The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharatham and the Bhagavadgita: 2.1 Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday 11, Sep 2026, 15:50.
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Bhagavadgita & Hinduism
The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharatham and the Bhagavadgita: 2.1
Swami Krishnananda
Next: Chapter 2: Challenges of the Spiritual Seeker -1.

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Chapter 2: Challenges of the Spiritual Seeker -1.

The power of sadhana does not gain adequate confidence until divine powers collaborate with it, and God Himself seems to be at the back of the seeker of God. We have been noting a great epic symbol in the Mahabharata, wherein we are given the narration of the adventure of the spirit in its struggle for ultimate freedom. The wilderness of the forest life that the Pandavas had to undergo is a great lesson to the spiritual seeker. No one can escape the ups and downs of life, the vicissitudes of time through which the ancient sages and saints have passed; everyone seems to have the duty to tread the same path. We have to walk the same path, and the path is laid before us with all its intricacies, with all its problems and difficulties, as well as its own facilities. We seem to be lost to ourselves and lost to the whole world, with no ray of hope before us, at least to our waking consciousness.

When the Pandavas were in the forest, they did not know what would happen in the future. It was just oblivion and gloom which hung heavy like dark clouds upon them. When we are in the thick of the dark night of the soul—a dark night not of ignorance, but of the spiritual quest; when we are in a period of transition between the world and the Absolute, a universal screen falls in front of our eyes, as it were, and we cannot see what is ahead of us. When we are going to be severed from our attachments to the particular objects of sense and are about to enter into a larger expanse of a vaster experience, in that period of transition there is an unintelligible difficulty. Efforts cease, because all the effort that the human being can harness has been tried and found wanting.

The strength of the Pandavas was not equal to the task. Draupadi in the forest reprimands Yudhishthira as a coward and insults God Himself, as it were, when she cries aloud saying, “If God had eyes, He would certainly see our fate, and that He does not seem to be seeing us is not of any credit to Him.” Yudhishthira could not bear these words of taunt which Draupadi expressed even against God Himself; his reply was simple and expressed in a few words. He was aware of the strength of the other side. He spoke to Draupadi, “Poor lady, you do not know where we are actually standing. The power of Bhishma, the power of Drona and Karna is so immense that we would not be a match to these heroes, and to take up arms against them at a premature time would be folly.” To fight the world one must have strength enough—otherwise one would be in that condition described by the old adage: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Seekers, enthusiasts and honest sadhakas many a time overestimate their powers, and they do not know the strength of the world. The Kauravas had their own strength and it could not be in any way underestimated. When the war was actually to take place, the strength would be seen. And it was seen—not an easy task it was.

God helps us, it is true, but He helps us in His own way—not in the way we would expect Him to work. There is a logic of His own, which is not always expressed in terms of human logic. Sri Krishna was there, alive, even when the Pandavas were tortured, almost, in the forest, but we do not hear much about his movements during this period of twelve years. There was, however, a mention of his casual visit to the Pandavas, where he expresses in a few words his wrath, his intense anger against what had happened. “Well, I am sorry that I was not present. I would not have allowed this to have happened if I had been present.” That was all he could say, and that was all he did say. Well, his associates were more stirred up in their feelings than could be discovered from the words of Krishna Himself. They spoke in loud terms and swore, as it were, to take active steps in the direction of the redress of the sorrows of the Pandavas at once, without even consulting Yudhishthira. But Krishna intervened and said, “No. A gift that is given is not as palatable as one's own earning. The Pandavas will not accept gifts given by us—they would like to take it by themselves. We may help them, but this is not the time.”

Many a time we feel as if we have been lost and have been forsaken totally. Even advanced seekers, saints and sages have passed through this critical moment of the sinking of the soul when, in anguish, words which would not ordinarily come out of their mouths do come and did come in respect of God. 'God, are You blind?' can be a poem of a great saint when no action is taken to redress the sufferings of the seeker, no blessing is bestowed upon him, no vision comes forth and he is only put to the grind and made to suffer more and more, more critically than the world would have tortured him had he been in the world. All these are peculiar psychical conditions in which we have to find ourselves and for which we have to be prepared, and no one is exempt from the law of the mind. Whether it is Buddha's mind or it is the mind of a rustic in the fields, the structure of mind is the same, and in its evolution it has to pass through all the stages of agonising suffering, emotional tearing, as it were, on account of the tussle that one has to undergo between the spirit within and the spirit without.

This spirit that is implanted in us suffers for union with the spirit outside, the Absolute. There is its critical moment. It is as if we were going to embrace the ocean. This experience has been compared in many ways to merging into fire, tying a wild elephant with silken threads, swallowing fire, etc. The problem arises on account of the peculiar nature of the mind. The mind is addicted to sense experience. It is accustomed to the enjoyment of objects, and it is now attempting to rise above all contacts and reach the state of that yoga which great masters have called asparsha yoga—the yoga of non-contact. It is not a union of something with something else; that would be another contact. It is a contact of no contact. It is difficult to encounter because of a sorrow of the spirit, deeper than the sorrow of the feelings, which even a saintly genius has to experience. The deeper we go, the greater is our sorrow, because the subtle layers of our personality are more sensitive to experience than our outer, grosser vestures. We know very well that the suffering of the mind is more agonising than the suffering of the body. We may bear a little sorrow of the body, but we cannot bear sorrow of the mind—that is more intolerable.

There is such a thing called the sorrow of the spirit, though it may look like an anomaly. How could there be sorrow for the spirit? Yes, there is some kind of situation in which our deeper self finds itself in its search for the Absolute. These are all interesting stages that are in mystical theology and the yoga of the advent of the spirit. Some of the songs and poems of the Vaishnava saints of the south, the Alvars, particularly the Nawars, and some of the rapturous expressions of the leading Shaivite saints, will be enough examples to us of the inexpressible and intricate spiritual processes through which the seeker has to pass. We are accustomed merely to a little japa, a little study of the Gita that we chant and repeat by rote every day like a machine, and we feel that our work is over, that we have done our sadhana. The deeper spirit has to be touched, and it has to be dug out like an imbedded illness. When it is pulled out there is a reaction, and the reaction is a spiritual experience by itself, through which Arjuna had to pass. A little of it is given to us in the first chapter and the earlier portions of the second chapter of the Bhagavadgita.

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Continued

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