The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

And when the theory is grasped, we know how to implement it in our daily life; that implementation is practice. So, here we have Brahmavidya and Yoga-Shastra, the science of the Absolute and the practical teaching on yoga which is the art of coming in contact with the Absolute, and, it is, moreover, something delightfully wonderful and more incapable of ordinary imagination than what we have already noticed. It is a conversation between God and man, which meaning is conveyed by the phrase, ‘Krishnarjuna Samvada’, in the colophon. Krishna and Arjuna are taken as occasions for bringing into highlight the relationship that exists between the Absolute and the relative. The epic has a special artistic grandeur and beauty of its own. That is the glory of a drama, and you enjoy it, though the enjoyment part of it has behind it a teaching, a moral or a lesson to be conveyed. As we noticed earlier, the characters of the Mahabharata are present perpetually in the features of the human being and so are the characters, Krishna and Arjuna. They are eternal relatives and not persons merely that might have lived historically some time, many years back. It is not a temporal history that is recounted to us in the epic, it is the story of the eternal drama that is played in the cosmos and is meaningful, therefore, for all times under every circumstance, to every person. As the message is imparted to the eternal individual by the eternal Reality, the teaching is also eternal. There is some essence in us which is perpetual in its nature. And that permanent essential something is the individuality of ours, which has a permanent relationship with the Supreme Being. It is, therefore, not a message conveyed in mere temporal language to suit a tentative occasion or a given moment of time, but this specific occasion of the Mahabharata was taken as a necessary context by the author of the Mahabharata to convey to the eternal human nature the knowledge of its relationship with the Eternal Absolute. The union of the individual with the Absolute is the final consummation of this story: The setting in tune of Arjuna with Krishna is the setting in tune of ourselves with all beings in a wholeness, which is Brahman, the Absolute. The story of the universe which is also the story of any country or nation, also the story of our own selves, is a story of the movement of all creation to the Creator, the Father of all beings that are here as these widespread phenomena. The world moves towards God. This is the story of creation. This is what is known as evolution. This is what we call desire, and this is what goes also as aspiration. This is the need, this is the requirement, ‘this is the necessity, the hunger and the thirst, and this is everything that is blessed here. All our requirements, whatever be their nature, are necessitated by the particular nature of the context of evolution at any given moment of time in which we are involved, in which every one is wound up entirely.

One can imagine with this introduction the widespread comprehensiveness of the gospel, the teachings of the Bhagavadgita. It leaves nothing unsaid, and the language in which this message is conveyed has behind it an incomprehensible secret. And the deeper we go within ourselves the deeper is the meaning we will discover in it. If our outer personality reads the Gita, we will see only the outer feature of its message. If we study it as a linguist, a Sanskritist, or an academician, we will see only that aspect, a story narrated which appeals to our feelings and emotions, or to our reason. If we read it as a psychologist, we will find there an unravelling of the mystery of the human psyche. If we read it as a rationalist, we will find there arguments for substantiating the varieties of the cosmos; and if we read it as a seeker, we will find there a parent to take care of us, a father and a mother, who will console us and solace us under moments of despair when clouds hang heavy in the horizon and we cannot visualise the light of the sun. Such is the tremendous depth of this gospel and teaching known as the Bhagavadgita, and of the epic of the Mahabharata in which the Bhagavadgita occurs displaying the whole character of mankind. It reveals an entire culture, not only of the Indian nation, but of all nationalities in the various stages of their evolution.

One might be surprised that this Divine Message, which should be regarded as spiritual in its character, has been imparted at a very critical moment, when a war was about to take place, in a battle-field, when people were up in arms to fly at each other’s throats, when there was heat in the minds of all that were arrayed in the war-ground. We know what is battle; and an hour or so before this terrific occasion should be regarded as the time for giving a message of eternity. It was not taught in a school or a college; one would have expected such a masterly teaching to be conveyed to students in a church or a temple, in an academy, a university, a college, a hermitage, a monastery, which would have been the proper place to reveal this message. Spirituality has little to do with war or battle, with fighting and with bloodshed. One cannot imagine the relevance of the wondrous eternity of the message to the awful scene of the battle of the Mahabharata. But here, again, is the speciality of the Bhagavadgita. It cannot, therefore, be considered as a religious scripture in any traditional sense. We do not expect a religious gospel to be broadcast in a battlefield. We assume an air of holiness, a sanctimonious attitude when we speak of God or religion. By holiness we mean something which is different from an unholy atmosphere. And what can be more unholy than a battle, a war, something unthinkable, detestable and undesirable to the utmost extent, the dread scene of killing each other. And yet, this is the occasion considered to have been most suitable.

Yes; the problems of life are not merely religious problems, and we should not be under the impression that we can be happy merely by a so-called religious message. If by religion we understand what is in our minds usually – and we know very well what we understand by religion – a scripture which has to be carried on the head and worshipped with a tremendous piety and fear in an atmosphere which has to be uncontaminated by secularity of any kind, cut off from the atmosphere of the give-and-take attitude of people, of shops and streets and the thoroughfares; a temple, a church, a priest, a ritual, we have to study the Gita a little differently. We have our own notions of religion. And religions there are and have been many and we are practicing them, yet grief-stricken. We are sorry people, indeed, with all our religion. We are weeping everyday, either openly or secretly, and the religion that we have been hugging as our dear child has not brought any consolation to us. We run to other sources of protection and solace when we are in need of support, and we do not run to religion under every circumstance. We have difficulties of various types, which are not necessarily those which can be solved by the religion that is in our heads today, and this does not require any explanation, further. We run about in ten directions everyday for solution of our problems, and we do not always go to a church or a temple if we have some difficulties. This means that our life is something which is not always capable of being confined to the religion of the church or the religion of the temple. We have not been satisfied with the God that we worship, with the religion we practice; with the scripture we read and the message we have received. We are always unhappy for some reason or the other; and man has been always unhappy and he is unhappy today; and we do not know how long he will continue to be such. Is there a solution for this unhappiness of people? Is it possible for us to be really happy? If this is a possibility, it is worthwhile investigating. And the Bhagavadgita takes up this task of tackling the problems of life in general and not just any one side of our nature.

We know very well, every one of us, that our devotions and our religious practices do not cover the whole of our lives. We have a piety inside our rooms, and a different religion altogether when we walk on the road or purchase a packet of biscuits in the shop, are traveling in the bus or journeying in the train. If our confrontation of life in these various aspects in which we are unwittingly and necessarily involved can be charged with the spirit of religion, we can be said to be truly religious, and that God will help us everywhere, and we need not run to another temporal God for solution of our daily problems. All temporality is a manifestation of eternity, and that which is eternal should be capable of interpreting temporal situations, also. And the Bhagavadgita as an eternal message is supposed to be a protection to us even in our temporal dealings and our work-a-day life. It is all things put together, like a mother to us; our relationship with our mother is not merely religious – it is everything. We can run to it for a cup of tea, a spoon of sugar, and we will see that the Gita has specifically pinpointed even these little things to relieve us of tension in all the layers of our being. The Bhagavadgita caters not merely to our outer personality but that essentiality of personality in us which is related to all things in the world, the whole of creation. We are not just citizens of Rishikesh or Uttar Pradesh or India or even this Earth. We have a passport with us for entering into the various planes of existence. We are citizens of the creation of God and this earth is not our only habitat. We have a duty which far surpasses our temporal obligations and tentative demands as nationals of a particular country or units in a particular community, etc. We have an obligation transcending the limits and the boundaries of the nation and the society in which we are born. When we fulfill the requirements of law, abide by the law that reigns supreme or operates in the atmosphere, that law is supposed to take care of us. Law protects. It does not always punish. It protects when we abide by it. It punishes when we disregard and disobey it. Our sufferings in life are therefore to be attributed to our disobedience of the law that operates in this world. We may be thinking that we are obeying a kind of law of a particular country, of a community and a family in which we are born. We think that is all-in-all, and that is enough to take care of us. But we know that if we are confined merely to the obedience of the law that prevails only within our family, and are disobedient to the law of the nation as a whole, our obedience to the family-law is not going to help us. The national law will pursue us, because we have disregarded it, notwithstanding the fact that we are humbly obedient to the family-law. And we can extend the analogy, further. The international law is also important, and if we kick it aside, as if it is nothing, and we are obstinately patriotic in respect of our own little country, that also would not be a solace to us. Our whole country can be placed in a precarious situation because of its disobedience to the international set-up of things. Such is the case with everything, everywhere. We may be obedient to the little laws of this land, but we may be disobedient to a higher law, not merely the international law, but the inter-planary law, the universal law as we may call it. That may take action against us if we are ignorant of its workings. The Bhagavadgita displays before us the structure of the universal law that operates everywhere. And if we can abide by it, it shall supremely protect us as the protection that we can expect from the Central Constitution of a Government, and our little laws are subsumed under it. Such is the beauty of this message, the Bhagavadgita.