The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita- 3-3. Swami Krishnananda.

 

====================================================================================

Friday 20, June 2025, 06:30.
Books
Shrimad Bhagavad Gita
The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita- 3-3.  
Chapter 3: The Spirit of True Renunciation - 3.
Swami Krishnananda.

====================================================================================

The context of the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgita is the atmosphere of tense feelings in the field of a tremendous Armageddon, each one imagining that one would win victory over the other, each one intent upon overcoming the other, so that each one musters in all the powers of oneself available for unleashing the same in this battle that is to ensue. The individual faces this world before it as a confrontation, a field of action and opposition. The child, in its moods of unintelligent enthusiasm, imagines that it can do anything with this world—possess it, enjoy it, overcome it, utilise it, harness it for its purposes. As we grow older, we become aware of the fact that the world is too much for us. Its quantity frightens us, as the ocean can terrorise us when we gaze at it from the shore. We are afraid of it because of the tremendous magnitude that is in front of us. How vast is this arena of the Universe! How difficult it is to think of the powers of these five elements, the whole of nature.

Not merely that; there are other things to which we are connected—our social relationships. The setup of Nature is a different thing, a consideration of which will come later on in the course of our study of the Gita. But we have immediate problems which are related to our human relationships, more imminent and demanding greater attention from us than the powers of Nature. We may be feeling heat and cold, we may be under the pull of the gravitational power, the five elements—earth, water, fire, air, ether—may be there before us as terrible forces, no doubt, but they are not our immediate consideration. When we get up in the morning we are not usually thinking of the five elements, though it is true they are there as powerful oppositions before us. We are, rather, thinking of immediate human relationships and other things connected with our personality, emotionally related, and the concern of today, for instance. There are loves and hatreds in relation to our connections with humanity in the immediate vicinity of our existence.

When we are in the midst of people to whom we are accustomed, we are not in a position to properly go deeper into the secrets of these relationships. We are living in a social atmosphere, we are living in a town, we are living in a monastery, in an ashram, in a house, in a family. When we are living in an atmosphere of this kind, which is human and social, we cannot know our mind wholly, because the fish is in water, and it thinks that everything is fine. We must bring the fish out of water and then see the fate of it. We wrench ourselves from social relations for some time, be not in the midst of people, do not go to the shop for purchase, do not live in the town, do not have anything to do even with family relations, do not speak to anyone, do not look at anybody's face for some months. We will know ourselves better then, than when in society.

We will be a little bit restless in the beginning stages. We will be unhappy for reasons we cannot easily know. We will like to get up and run away into the thick of human relations once again, because man is a social animal basically. And to ignore this aspect of the human individual would be not to properly comprehend the psychology of the human being. The attractions and repulsions, the likes and dislikes in relation to personalities, are inborn in us. We are born into this circumstance. We have something to say about the people around us. For or against, we have some opinion about people, and we always pass a judgement on things in our own selves. A judgement in the form of a logical conclusion that we draw in connection with our understanding in relation to humanity around us becomes the propelling force for our conduct and behaviour in relation to people.

Our attitude towards people is the result of our understanding of people. We have an opinion in such-and-such a manner and, therefore, we have to deal with this situation in such-and-such a manner. This so-called dealing in respect of people outside is our conduct which we express in behaviour outwardly, an expression of our internal attitude or feeling psychologically. Mostly, we are tied up by ropes of likes and dislikes which pull us in two different directions, and we rarely bestow thought on the interesting feature behind our likes and dislikes, namely, that a like implies a dislike, and a dislike implies a like. They are not actually two different activities of the mind. It is one outlook, one attitude, which puts on the colour or feature of a double attitude. The like which the mind entertains in respect of a particular thing or a group of things implies the exclusion of factors which do not contribute to the makeup of that atmosphere in which this thing or this group of things exists. The inclusiveness in respect of a particular situation implies exclusiveness in respect of other situations. So, as the obverse and reverse of a coin, like and dislike go together, one signifying the other, one being impossible without the other. This is, again, an internal warfare that is taking place in us, a perpetual conflict between the circumstances within us pulling us in the direction of likes and dislikes.

Arjuna was such an individual. He had likes and dislikes. The whole story of the Mahabharata is a description of the conflict among the varieties of likes and dislikes. The spiritual seeker is taught, through the epic atmosphere of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita, the lessons of life and the morals that follow from these lessons. When our reasoning capacity is turbid, our knowledge is inadequate, and our adjustments with the world outside, including human society, are not strong enough. They collapse at the least touch of confronting situations, because human relationships are only an outer form of an internal propulsion of these three forces—sattva, rajas and tamas—which are cosmically present everywhere. There is a cosmic purpose behind even our individual likes and dislikes. And our entanglement in like and dislikes is the result of our not understanding our wider involvement in a cosmical meaning that is at the base of all human situations. We always feel, “I have a like” and “I have a dislike”, but we do not know why we have that like, why we have that dislike. Why is it that we should like this and dislike something else? We cannot give a satisfactory answer except that which is purely sentimental and emotional. But the world does not live on sentiments and emotions. It is a perfectly logical system, and all the parts of the mechanism of the universe are scientifically arranged; and our behaviour outside as well as our thoughts and sentiments inside, our relationships of any kind, are conditioned by this final structure of things in general, of which we are integral parts.

The mistake of the human being in Arjuna was the incapacity to go deep into this involvement of the human individual in the larger setup of things. It is difficult for us to imagine that we are related in a more significant manner with things than what appears on the surface. The son is related to the father, the father is related to the son, there is a relation between friends, etc. This is only the outer form of some of the relationships that appear before our eyes. But these relationships are metaphysically conditioned, cosmically organised by an impersonal government which has no friends or foes, and which does not bestow favours on anyone. It is like a large computer system which has no friend and which has no enemy. It depends upon how we manipulate the mechanism, how we feed this system, how we approach it and how we conduct ourselves in relation to it. If our conduct is in any way disharmonious with the requirement of the setup of the mechanism, we will find that an undesirable result follows, something we did not expect. And the reason behind this unexpected occurrence cannot be attributed to any kind of error in the setup of things, in the mechanism we call the computer, but in the mistake we have committed, in the error that is involved in our relationship, in our not understanding properly how it works.

Arjuna, and anyone, could not and cannot easily understand or grasp this circumstance. So, we have hundreds of occasions every day to be jubilant in joy and hundreds of occasions to be sunk in sorrow. The Mahabharata concludes with these words: “Fools find themselves in umpteen situations every day when they can be happy, or when they can be unhappy, also.” It is the stupid man, not the wise one, who sees occasions for joy or sees occasions for grief in the world. The world is not intended to bring us joy, nor is its intention to pour on us sorrow. A vast computer has no intention to give us satisfaction, nor is it intended to be there to bring us sorrow. It is impersonal, and it has no such emotional meanings behind it. But human beings are emotionally composed. They are not bathed in the light of wisdom at all times. We have secret directions from impulses which sometimes appear to be irrational because they cannot be explained in a scientific manner, though ultimately there is an explanation for everything in this world.

*****

Continued

=====================================================================================