The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharatham and the Bhagavadgita: 3.1.Swami Krishnananda.

 

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

Tuesday 13, October 2026, 06:00.
Books
Bhagavadgita & Hinduism
The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharatham and the Bhagavadgita: 3.1.
Swami Krishnananda
Chapter 3: The World Is the Face of God-1. 

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

Chapter 3: The World Is the Face of God -1.

In the journey of spiritual practice, there are many halting places on the way. It is not a direct flight without any stop in-between. At the very inception of this endeavour known as spiritual sadhana, there is an upheaval of the powers of aspiration, an innocent longing for God and a confidence that one would reach God—perhaps the same kind of confidence that a child has in catching the moon. The innocence and the credulity do not permit the acceptance of the difficulties involved in this pursuit. There is simplicity, sincerity and honesty coupled with ignorance, and this is practically the circumstance of every spiritual seeker. There is a humble innocence, very praiseworthy, but it is also attended with ignorance of the problems on the path and the difficulties of attaining God. The innocence of childhood is simplicity incarnate. Everyone loves a simple, innocent child, and everyone is happy about a simple, innocent seeker of truth. The Pandavas—we are studying certain implications of the Mahabharata—were innocent children playing with their own cousins, the Kauravas, and they would never have dreamt, even with the farthest stretch of their imaginations, of the forthcoming catastrophes in the life to come.

There is a peculiar circumstance in which the seeker finds himself at the outset, and there is a tentative picture presented before the mind of a seeker of great success. The intense austerity that we practise—the japa, the studies, the prayers, the worships—attract attention from everyone, and we become an object of adoration. Yudhishthira was crowned with the rajasuya sacrifice; it was a great glory indeed. The world begins to know us as a great austere seeker and a man of God; but the vision of people is different from the vision of God. It is inscrutable, and no one can say what the way of God is. The most compassionate conceivable and the hardest nut to crack—all combined in one, as it were, appears to be the attitude of God. Great difficulty, hardship and judicial strictness coupled with parental affection is the characteristic that is generally attributed to God. Law and love combined together; justice and affection both seem to be blended in Him. We cannot understand how these go together, but they do go, and perhaps they have to be together in a mysterious manner which the human mind cannot grasp. The justice of God is not contrary to the response that is evinced from Him by the affection that the seeker develops in respect of God. The love that is divine is compatible with law that is justice.

But the human concept of law and the human concept of love both require emendation. There is a cosmical interpretation and a standpoint taken on the basis of an interdependence of things, when things are looked at from the point of view of God. But human minds are not made in that manner. The interdependence or the interconnectedness of things in a universal manner is a theoretical concept which surpasses the imagination of the individual, and in practice it escapes notice wholly. We take an individualistic view of things, a finite attitude towards objects, bifurcating the relationship of one with the other, and therefore unexpected consequences follow from our attitude to things. Our satisfaction need not necessarily to be taken as a sign of success, because our satisfaction is that which satisfies our individuality. The satisfaction of an individual is not really a genuine and a permanent satisfaction. It flies away like the wind, and it moves as the individual moves.

In the process of evolution there is a transfiguration of the structure of individuality. The individuality transforms itself in the process of evolution, and simultaneously with this transformation, the notions, the ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, pleasure and pain also change. What is pleasant today need not be pleasant even to me, myself tomorrow, on account of the change of my attitude to things due to a shift of emphasis in the process of evolution. This is commonplace and does not require much commentary. Hence we should not be under the erroneous notion that a jubilant feeling within us is a sign of spiritual vision, since our jubilation is somehow or other connected with the nature of our own personality. The likes and dislikes of the mind of an individual are reactions set up by the structure of the mind of that individual. The structure of the mind is responsible for the particular type of satisfaction that it feels, and the particular type of dissatisfaction also, which follows automatically from this structure. So what I like need not be your liking, it follows, because of the simple fact that minds are not made in the same manner. Hence, a particular sense of elation within oneself can be a great credit to the capacity to achieve in one's own individual mind that which one seeks as something pleasant. But we are told again and again that the pleasant need not necessarily be the good, and the good need not necessarily be the pleasant, although the good can also be the pleasant. Hence the mass of votes poured upon Yudhishthira in the form of the rajasuya sacrifice, culminating in his coronation through the rajasuya, struck at the same time a note of retrogression by ways and means which were unthinkable; and this elation, and the rising to the throne after the rajasuya, ended in the banishment of the very same empire and emperor to the grief-stricken life of the wilderness of the jungles in the Aranyapurva.

The life of a saint is a mystic Mahabharata itself. Every sage or saint has passed through all the stages of the Mahabharata conflict. No one lived as a great saint without passing through untold hardships, and no one ever left this world with the feeling that it is all milk and honey flowing. The truth of the world becomes evident to the eyes that are about to close to this world; the untutored mind takes it for what it is not. Hence the glory of the royal coronation and success ended in untold grief, because of a negative aspect that was hidden in the joy of the coronation. There was something lacking. It was a glory that was bestowed upon Yudhishthira by the power of people, like the ascent of a person to the throne of a ministry by the raising of hands of the vast public. But the hands can drop down tomorrow; they need not always be standing erect. There is always an unpredictable uncertainty about mob psychology, and therefore a dependent success cannot be called a success. If I have become great due to your goodness, that would not be real greatness, because your goodness can be withdrawn. If the greatness is at the mercy of another's opinion or power, it falls.

*****
Continue

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