The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita - 3 (END) .Swami Krishnananda.

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

Thursday 14, May 2026, 18:00.
Article
Scriptures
Srimad Bhagavad Gita
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita - 3.
Swami Krishnananda.

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

Arjuna was thoroughly mistaken in assessing the values of life. “Your understanding is turbid, it is not clear enough to grasp the vitality of life. Nobody asked you to start the war. It is you who started this, and I merely said nothing against it. If you want it, have it, and be done with it. After having started it of your own accord, relying on the strength of your arms, listening to nobody else's advice, what makes you now sing a different tune altogether, as if you are another person having nothing to do with the previous person that you were who decided to wage the war? The answer of Arjuna was: “I do not know.” There are some students who come to this Ashram. If I ask them why they came, the answer is: “I do not know.” It is difficult to speak to such people. How is it that they do not know anything? You must know something at least. The truth is that you know that you do not know. Don't you know even that much? Well, it looks something humorous. But, this was exactly what Arjuna did. “I do not know what to do. Tell me what is my duty.” The answer is the Bhagavadgita, which is supposed to be a Gospel on duty.

What is the duty of man? I began by speaking of the four conflicts, which the Bhagavadgita endeavours to resolve. To solve the first conflict, Arjuna thought that battle is the only way. But before the war took place outside, a war broke out inside the warrior. There was a psychological war which fumed up like wild fire within the mind of the hero, even before the outer social war took place. “Do you know why this happens? Do you know why any war takes place at all? Why conflicts should arise at all? The ultimate cause of all conflicts? Do you know this, Arjuna?” Sri Krishna spoke. You do not know anything. You do not know that you have a higher conflict pushing you forward into a further external conflict. Behind the social conflict, is the individual conflict. Behind the individual conflict, there is another conflict which was not apparent to the mind of any person then, but Krishna knew what it was. It was the conflict between the individual and the world as a whole in the form of this vast creation.

Man has estranged himself from Nature. This is the third conflict – the conflict between man and Nature. The world seems to be outside us, and we seem to be strangers in this world. We are not sure if we are really wanted in this world. Sometimes it looks that we are not wanted at all, and yet we, somehow, reconcile ourselves with the hardships of this mysterious creation and pull on in life, “get on”, as we say. The world is not going to be reconciled if we are not going to obey its laws. Because of a conflict of our individuality with the universal Nature we suffer various pains – hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and, finally, death. All these catastrophes of human life, and life in general, are the outcome of an isolation of the individual from the cosmic Nature. Nature does not die; it is the individual that dies. Nature has no hunger and thirst; it is the individual that has hunger and thirst. Nature does not feel cold. Nature does not want a blanket or a sweater; it is the individual that feels heat and cold. 

The bodily limitations, the vital limitations, the mental limitations, the intellectual limitations, are all the result of this bifurcation of personality or individuality from the universal Nature. If you are to be tuned to Nature, you are to become an integral, vital, universal part of Nature. Then you will have no hunger and thirst, no heat and cold, no death. But why should this difficulty arise? “I never wanted to isolate myself from Nature.” Nobody would purchase trouble deliberately. And why has this happened? Who is responsible for this banishment of the individual from the universal? This third conflict is due to another conflict altogether, viz., the fourth conflict – the conflict between the Universe and the Absolute, between man and God. We are removed from God Himself. That is why every other disease has cropped up. Social conflict or political conflict is due to individual conflict. The individual conflict is due to the conflict of natural forces in respect of the individual. This, again, is due to a higher conflict between the Universal Being and the individual.

The war seen before us is the array of forces which God has unleashed to teach us a lesson. The whole world is up in arms against us, because we have set ourselves against God. Can we expect to have peace and happiness here when we wage a battle with God Himself? But this is the secret that man does not know because of an original ignorance, what we call the original sin of man, the fall of man, the fall of the soul from its Divine Status of Universality. Unless we reconcile ourselves with God, we are not going to reconcile ourselves with Nature. Nature is nothing but the army of forces let loose by God against the erring individual, as a reaction to the rebellion set against Him. When there is conflict with a country in war, we cannot speak to its soldiers, “My dear friends, please do not fight,” for they are not responsible for the battle. They are released by some other force behind them. We must tackle that force, which is the cause of the release of these forces. Why do we talk to the soldiers, because they, poor fellows, know nothing except that they have been ordered; and they act. Thus there is no use of speaking to the world, “My dear friend, Wind, don't bite me. Water, do not drown me. Fire, do not burn me.” They will say, “We do not know. We are only ordered to act, and we shall do according to the order. You speak to the Person, the Force who has ordered thus. Otherwise, we shall burn you down, cut you, blow you up, drown you, kill you.” So there is no use trying to get rid of the troubles of life, because these are forces released by a higher Nature. Unless we reconcile ourselves with God, we are not going to be friendly with Nature. And unless we reconcile yourself with Nature, the cosmos as a whole, our internal conflicts are not going to cease. And until internal conflicts are solved, the external wars are not going to end. The social peace which we are clamouring for, the national peace, world-peace, the Ramarajya as we call it – all these wonderful things that we are aspiring in life – cannot be had on earth until we solve the original conflict that is between us, within us, with Nature, and God.

This is the essence of the themes described in the chapters of the Bhagavadgita. We are face to face with the Supreme Being in the eleventh chapter; and whatever I have told you now is the inner significance of the contents of the first eleven chapters. The chapters that follow from the eleventh onwards describe methods of practically applying this knowledge in specific contexts of life. Before doing anything, understand well. And think well, dispassionately, taking into consideration all aspects of the question that arises in your mind. Cast a glance around you, and recognise where you really stand in this world, what your difficulties are, and tap the diffiuilties in their roots. Then it is that you will be blessed, and mankind at large reach blessedness and beatitude.

Social collaboration, individual self-control, universal interrelatedness, and Absolute Oneness are the standpoints from which the Bhagavadgita exhorts us at different levels of its teaching. The highest Reality is Aksharam Brahma (the Imperishable Absolute). It is the Supreme Person, or Adhiyajna from the standpoint of creation. It is manifest as Adhibhuta (the external universe) as the object on the one side, and as Adhyatma (the individual experiencer as the subject) on the other side. The Divine Principles organising the relations between subjects and objects is Adhidaiva (superintending Deity). The movement of the cosmic cycle, the inexorable impulse to action, the universal urge of creativity, is Karma-Visarga (the complex of activity determined by interconnected universal factors). No one can escape this duty of 'All-Life,' and none can afford to be ignorant of this secret of existence. Here is the Bhagavadgita in a nutshell.

*****

END

Next
Book
The Teachings of the Bhagavadgita - Swami Krishnananda
Continue

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