The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata
and the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

So, the judgment of Arjuna in respect to the world outside, which he declares in the first chapter of the Gita, needs an emendation. What is judgment? It is a reading of meaning into the object by a particular subject; an interpretation of values by investing them with characteristics from outside. But this judgment implies an isolation of the subject from the object. If you are a part of the object itself, the judgment would be difficult. Just as a judge cannot decide in a case if he himself is involved with the parties, if he himself is a client, the judgment of the intellect becomes ultimately untenable. Though acceptable in the beginning stages, ultimately it is not acceptable, because it is impossible to see any meaning in any judgment unless the subject is isolated from the object. But the two are not so isolated; hence there is a mistake committed by every subject in passing judgment on anything. “Judge not lest you be judged.” The cosmos will judge you if you, as an individual, begin to judge objects. Hence Arjuna’s judgment of values was not acceptable to the cosmic sense of Bhagavan Sri Krishna. Prakriti, which is universally spread out everywhere in space and time, is also beyond space and time. It being the sum and substance of both the objective side and the subjective side, there comes about a necessity to see things in a new light altogether. This new light is called samkhya. We have to visualise things as constituents of prakriti, not forgetting the fact that we are also a constituent thereof. This implies a necessity to rise gradually from the individual placement of values to a cosmic placement of values. Every judgment becomes a cosmic judgment.

It is difficult therefore to know anything unless we know everything. To know anything completely would mean to know everything completely. Only the cosmic mind can know all things correctly, and its judgment alone can be called correct. “So Arjuna, your statements are based on your notion that you are a human being belonging to a class and category, an individual among many others, separate entirely from the objective world—which is not true.” Hence, a transvaluation of values becomes necessary. The individual has to rise up to the occasion, and the occasion is the recognition of the involvement of the very judge himself in the circumstance of judgment. Well, if this is the truth, what is the duty of the individual under this condition? One cannot act, one cannot move, one cannot even think perhaps, if it is to be accepted that the thinker is inseparable from that which is thought. The answer of Sri Krishna is, “It is not like that. This again is an individual’s judgment, that in that condition no action is possible.” We are imagining that in a cosmic state of things one would be inert, and no activity of any kind would be possible.

There is a transcendental type of activity which the human mind in its present state cannot understand, and that is the significance behind the great gospel of the karma yoga of the Gita. Karma yoga can be said to be a transcendental action. It is not my action or your action; it is not activity in a commercial sense. It is an activity which is commensurate with the law of the cosmos. It is, again, an activity which is based on samkhyabuddhi—we have not to forget this point. The enlightenment of the samkhya, to which we made reference earlier, is the basis of this action called ‘yoga’ in the Bhagavadgita. The karma yoga of the Gita is therefore divine action, in one sense. It is not human action, because the human sense of values gets overcome, transcended in the visualisation of the involvement of the seer in the seen universe. Every thought becomes a kind of universal interpretation of things, and every action becomes a universal action. That action is divine action, and universal action is God acting—the two are not separate—and this action cannot produce reaction. Therefore there is no bondage in performing this kind of action.

Why does it not produce any reaction? Because the force of action is not separate from the result of the action; it is not even separate from the process of action. Brahmarpanam brahma havir brahmagnau brahmana hutam, brahmaiva tena gantavyam brahma-karma- samadhina: The performer, the process of performance and the aim to which it is directed are basically connected by a link of—we may call it prakriti, we may call it purusha, we may call it Brahman—whatever is the name we give to it, there is a sum and substance which is at the root of all things. So karma yoga is an uplifted action of a highly transformed character based on the visualisation of God Himself, as it were, of the universal nature of the life that we live.

This is a very difficult thing. Anybody would say it is an impossibility, because our desires are so strong. We have impulses in us which tie us down to the body and to the society in which we are living. We have hunger and thirst and the urge to sleep; we are fatigued, we have anger, we have passions, we have jealousies, and we have every blessed thing. These impulses within us, which are inseparable from the nature of our mind itself, prevent us, or certainly hinder us, from contemplating any such possibility along the lines indicated here.

No mind can think in this manner because of the desires that are inside us—intense desire, which also, when it is frustrated, becomes intense anger. Desire and anger—these will not allow us to contemplate in this manner. Either we have desire or we have anger; one of the two is always there. We cannot be free from both. But they are one and the same thing appearing in two ways—anger and desire are not two things. When Arjuna queried, “What is this obstruction to this visualisation that you are proclaiming?” Bhagavan Sri Krishna said, “Desire and anger are the obstacles.” They are all-swallowing, all-devouring, fire-like, and insatiable. They can destroy anything, and as long as these are there it will not be possible for the higher mind to work, because as smoke is able to cover the brilliance of fire, the light of higher reason is clouded by the smoke of these desires and impulses. “Well then, what is the state of the individual? On one side you say this; on the other side you say that. On one side you say there is no alternative but to think in a cosmic manner. On the other hand we are told, at the same time, that these impulses will not allow us to think like this. Is there a remedy?”

There is a remedy, because the locations of these desires are the senses, the mind and the intellect. These are the harbingers of desire and anger. Therefore it is necessary to restrain the senses, the mind and the intellect. Desire is nothing but an urge of the individual to move towards objects. It is like the impulse of the river to move towards something outside, say the ocean which is its object. The individual, in its finitude of consciousness, in its agony of being conditioned to the body, cries to come out of itself; and in its attempt to come out of itself and unite itself with others, hugs objects of sense and runs to them. This urge or impulse of the individual to run to outside objects for the purpose of assimilating them into himself—that is called desire—and these desires are channelised through the sense objects and propelled by the mind, sanctioned by the intellect. So these three are the arch devils, we may say, or arch angels which are behind this activity of desire.

The senses are controlled and directed by the mind, and the mind works according to the understanding of the intellect. The one is higher than the other. Higher than the senses is the mind, and higher than the mind is the intellect. So by the power of the mind, the senses can be restrained. But how can the mind have the power to control the senses, when the intellect passes judgment that such-and-such thing is the proper thing? So the intellect has to be approached, and it has to put a check upon the mind itself; and, sympathetically, the mind puts a check on the senses. But the problem arises—how will the intellect permit this process? It is the intellect that creates this mistake, and yet it is said that the intellect itself should restrain the mind, and the mind has to control the senses. The intellect sees a division between itself and the world outside. It is the creator of logic of every kind, and therefore it sees a gulf between itself and things outside. How will it permit the control of the senses by the mind?

Therefore, the great Teacher of the Gita says: “You have to resort to a higher power.” There is something higher than the intellect, where the subject and the object are cemented together in a complete whole of integration. That is the Atman. The Atman is the purusha of the Samkhya, ultimately. This universal principle, when we resort to it by the power of a higher reason—we have to remember that within us there is a higher reason also, apart from the lower intellect which sees divisions in things—with the help of this higher reason which reflects the universal Atman in us, we can bridge this gulf between subject and object created by the lower intellect. And when this gulf is bridged, the desire for objects of the senses automatically gets sublimated into the higher consciousness of this basic connection between the subject and the object. This is a very difficult practice, but it is a must—the essence of yoga is only this much. Here I have endeavoured to place before you the sum and substance of the third chapter of Bhagavadgita.