The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata
and the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

All these concepts are not a part and parcel of the education of the ordinary human being. We are brought up in families and societies and atmospheres which are given to the technique of physically counting things and associating particulars in solid manners and not abstract, philosophical ways. But when the Ultimate Being, God Himself, is finally equivalent to the supreme state of consciousness, chaitanya, and His sole existence cannot permit the externality of any object outside Him, it amounts to saying that any kind of detachment to be practiced as a yoga for the purpose of the realisation of God should be a tendency of consciousness to withdraw from the insistence that objects are outside. Here is a divine element that is introduced into the practice of yoga, apart from its physical aspects or psychological manouevers. The sum and substance of the significance that seems to be hidden behind this great analogy of the tree as the creation, in toto, seems to be this much.

It was mentioned that God, the Supreme Being, operates in three ways—sattva, rajas and tamas. This point is brought up again in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita, where it is stated that God, as purushottama, is superior and transcendent to kshara and akshara prakritis. The perishable and the imperishable are both like the arms, again to use the same comparison, of the one indivisible God. He is the supreme purusha, consciousness par excellence—purushottama.The so-called jiva, the individual, and the world outside are both included within the all-pervading Being of God, and at the same time God is transcendent. So we as persons here, human beings, are therefore finally inextricable in our relationship with the world outside, and both these are inviolably related to God’s super-personal purushottama state. The state of purushottama is often compared to the jivanmukta condition by many interpreters of the Bhagavadgita, though it is difficult to say whether that is the intention of the Gita when it speaks of the purushottama, because God’s personality seems to be emphasised here for the purpose of contemplation and meditation.

The term purusha is used in a highly philosophical sense, and not in the sense of any gender. It is intended to express the characteristic of the ruling consciousness, and not of the ruled object. Thus it is that wherever two people sit together, there is a third person between them. Purushottama is between kshara and akshara. When one whispers into the ear of another, there is a third one seeing what is going on and listening to what is spoken, and there is no chance of two people existing without a third being there at the same time. These two persons do not necessarily mean two human beings. It is only a way of indicating the presence of a supreme principle operating between the subjective individual and the objective atmosphere, whatever be its nature. It may be a person, it may be things, and it may be mere space and time—whatever it is. So we cannot escape God’s hands. Wherever we go—even if we fly to heaven or descend to the nether regions—there we find the great Being Himself greeting us. The glory of God and the omnipresence of His Being are such that we cannot go outside the boundary of His existence. Whatever be the power of our wings and the speed with which we fly, even before we reach our destination He is already there to greet us.

This purushottama is not a person, like a judge in the court or a head of a country governing subjects, but is a pervasive power, an omnipresent reality, and is inescapably present in every little nook and cranny of the world. The implication of this is not visible in the words of the verses of the Bhagavadgita, but if we read between the lines we will find the glorious message that is embedded within these verses, in the midst of these words, as a string passing through various pearls or gems.

This Supreme Master of the cosmos, the Soul of the universe, rules and operates through these properties of sattva, rajas and tamas; yet the Bhagavadgita wants to awaken us to another fact—that God is not actually threefold. This threefold activity can be boiled down or reduced to a twofold activity of the positive and the negative powers. We need not call them by the terms sattva, rajas and tamas. They are only, to put it in the language of the Gita itself, the divine and undivine forces, which is another way of saying consciousness which moves us towards unity of comprehension, and that which moves us towards diversity, dissention and separation of one from the other.

Both these tendencies are present in everyone, and we as human beings are particularly concerned with our own state of affairs. We are urged in two ways—inwardly and outwardly. We have a loving, sympathetic, affectionate core within us, and also a devilish, separating nature. Both are working within us at different times—we are good people and bad people at the same time. Any one particular characteristic can be evoked from us by the operating of a particular pattern in our personalities. Thus it is that we are god and devil at the same time, as it were, and any person can behave either way under different conditions. There is no absolutely good person in the world, and also no absolutely bad person. Both these characteristics are mixed up in human individuals in certain proportions, and they are evoked by certain circumstances that take place outside.

Thus, finally, it can be said that there are two forces—daiva and asura. These are only theological terms representing the highly incomprehensible activity of the cosmos by which it evolves and involves itself in the process of creation, preservation and transformation, sometimes called destruction. This cyclic movement of all things stands before us as a mighty mystery that we cannot understand. Thus, to put it concisely before you, it may be said that the whole universe is a drama, an interesting enactment of various dramatic personae coming in, and leaving when the curtain drops and the scene is over. No dramatic persona is indispensable throughout the play, while everyone is necessary at the particular time when that personality is to be projected in the scene. So nothing is necessary, and nothing is totally unnecessary in this universe. This puts the characteristic of impersonality and universality of operation in the hands of God.

All things in the world are divinely ordained. This is the great message that comes forth from these mighty verses of the Bhagavadgita. God plays the drama within Himself—He does not create a world outside, as if there is matter external to Him. It is a scene and a performance that is going on eternally, as it were, within His Being, and He Himself is the witness thereof, while it can be said that He Himself is the actor in the drama. Mystery is the name of this creation, and wonder is the way in which things operate, even in the least of circumstances. The mystery that is hidden within a little grain of sand on the shore of the ocean is cosmically significant. The great mystery that throbs through the orb of the sun in that resplendent supernatural transcendence that we see in the sky can also be seen in the little, insignificant sand particle. In the little ant that crawls in one’s kitchen, one can see the great glory of Brahma, the Creator Himself. Such is the prevalence and the pervasive character of the universal in all the little particulars—purushottama operating through kshara and akshara. The more we contemplate these mysteries, the more our sins will be discharged and burned up.

The fire of knowledge burns ignorance, burns all impressions of past karmas, and blazes forth into a luminance of awakening where we do not any more exist as persons, but move in this world as citizens of the universe, belonging to all and living as if all things also belong to us. Such is the mighty superman demonstrated in the personality of Bhagavan Sri Krishna, the citizen of all the worlds at the same time, and a friend and well-wisher of all beings in this world—belonging to all and yet belonging to nobody. So, in these few remarks I cited from one or two chapters of the Bhagavadgita, we have a great message before us which is worthwhile for us to contemplate every day for our own welfare. God bless you.