Sri Krishna as Revealed in All Levels of Reality: 1. Swami Krishnananda

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

Thursday 02, April 2026, 20:45.
Article
Scriptures
Sri Krishna as Revealed in All Levels of Reality: 1.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on May 1, 1983)

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

Often teachers as well as students of the Bhagavadgita consider the last verse of this gospel as representing in a way the quintessential import of the whole teaching. Yatra yogeśvaraḥ kṛṣṇo yatra pārtho dhanurdharaḥ, tatra śrīr vijayo bhūtir dhruvā nītir matir mama (Gita 18.78). Thus concludes the Bhagavadgita. “Where there is Krishna the Lord of yoga and where there is Arjuna the wielder of the bow, there is prosperity, victory, happiness and firm quality. This is my conviction,” said Sanjay.

This statement would mean that a kind perfection in life can be expected where this blend between Krishna and Arjuna is made practicable. We know very well that Krishna and Arjuna, two geniuses in their own way, were seated in a single chariot, and the vehicle was driven through the battlefield of the Mahabharata. The point in this verse seems to be that we can hope for success where Krishna and Arjuna are in a state of unison, seated in a single vehicle.

The obvious meaning of this instruction is, of course, clear to any studious mind engaged in reading the Bhagavadgita. But if, as it is very often said, the Bhagavadgita is a sort of gospel for eternity, meaningful for all conditions of life and applicable to every state of existence, there is perhaps a possibility of our discovering in this poignant verse something more implicit and significant than what an ordinary, literal translation may furnish us.

The Bhagavadgita is a highly philosophical teaching, and thus, in the vast gamut which it covers it seems to sweep over practically every question that can arise in the life of a human being. As a philosophical teaching, philosophical in the true sense of the term, it takes us gradually, stage by stage, until the final cause of the problem of life is discovered, and a final solution is seen and brought forth as a remedy for every kind of ill of mankind.

The illnesses of life are manifold, as we all very well know. It is not merely a sickness of the body which should be considered as a sort of outer expression of an inward maladjustment because a basic difficulty, often called a metaphysical evil, is behind every form of temporal problem and difficulty.

If philosophy is essentially the tracing of effects to their causes and the attempt to interpret every event, every occurrence, every phenomenon in the light of a cause behind which there is no further cause, then the instruction that permanent and perennial success or happiness can be had only where Krishna and Arjuna are seated in one chariot may have a deeper meaning than what is visible on the surface. It is perhaps evident to any inquisitive understanding that Krishna and Arjuna have to be in one chariot at every level of being, and not merely in the physical field of the Mahabharata. The gospel of the Bhagavadgita itself is a teaching that is given from many angles of vision, inasmuch as the problems of life are multifaceted and so the remedies also have to be of similar character and potency.

Our difficulties do not arise from one side only. Misfortune does not come in ones, as the old saying goes. It drops on our head like a hailstorm when it comes, and we will find ourselves in such a mess that we would not be able to easily discover the source of our difficulty. We are likely to trace the problems of life to immediate causes. For example, we think that we sneeze because we walked through the rain. We have an easy answer to the phenomenon of a sneeze, a cold, a headache and the like. Likewise, we have an immediate answer as an explanation for every event and every phenomenon of life, but rarely do we go behind these immediate antecedents of our difficulties and try to locate the ultimate cause and permanent solution of the problem of life, which is the theme that is taken up for discussion in the Bhagavadgita.

If we live a multifaceted life, and if our existence is not exhausted merely by the physical level or by our physical body, and if it is true that we have inwardly in our own selves layers of being which are transcendent to or beyond the physical and the visible level, then the solution provided in the last verse of the Bhagavadgita as the coming together of Krishna and Arjuna in a single chariot should be an occurrence in every level of being. These principles have to be united in all the stages of our life, in all the angles of vision that may be the means of our knowledge in the world, and in every blessed thing that we perhaps are.

Now, inasmuch as the Bhagavadgita is philosophical, ethical and mystical, a brahma vidya and a yoga shastra, the art of the integration of being, we may say, this act of blending or integration is to be effected in the different levels from which the teaching of Sri Krishna emanates.

****

Continue

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