person ceases to be endowed with an element of universality and is shackled within the shell of bodily individuality only.

So as long as one thinks in terms of a physical individuality or even a psychic individuality, action will look like a process that is directed towards an exterior end in space and time. This is the reason why we are after the fruits of action. No one can think of an action which will not bring any fruit. Why should I do anything if it will not bring any advantage to me? This is how we generally think. We think in terms of advantage, profit and loss. A commercial attitude is employed by us even in our activities which are otherwise good, noble and sublime. A work, a karma yoga, a sacrifice, a sacrament, a dedication can be divine only to the extent of the universal present in it. You are a good man only to the extent you are impersonal and universal. You are a bad man to the extent you are a particular, individual, localised ego. So the goodness and the badness of a situation can be judged from the magnitude of the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of the universal principle in any particular event, location or circumstance. Now, this is how we may try to solve the problem of sankhya and yoga, knowledge and action – whether they are really capable of relation, or they are totally exclusive.

There is a marked difference in God's action and man's action. Though the author of the Bhagavadgita does not expect every person to be God at the very outset, the intention is to make man into God Himself, finally. Man has to become a superman. Sri Krishna himself was the ideal superman who spoke this ideal gospel for the supremely ideal situation of life in the world. The intention of the Bhagavadgita is to make every man a superman, which means to say, to pave the path to God for every particular individual in the world. The Bhagavadgita does not expect every person to be capable of this attainment at once. Every saint and sage and prophet and teacher is aware of this difficulty. But every teacher, every Incarnation, every sage expects that the teaching has relevance to that apparently remote expectation of the ideality of human existence in supreme divinity, because the Bhagavadgita is a gospel of freedom. It tells us how we can be free from the bondage of reactions of actions. The whole of the message is only this much. It is the philosophy, the gospel and teaching of freedom, ultimate freedom, unshackled, untrammelled, unlimited freedom. But such a freedom is not possible except in the universal. And what is limitation to freedom? It is the presence and the operation of something outside. Any person outside you is a limitation upon you, and anything that is taking place external to you puts a barrier on your operation. The operation of B is a limitation on the operation of A.

Now, in that sense, there cannot be freedom in this world if freedom is to be untrammelled, unlimited and supreme. Inasmuch as our intention is to be supremely free, which is called moksha, liberation from every kind of limitation, it follows that establishment in a universal inclusiveness alone can bequeath to us this kind of freedom. Every step that we take in the direction of this achievement also can be said to be a movement towards freedom. The more you are approximate to the solar orb, the more is the heat that you will receive from it. The more you are juxtaposed to the Universal, the more you are free. It is not only the more you are free, but the more you are strong and powerful, the more you are good, the more you are righteous, the more you are capable, the more you are free from the fears of life, the more you are free from death itself. But no one can be free from death as long as one is limited and is located in a finite position in space and time. Birth and death are processes of the reshuffling of the finitude of individuals for the purpose of enhancing their dimension of being; therefore, birth and death will never cease until the Universal is attained, as the writhing and the wriggling and the roaring of the rivers cannot cease until they reach the ocean.

To be continued ...

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