Commentary on the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

When we are well placed in the midst of society and everybody respects us, we cannot know what kind of persons we are. The society should reject us or we should reject society, either one or the other, and then we will stand by ourselves. At that time, what we are in our basic subconscious will surface, and we will be neither rich nor poor; we will be just sentimental individuals like anybody else. Then the doubts arise: “This is not for me.” “I have made a mistake in choosing the Guru. I will have to go to another Guru.” “My meditations must have been wrongly manoeuvred.” “What happens to me? When I die, I lose all things. This world is lost for me.” “I have a father and a mother who love me.” The little affection of those parents and relatives will sting like a scorpion when everything is cut off and there is nothing for us to stand upon. And, as I mentioned, silly desires, most irrational instincts, will take possession of the individual when he totally cuts himself off from society and becomes an itinerant monk or an austere individual, starving his sentiments. “What is the guarantee that I will attain God in this birth? It may be a great hope, but from what has happened to me over the last fifty years, I realise that I have achieved nothing. I have not taken even one step in the direction of God-realisation.”

The sentiments, the inner subconscious forces, take possession of the individual, and finding the weak point of the individual sentiment, they ambush like guerrillas and take the opportunity to attack him, and the advanced spiritual seeker becomes this petty individual who is practically helpless: “God has not come; the world has gone.” At a particular time we will either feel that the world has left us or that we have left the world, but God has not come. That is the situation in which we find ourselves – neither this nor that, in a vacuum – and it is at that time that we can develop a neurosis or have a breakdown, or develop a peptic ulcer or peculiar illnesses where the brain malfunctions and the mind becomes deranged. I have seen one swami who kept shaking his head. He said, “I have done meditation on the great truth of the presence of consciousness everywhere. I began to see consciousness in all things. This made me very happy. I went on concentrating on the presence of consciousness in everything. Suddenly one day I got a bolt from the blue, as it were, and now I am feeling like this. Is there any remedy that you can think of?” I gave him some remedy which helped him, satisfied him.

Arjuna should be well prepared for all the psychological eventualities that he may have to face, rather than merely being prepared for the physical eventualities. To fight with the mind is more difficult than to fight with people, and it is the mind that sees values in things and considers people as friends or enemies, etc. Who tells us that so-and-so is a friend and so-and-so is an enemy? It is the mind. Hence, it is a peculiar psychological reaction from ourselves that is the determining factor in defining our envisagement of values. Otherwise, we cannot know who is a friend and who is an enemy, because a relationship of this kind, positive or negative, is a counteracting medium of the mind itself which has some mould into which these values are cast; and if the susceptibility to react in terms of affection and hatred were not to be in our minds, we would not experience affection and hatred. There is some weakness in the mind which is submerged in ordinary social life, because when we are in a good society we don’t always think in terms of affection and hatred, etc. Everything looks fine and we are all well off. But when we are totally alone, the possibilities of the otherwise-ignored aspects of the mind will come up and tell us that we have totally ignored them, we have not paid our debts to them; the tax has not been paid and, therefore, we will not be able to move further. Arjuna asked: “Even if I face these people, and even if I am the best of spiritual seekers, what is the guarantee that I will succeed? I may conquer the world – or the world may conquer me. I may perish in this attempt.” Arjuna himself put this question: “If somebody perishes in the middle, having attained nothing, what will be his fate?” Lord Krishna answers it in some other chapter.

Do we find ourselves in a helpless condition spiritually? We will not be able to answer this question unless we live an individual life. We should not be in society. When I say we should not be in society, I do not mean that we should sit under a tree or go into the jungle, etc. The mind should be dissociated from any kind of social contact. A person may be sitting next to us, but we may not be socially connected with him or even be aware that he is there. It is like a railway station. We are travelling in a coach on the train. Many people are sitting in the same coach. Are we connected with any one of them? It is a society, no doubt. We are sitting in the midst of a large number of people, which is nothing but human society, but we are not even aware of the existence of these people and we don’t care what kind of people they are. It is total detachment of our minds, for reasons which are obvious. So we can be in the midst of thousands of people and yet be unconcerned with them. Similarly, the detachment that is required socially is not actually a physical running away from Rameswaram to the Himalayas. That is not of any utility, finally, because it is the mind that works havoc, and not the body.

“Will I succeed? If I perish, what happens?” This is Arjuna’s question. Secondly, Bhishma, Drona, Karna, etc., are not ordinary people. They are ten times stronger than Arjuna, and Arjuna knows that. Nobody can face these people.

Before the commencement of the war (this is a little digression from the main point) when all were arrayed on the battlefield, wearing their armour, with bows and arrows in their hands and swords drawn – everything was war-hot and nobody knew what would happen the next moment – Yudhishthira put down his weapons, removed his shoes, put on a single cloth, a dhoti, and in the thick of the array went forward. Nobody understood what was happening to this crazy man; he was walking into the midst of his enemies, who had drawn their swords. Arjuna said, “What has happened to my brother? Has he gone crazy?” Duryodhana and others said, “Coward! Coward! The coward is coming. He is afraid. By seeing us he is afraid. He is coming to sue for peace.” Krishna said, “I am aware of what it is. He is neither a coward, nor he has made any mistake. He is following a great tradition of paying obeisance to elders.” We have to pay obeisance to our elders, which is one of the great dharmas of India. He went and prostrated himself before Bhishma. “Bless me for success,” said Yudhishthira. “Not as long as I am alive,” Bhishma replied. “Then what?” “Not as long as I am alive.” “When I shall have success? How will I defeat you?” “This matter we shall discuss later on.” Yudhishthira then went to Drona and prostrated himself before him. “Please bless me for success.” Drona replied, “Nothing doing, as long as I am in the field.” Yudhishthira then went to Kripacharya, who said, “No success for you as long as I am here.”

The world will tell us, “I am not going to leave you like that, so easily.” It catches hold of us, with all our sentiments and desires and longings and social relationships. The gold and silver, and the milk and honey of this world are not easy to abandon. There is a joy in being an important person in the world. There is a satisfaction in being a king, an emperor or a ruler of a country. There is a satisfaction in being a very wealthy person, a millionaire rolling in gold. Can we say these are not satisfactions? And if this temptation is thrown at us – suppose we are offered a gold throne – what will we say, my dear spiritual seeker? We will hesitate. It is said that Satan showed a large field of gold and silver to Christ. “Take this for yourself. Convert stone into bread, etc. You are a master. You have attained great siddhis. Now what further meditation? Stop it. Do some good work for people who are suffering.” This was told to Buddha also, in a different way, and will be told to every one of us.

Arjuna was an epic representation of the internal chaos that one may have to face in the beginning of spiritual life. I am describing the initial stages of spiritual life, not the advanced conditions where we are receiving something positively: “Great confusion – I have lost everything. I have lost my father and mother. I have no friends here, and nobody talks to me. I am sick. I have achieved nothing. I have no guidance, no teachings. I will go crazy.” A spiritual seeker may feel like that, and run about here and there. Sometimes, to save themselves from going mad, they go on travelling from place to place. That is also a way. If we are very angry, and take a long walk, our anger comes down. But, finally, these tactics will not take us anywhere. The reason is that we have not properly founded ourselves on the correct appreciation of values. Whether to renounce the world or not renounce the world – who told us what is to be done? Has anybody told us that it is necessary to renounce the world? Something has been told to us by our elders. Something is told in some scripture. Is it because of the statement of some book that we are trying to kick the world out? Or have we got any actual reason for it? Is there a rational ground for our feeling that the world has to be renounced? I think very few people will give an answer to this question: What is the rational ground for our renouncing the world? Is it because we want God? We will find that this is a very horrible question, and we will not have a rational ground. Let the scriptures say that, Gurus say that, the Bible says that, the Gita says that; nobody will help us here. When we are drowning, no Gita will come to our rescue. Nobody will come. Our own conscience will come. Thus, Arjuna’s difficulty is a spiritual difficulty; it is a spiritual crisis in which he found himself. And in an epic manner, Vyasa describes this chaos of the spiritual seeker who was otherwise very adventurous and who went forward to face the battle of life, but who immediately became diffident and threw down his weapons. “No japa, no meditation, no book-reading – all this finished. I am unable to do anything,” Arjuna said.

In this condition, our only resort is the Guru. Fortunately, Arjuna had a good Guru; and, fortunately, he had the sense of feeling that it was necessary to surrender himself; and, fortunately, he knew that his egoism was not going to work any longer. Had his self-confidence continued and had he stuck to the wrong arguments that he put forth in the First Chapter, nothing would have come out of it. However, some sattvic karma rose up and he felt that it was necessary for him to know what was to be done: “In this chaotic condition of my mind, what is my duty? I surrender myself to you, the great Master. Please tell me.”

The answer of Bhagavan Sri Krishna is that we understand nothing. Without proper understanding of the structure of life and our relationship to people or things in general, we draw conclusions. This is a very sorry state. How can we draw conclusions without proper premises? If we draw a conclusion based on a wrong premise, the conclusion is also wrong. Therefore, all that we have been told up to this time is without any foundation, because we do not know either ourselves or the world. What is the meaning of knowing oneself and the world? These questions will be answered gradually in the Second and the Third Chapters. The second chapter will tell us what we are. The third chapter will tell us what the world is.