The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita : 1.5. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, February 23, 2023. 06:30.

Chapter 1 : This Drama of Life - 5.

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The law of a country is larger than the person or the individual who is free. Every person in a nation is free, yet the law is superior to every person. Unless it is superior it cannot exercise a control over others. One individual cannot restrain another individual, because both are on par, as far as they are individuals. A control can be exercised only by a superior power which is super-individualistic, and thus is law. Every disciplined law system rule is super-individualistic. If it is confined to the individual only, it cannot operate in respect of other people outside, external to the individual. So there is a law operating in the world which gives you freedom to act, and at the same time restrains you in a powerful manner. So I come to the point again, that restraint and freedom are not opposites – they are co-relatives. They co-exist, they are co-extensive, co-eternal, and one cannot be without the other. An ordinary weak mind, not properly tutored or educated, will not be able to think in this manner. Arjuna was not able to think always like this. He was the son of so-and-so, he was a Kshatriya, he had a right over some land for which he was to fight – that was all that seems to have been in his mind, and he was not wholly educated, perhaps, in the art of thinking in a manner which is required by the existence of things which are not always visible to the eyes.

This transcendent principle which is called law, which operates in a country and operates in the world, operates everywhere, is not always a pleasant thing for a person who seeks a hundred percent freedom to one's own self. Nobody likes the word 'law'; it is a hateful word. We do not like the word 'discipline' – we resent it. It is very bitter to hear these terms because we are not prepared to allow that amount of freedom to others which we like to allow to our own selves, which requires a slight impersonality on our part, above and transcendent to our individual way of thinking which, given a long rope, will be the centre of selfishness. Selfishness, is the affirmation of yourself as the whole reality and an unpreparedness to accept that others also exist around you. You are not prepared even to acquiesce in the existence of other people. You alone are and, "Nobody else can be in front of me." This is selfishness, this is tyranny, this is a dictator gone amuck. "Let me alone exist and others be not." This is the height of selfishness. But it can present itself in a milder form when we stick to our own guns and would not be prepared to be charitable enough to accept the viewpoints of other people also, much less give them the freedom that they would like to enjoy as we ourselves would like. The world is not made in the way in which we are thinking it to be constituted – things are not what they seem. The law I refer to is not outside you. We do not like the operation of law because we are under the impression that it is outside us – somebody is harassing us from outside by saying that there is a law. Law is not an external existence – it is something in which you yourself are involved. In this sense, you are involved in the world also. So in this sense again, the world is not outside you, as the law is not outside. The relationship that obtains between you and the world is what is called law. It is not made by man; it exists, as the law of gravitation exists if man is not to be at all.

This is a new education into which we have to be introduced, if we have to enjoy a peaceful existence in this world. One who violates law cannot be protected by law, and therefore he cannot have any peace. And if we are insistent on considering others as totally externals – the world is unrelated to us, which we are merely to exploit in some way or the other – then the law will catch hold of us. If you are not prepared to accept a law which accepts the existence of other people, you will be unhappy in this world. You may say that we are all unhappy because of the violation of a law - not necessarily the law that man has made in a parliament, but a law which conditions even the laws made in the parliament. Why do you violate such laws? Because you are not sufficiently educated. That was the condition in which Arjuna found himself when he saw a huge army of friends, relations, etc., in that context of the Mahabharata battle. It is a fear to face relations, friends, and related objects. That roused up a question of what one has to do in this large set-up of things. It was not a question of Arjuna, but a question of man as such. It is not a question concerning the Mahabharata battle; it is a question concerning the struggle for existence itself. This question has to be answered, and here is the Bhagavadgita.

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Next
Chapter 2: The Difficulties of the Spiritual Seeker
To be continued

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