Arjuna, the representative of man, who thought as any one of us thinks, found himself in a difficulty when he had to confront life's problems. The word 'confrontation' is very unpalatable. It implies a kind of opposition you are trying to face - which war is, battle is, and perhaps any encounter or enterprise is. Any enterprise in life is an opposition you are facing. Any activity of any kind is the effort on your part, to solve a question arisen on account of an opposition that is in front of you; if there is no opposition of any kind, no activity would be essential in life. You need not do anything - you can be just there, where you are - but life is a battle, inwardly as well as outwardly. It is a battle because there is conflict everywhere. You will never find a very smooth movement of anything without a rattling of conflicting elements, which movement of any kind is.

Our very personal existence as a human body is a phenomenon of battle going on in what you call the biological system, which is not a static, concrete, unmoving entity - it is a tremendous movement. You have grown into the stature of your present maturity of body due to a transmutation process which has been going on ever since your birth, and transmutation or transformation is nothing but a process of being born and dying at the same time. An earlier stage dies, and a new stage is born in every evolutionary process. That which 'was' has gone and that which 'is not' is to arrive. The arriving of a new thing is the birth, so-called, and the going away of that which is now, and giving way to that which is not, is the death of the earlier one. Birth and death, the coming and the going of things, is the drama of existence. A Nataka, a drama, a performance in a theatre is a terrible movement - it is not a static action, it is not the mere existing of people on a stage. There is a movement, which is involved in the coming and going of people - some role comes in and some role has an exit. Otherwise, you would have all the dramatis personae standing there before you and not saying anything; there will not be a play. A play involves the coming and going of various actors; and the coming and going of various actors is what you call the scenes in the drama or the enactment - the play. In this sense we may say the life of this world is a great enactment of many people, coming in and going and playing the role in some way, and then having their exit, not being seen again. "The world is a large stage." This is what Shakespeare mentions in a beautiful passage in his As You Like It, perhaps. We are all actors in the large play.

Now, when you take up a particular part in an enactment or a drama, you know very well that there are other actors also, and you are not the sole actor in that performance. Your relationship to other people in that particular performance is the vital thing you have to understand. There may be friends and enemies, which are the roles you may have to play - maybe you are enacting the Ramayana or the Mahabharata or some such thing. Every actor performs a particular duty. And in the sense of that particularisation of the duty, one is different from the other. There is no vital connection between one actor and another, inasmuch as one actor is concerned only with his or her role, and not with the role played by other people in the drama. In that sense every one of us is independent - you have no connection with me, I am not concerned with you. I do what I am expected to do in the little circumference or the circumscribed area of my life, and so on is the case with you also. But, there is a unity of structure in the whole play; otherwise it would not be a play at all. In spite of the individuality and the isolated performances of the different actors, maybe hundreds in number, there is a unity of purpose, an aim and objective with which the drama is played - the objective being in the mind of the director who knows which actor will play which role and what unity there can be between the performance of one and the performance of another. It is not merely the director as an individual that is supposed to know the unity of purpose. Even the individuals will be aware of it, without which knowledge there would not be a harmonious element in respect of other elements, notwithstanding the fact for the purpose of their performance they are individuals.

Here is a little hint that I place before you as to the structure of our social life itself. We are, outwardly speaking, independent persons. Each one is a free bird - we can fly in any way we like - but we are not so free as we may imagine, under the pressure of an error of thinking. In a democratic set-up of a government, each person is free; that is the very meaning of democracy. You are not a shackled person; you are not limited in the operation of your daily performance - you are a free man. That is democracy. But you are not a hundred percent free; a hundred percent freedom given to every person would end in a destruction of the very system of democracy, because two hundred percents are unknown - like two infinities. There will be a clash of persons in one second. In spite of the independence and freedom given to individuals in this free set-up of things, there is a restraint exerted upon each individual which you call the operation of law; you may call it the government if you like. So, there is a restraint that you have to exercise on your part, together with the freedom that you are exercising in life. So restraint and freedom are not opposites, though they are opposites from the point of view of a dictionary meaning of these words. How can restraint and freedom be the same thing? They are two different things, but they are not contradictories. Do you know that in the exercise of your freedom as a citizen of a democratic nation, you are also restraining yourself from interfering with the freedom of other people? Is it not restraint? Do you say that the restraint is in any way opposed to the freedom that you are endowed with? So, freedom and discipline are not opposites, and perhaps the one cannot be there without the other.

But, the human mind being very weak for obvious reasons, is not always able to think in this disciplined manner. Most of us are undisciplined, indisciplined persons. We have a desire for license to do anything. This is not merely not a superhuman way of thinking, it is not even a decent human way of thinking. "Each one for himself and devil take the hindmost" is not democracy. It is a duty that each one feels, not only in regard to oneself but also in regard to others. Many of us are not meant for a pure democratic living, since we are unable to think in such a large way which is essential for this charitable way of existence you call democracy. In one way at least, you may say the universe is like a large democratic organisation, though it is not merely that; it is something else also, to which we shall refer later on. Everyone has a duty in this world, not only to one's self but also to others. You know this very well - a simple truth. You have a duty towards yourself, and in the performance of this duty in regard to yourself you are free; nobody obstructs the performance of the duty you owe to your own self. But, in the duty that you owe to others, you are under the impulsion of a law that operates transcendent to your individuality - transcendent because it is wider than your personality, it is comprehensive of all other people also, in whose relationship you as an individual are involved.

The law of a country is larger than the person or the individual who is free. Every person in a nation is free, yet the law is superior to every person. Unless it is superior it cannot exercise a control over others. One individual cannot restrain another individual, because both are on par, as far as they are individuals. A control can be exercised only by a superior power which is super-individualistic, and thus is law. Every disciplined law system rule is super-individualistic. If it is confined to the individual only, it cannot operate in respect of other people outside, external to the individual. So there is a law operating in the world which gives you freedom to act, and at the same time restrains you in a powerful manner. So I come to the point again, that restraint and freedom are not opposites - they are co-relatives. They co-exist, they are co-extensive, co-eternal, and one cannot be without the other. An ordinary weak mind, not properly tutored or educated, will not be able to think in this manner. Arjuna was not able to think always like this. He was the son of so-and-so, he was a Kshatriya, he had a right over some land for which he was to fight - that was all that seems to have been in his mind, and he was not wholly educated, perhaps, in the art of thinking in a manner which is required by the existence of things which are not always visible to the eyes.

This transcendent principle which is called law, which operates in a country and operates in the world, operates everywhere, is not always a pleasant thing for a person who seeks a hundred percent freedom to one's own self. Nobody likes the word 'law'; it is a hateful word. We do not like the word 'discipline' - we resent it. It is very bitter to hear these terms because we are not prepared to allow that amount of freedom to others which we like to allow to our own selves, which requires a slight impersonality on our part, above and transcendent to our individual way of thinking which, given a long rope, will be the centre of selfishness. Selfishness, is the affirmation of yourself as the whole reality and an unpreparedness to accept that others also exist around you. You are not prepared even to acquiesce in the existence of other people. You alone are and, "Nobody else can be in front of me." This is selfishness, this is tyranny, this is a dictator gone amuck. "Let me alone exist and others be not." This is the height of selfishness. But it can present itself in a milder form when we stick to our own guns and would not be prepared to be charitable enough to accept the viewpoints of other people also, much less give them the freedom that they would like to enjoy as we ourselves would like. The world is not made in the way in which we are thinking it to be constituted - things are not what they seem. The law I refer to is not outside you. We do not like the operation of law because we are under the impression that it is outside us - somebody is harassing us from outside by saying that there is a law. Law is not an external existence - it is something in which you yourself are involved. In this sense, you are involved in the world also. So in this sense again, the world is not outside you, as the law is not outside. The relationship that obtains between you and the world is what is called law. It is not made by man; it exists, as the law of gravitation exists if man is not to be at all.

This is a new education into which we have to be introduced, if we have to enjoy a peaceful existence in this world. One who violates law cannot be protected by law, and therefore he cannot have any peace. And if we are insistent on considering others as totally externals - the world is unrelated to us, which we are merely to exploit in some way or the other - then the law will catch hold of us. If you are not prepared to accept a law which accepts the existence of other people, you will be unhappy in this world. You may say that we are all unhappy because of the violation of a law - not necessarily the law that man has made in a parliament, but a law which conditions even the laws made in the parliament. Why do you violate such laws? Because you are not sufficiently educated. That was the condition in which Arjuna found himself when he saw a huge army of friends, relations, etc., in that context of the Mahabharata battle. It is a fear to face relations, friends, and related objects. That roused up a question of what one has to do in this large set-up of things. It was not a question of Arjuna, but a question of man as such. It is not a question concerning the Mahabharata battle; it is a question concerning the struggle for existence itself. This question has to be answered, and here is the Bhagavadgita.