Sri Krishna as Revealed in All Levels of Reality: 2. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Saturday 16, May 2026, 20:15.
Article
Scriptures
Sri Krishna as Revealed in All Levels of Reality: 2.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on May 1, 1983)

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A keen student of the Bhagavadgita would have observed that a single answer is not available, but a manifold answer is poured forth through the different verses of the Bhagavadgita, often making us feel that there is, as it were, a contradiction in the statements made. There is a sociological point of view sometimes visible to us at the very beginning of the Gita, a point of view of the Sankhya even in the classical sense, a point of view which is purely political, economic and personal, a point of view which may be called ethical and moral, a point of view which is cosmical, natural, universal, and a point of view which is perhaps Absolute. Therefore, considering the last verse of the Bhagavadgita as a sort of a concentrated shape that the teaching has taken, we may have to see through the meaning of this verse and attempt to discover something which is applicable to all those levels and standpoints which were taken into consideration when the gospel was delivered.

We are, at the present moment, in the political, social, and physical levels of existece. We are overly concerned with our political associations, requirements and involvements. Whatever be our spiritual, moral or philosophical longing in our leisure hours, there is no gainsaying that as a citizen of a particular nation a person is conscious of his or her involvement in what is called the national setup. There is an involvement in human society, in the community to which one belongs and from which relationship one cannot easily extricate oneself. And there are the fundamental involvements which are the ingredients of our own psychophysical individuality. While it is true that we are units in a politically organised nation – individuals related to human society in a particular manner and not totally independent of human relations – there is something more about us than what is available visibly in this manner.

We are apparently a physical frame we call the body, and this is a level which weighs very heavily on our shoulders. For all practical purposes in our life we consider ourselves as the physical body only. We do not seem to be concerned with anything else, though on rare occasions we manifest that particular feature in us where we seem to be concerned with our mental life much more than the physical or bodily life.

We are all very well aware that sanity of the mind, inward peace and composure of the psyche are of greater consequence in our life than merely the well-being of the physical body. But there is something very crucial, namely, the capacity of our understanding itself, and this is a point which is easily missed by us. Our longings, our likes and dislikes, and all the projects in which we engage ourselves, our very outlook of life, is nothing but a kind of interpretation of our own understanding.

Thus, there is a level in our own being which is not merely political, social or even that which is related to our community existence, not merely the physical or the psychic, but there is a rational element in us, and the importance of the reason in us is well known to every one of us. When the reason fails, we know what will happen to us. There is no greater treasure in life then a well-balanced reason which can think correctly, logically, systematically, precisely. If the reason works in a confused manner, all the apparatus of the psyche will topple down and we shall cease to be human beings for any practical purpose, though we may be physically alive.

So we can very well understand that the so-called 'I' or 'we' to which reference is made again and again is not a simple thing which can be swallowed like a pill. It is a highly complicated structure. And in the same way as we do not seem to be exhausted merely by the physical body and we have inner levels of personality, there is a co-relation established between these inner layers of our personality with the corresponding layers of the cosmos.

There is not much difficulty in realising that there seems to be a basic connectedness between ourselves and the stuff of which the world is made. The human individual is supposed to be a specimen of what the universe is constituted. This is perhaps the reason why it is said that if one knows one's own self, one can know the whole universe at one stroke because the human individual is a specimen of the cosmos, a sample of the universal structure. The sample that we are is a demonstration that there are levels and layers beyond and beneath the physical and the social. Likewise, we may infer the presence of such corresponding levels in the universe to which the internal layers are related, so that we are cosmically obliged to perform a duty in every level of our being, which is the ringing tone of the teaching of the Bhagavadgita.

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