Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita- Part 1: Post-9: Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday 18, Jul 2024, 06:50.
Article
Scriptures
Introduction to the Bhagavadgita- Part 1
POST-9.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on March 3rd, 1974)

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There is something which is not measurable through the yardstick of space and time, which is within us and also outside in the world, and the quantitative approach to things, called arithmetic or mathematics, is inapplicable in that purely qualitative realm of Truth. Truth is not merely a quality. We cannot use terms of this kind in respect of it. It is neither a quantity nor a quality. It is something transcending both. It is not an aggregate of particulars. It is not an army of soldiers. It is not a group of forces. It is not a totality of individuals. It is, in short, not a measurable something. Therefore, the whole army of Duryodhana can do nothing with it. It is useless to measure its strength by comparing it with the powers of the world.

That one thing is a non-mathematical unit, and that was represented by this one man called Krishna. He was not a single individual; he was not one man sitting in Dvarka, which was the wrong opinion of Duryodhana and others. He was a non-mathematical unit which is beyond the understanding of the human mind because we cannot think except in terms of arithmetic. In all our transactions of give and take, everything is calculated on this basis: The more you take away, the less the source is. That is why we do not want to give anything. We are greedy, very miserly, and charity is very painful to us. What is charity? Giving away what we have. And what happens to us? We lose what we already have; and losing is not a good thing. We, through our business arithmetic, conclude that the more we take away from ourselves, the less do we become in our status and quality. But this is far from the truth. The more we take away from ourselves, the larger do we become. How is it possible? This is contrary to all known arithmetic. But the nature of Truth, unfortunately for us, is contrary to everything that we know, appreciate and regard as useful. It is because of this enigmatic and supernormal character of Truth that we do not want Truth. We always bid goodbye to it and want to relegate it to the limbo, and try to think of it only in our leisure hours. Truth is very unattractive. It is not pleasing. When it comes, it comes like a pain or a sorrow to us, like an unwanted guest. We like only the world of quantities, of particulars, of magnitude, of wealth, of preyas, of pleasure.

Now, the realm of the Spirit, the path of yoga, the way spiritual is quite different from this quantitative interpretation of things. We have to completely shed this prejudice of thinking in terms of business and transaction. All our thinking is transaction and business, give and take. It is purely a measurement through quantity, and Truth is not a quantity measurable in terms of the things of the world or any value of the world. It is this difficulty that prevents most people from approaching life spiritual. It is shocking. The very thought of God shocks us because of the feeling that perhaps we are going to lose all the pleasure centres of our life.

But blessed souls like Arjuna knew that this non-quantitative reality, represented in the historical scene of the Mahabharata as Krishna and the universal setup of things as the Supreme Being, the Absolute, should be the measuring rod for us in the evaluation of anything in this world. For the Pandavas, for Arjuna, for Yudhisthira, Krishna was everything. Whenever there was any difficulty, they turned to him for advice, and whatever he said was final. Why should they regard the opinion of one man as final, as if he was the only man in the whole world? But he was not a man in the quantitative, social, unitary sense. He was not an individual. It was a super-individual power that was embodied in an individual form. And if we also consult with this super-individual value in this life, we will certainly succeed in life. But we consult these particulars which tempt us with their promises of sensory gratification, and so we fail. All masters of quantity fail in this world. All the dictators, all the tyrants that history has seen, were worshipers of quantity, and doom came upon them. They were wiped off the Earth in spite of being masters of the largest quantity thinkable. They were owners of immense wealth and rulers of vast kingdoms, but they were pounded to dust by the relentless hands of time because Truth is quite different from what man contemplates as true or real.

Thus, the spiritual evaluation of things is the subject of the Bhagavadgita, which is different from our normal childish way of thinking in terms of give and take, quantity, money, social status, and pleasures of sense and ego. We are entering a new realm altogether, a new world of a different type, of light and resplendence. It is awakening from sleep, as it were, into the world of bright sunlight. We will be taken into a wonderland by the Bhagavadgita, with its masterly message of the Spirit.

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NEXT

Introduction to the Bhagavadgita: Part 2.

Continued

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