Commentary on the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

We have studied three chapters of the Bhagavadgita. If you have listened to me carefully, you would have noticed that the compressed matter that has gone into the first three chapters lays the very foundation, as it were, of the whole spiritual teaching for mankind. As difficult it is to remember all these things, so difficult it is to make out the various facets involved in the teaching; and more difficult it is to put them into daily practice. The poor human individual – with frail intellect, with even more frail body, with tensions which are political, social and of many other types – how will this individual be able to grasp this teaching? Where is the brain for it? It is difficult to intellectually comprehend the inner secrets hidden even in the first three chapters. So much has been said about practically everything. Nobody will remember all these things – except this tape recorder. It will record everything, but others cannot remember everything in detail.

This difficulty is likely to be felt by everyone, as ordinary human individuals are subject to limitations of every kind. Is the human individual to feel disappointed that, after all, it seems to be too big an affair and we are perhaps not fit, either physically or mentally, to face the profound realities of this world? Are we to be in a state of despondency and feel a sense of helplessness? No. There is a guiding hand operating through the cosmos.

It is not merely a picture of problems and difficulties and scientific inter-connections that has been placed before us. The picture of the universe in terms of modern physics, chemistry and astronomy may be enough to frighten us out of our wits. We cannot even imagine what kind of world it is, with such width and such depth and such intricacies of inner composition. Such are the gunas of prakriti; such is prakriti; such is purusha; such are the involvements of consciousness and matter, and individuality, and what not. All sorts of things have been told. We seem to be as far from this lofty teaching as we are from the stars. Is it so?

The Fourth Chapter begins with a great consolation. The element of spiritual guidance is brought into the focus of the attention of the student. There is a perpetual guidance flowing from every part of the cosmos. The whole universe is composed of friends, well-wishers, who are eager to see that we are protected, that we are guarded and enabled to rise higher and higher to more and more profound states of perfection. They are the directions of the heavens which are dominated and superintended by divinities called the Ashtadiggajas, the divinities of the four quarters, the gods who superintend over our sense organs and our mental psyche, the very prakriti itself whose sattva, rajas and tamas are in our own personality, and the supreme purusha, which is implanted in the recesses of our heart. These are the highest friendly forces. There are no enemies in this world.

The highest possibility of help comes from a universal intelligence which permeates through the entire material universe and all the fourteen lokas; and whenever there is disharmony among the parts of the cosmos, the power of God descends as an avatara. The incarnation of God is nothing but the cosmic intelligence operating through required media at a given time, in a given manner, for a given purpose.

Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata, abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srijamyaham (4.7); paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya ca duskritam, dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge (4.8). At every juncture of experience, whether created knowingly or unknowingly, God manifests Himself, just as healing forces in the body work perpetually when there is disease in the system. If there is some illness in the body, the protective forces immediately gird up their loins; and powers – called anabolic forces – stand against the catabolic forces which are intent on destroying the body. As gods and demons fight in heaven, the constructive healing forces fight, as it were, against disease-forming toxins – just as whenever there is even a little pain in the foot due to a thorn that has gone into it, the entire body descends as an incarnation of power to set right that element that has entered as something totally alien to the bodily requirement.

When does God incarnate? Is it sometimes, occasionally, always, or only in some ages? The word ‘yuga’ is used in this verse: yuge yuge. Yuga also means the fourfold cycle of time known as Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga. These four ages of the time process are called yugas in Sanskrit. “In every yuga I manifest myself” is one meaning. We will find in the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana or the Vishnu Purana or any other Purana that the incarnation of God in some form – Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha and so on – took place in every yuga. But yuga also means a junction, a crisis, a situation where there is a conflict of forces, outwardly as well as inwardly. There is a necessity for the descent of redemptive forces in the same way as the constructive redeeming forces of the body do not act only sometimes. They do not even sleep. The anabolic forces, or constructive forces to which I made reference, are perpetually working in the body to see that health is maintained and the body does not deteriorate.

Just as the intelligence maintaining the human body works continuously, without winking and without sleeping, in order to maintain this psychophysical organism, in the same way God acts in this world through manifestations which are myriad in number. Santi sahasrashah – thousands and thousands are the ways in which God can reveal Himself for the purpose of bringing about a rapprochement of conditions, a harmony among conflicts arising in any way whatsoever. God can reveal Himself positively in the form of an amelioration of all the conditions causing pain to people, or negatively by the amputation of a limb of a body if that becomes unavoidable, which God does only under extreme cases in the form of battle, war, epidemics, cyclones, earthquakes, floods and tornados. All these come as incarnations of God. He may come as the beautiful butter-stealing child Krishna – so tender, so attractive, so beautiful and so adorable – or He may also come as the terrific tooth and claw Narasimha. Hence, we should not expect Him to manifest Himself only in the manner we like.

When a fever arises in the body, it is a very painful and very unpleasant thing that is taking place. This is a healing process. A big war is taking place within the body, and a heightened form of energy rises up into action in order to drive out all the toxic forces. In this war, sometimes the soldiers in the battle who drive out the toxic elements also die. The warriors do not always come back hale and hearty. Many of them perish. The white corpuscles in the blood are supposed to be the warriors, and when they die there is pus in the body. That pus is nothing but the blood corpuscles dying in the war for the sake of our welfare. Soldiers die for the nation. Nations survive; soldiers die. In the same way, these poor white cells fought with the elements that came as toxins, and when the toxins were too powerful – like Ravana and Kumbhakarna – many of these cells died, sacrificing themselves for the welfare of the body.

Similarly, the manifestation of God is with an ultimate purpose. It is not with an individual, motivated, localised purpose. God does not descend for your sake or my sake, or for this country’s sake or that country’s sake. There is no such thing as ‘mine’ and ‘his’ for God. The total intention of creation, taken in its completeness, is the intention of God. He wants the health and the harmony of the entire creation in the same way as we want the health and the perfection of the entire body. We do not want part of the body to suffer and part of the body to be healed by medical treatment. What is the good of it? If we are partially sick and partially healthy, we cannot be regarded as healthy at all. As a good medical practitioner, God takes the view that the entire body should be protected. It is not enough if only some limb is protected; and if for the sake of the protection of the entire organism which is the body, some part has to be eliminated, He will eliminate it – by a cyclone or something like that. But God does not always come as a disease or a threat or a Narasimha. He can also come as a friend, a well-wisher. Suhridam sarva-bhutanam jnatva mam santim ricchati (5.29): “Knowing Me as the friend of all beings, you shall attain peace.” A terror like Narasimha, a fearsome force like Bhagavan Sri Krishna, yet the kindest, most merciful, most adorable is the manner in which incarnations come.

“Whenever dharma declines and adharma rises up, I will manifest Myself.” Dharma is the integrating force; adharma is the disintegrating force. That which keeps society – the world as a whole – intact as an organic completeness is dharma. Dharma is a cohesive force, a cementing element, even in the midst of the worst of diversities of being. Adharma is the opposite. It cuts into pieces all the unity that we can have anywhere – brother fights with brother, husband throws away the wife, wife deserts the husband, the son sues the father, and nobody wants anybody. These kinds of terrible diversifying situations can be the outcome of adharma working with great rapacity, which comes as Hiranyakashipus, Ravanas and Kumbhakarnas, etc., or as destructive cosmic forces.