The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata
and the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

The Pandavas and the Kauravas are especially interesting today in pinpointing the subject of the conflict of the spiritual seeker. The Pandavas and the Kauravas are inside us, yes, as well as outside. The sadhaka begins to feel the presence of these twofold forces as he slowly begins to grow in the outlook of his life. There is a feeling of division of personality, as mostly psychologists call it, split personality. We have something inside us and something outside us. We cannot reconcile between these two aspects of our outlook. There is an impulse from within us which contradicts the regulations of life and the rules of society in the atmosphere in which we live, but there is a great significance far deeper in this interesting phenomenon. The opposition is between the individual and reality, as psychoanalysts usually call it. Psychoanalysis has a doctrine which always makes out that psychic tension or psychotic conditions of any kind are due to a conflict between the individual structure of the psyche and the reality outside. Well, as far as psychoanalysts are concerned, what they mean by ‘reality’ is the social set-up. When the individual psyche inside, with its emotions, desires, aspirations, etc. comes in conflict with the rules and regulations of human society, it finds itself incapable of fulfilling its inner urges. When the urges within are not allowed to express themselves on account of the mandates of the superego—we have to put it in the language of psychoanalysis—the social forms, there is no alternative except to revolt against society; rebel against the laws operating. Or if this is not possible for reasons obvious, to push these impulses inside the subconscious and finally the unconscious. If the first alternative is taken, one becomes an antisocial person, unwanted by people. One may come across as a criminal—that is what people call such a person. But if that is not an advisable and practicable move, one becomes a maniac, a crazy person, a tense individual with obsessions inside, and writhes in sorrows and grief at that time.

Now, this is a tension between the Pandavas and Kauravas in a very low sense of the term—purely from the point of view of psychoanalysis or psychology. But the Mahabharata is not merely a scripture of psychoanalysis or psychology. It is a spiritual epic, which tells us something about our destiny in this world in the context of our aspiration for God-realisation, ultimately. This conflict between the Pandavas and Kauravas is an inner conflict within the spiritual seeker, and what the Pandavas underwent, the spiritual seeker also may have to undergo. The jubilant spirit of a youngster who knows nothing of life ceases when he is opposed by the realities of life. The realities may be social; they may political; they may be economic; they may be material—whatever they may be, it does not matter. They are oppositions of various types which put the spiritual seeker in a state of great hardship as to how to move forward when he is in the same type of position that the Pandavas found themselves. He has no other alternative than to escape from this turmoil of life, and he withdraws himself into a monastery, may be a temple, or goes to Uttarkashi or some other such place. Well, this is the life that the Pandavas led in Indraprastha—unwanted, unknown, unseen by the Kauravas. In case of any trouble just go away; one cannot bear this further.

In Uttarkashi you cannot get your stomach filled—you have to come back to Rishikesh with a hungry stomach. You say, “Thank God, goodbye to Uttarkashi.” You come back. People have tried; they cannot live there, because human nature is a very complex structure. You cannot simply tabulate it into pigeon holes. It is an ununderstandable, impossible organism, and cannot be easily handled. You cannot stay either in Uttarkashi or in Hollywood. Either place would be a failure due to the miraculous dissidence that is within us, as miraculous as we ourselves are, because it has an element of the mystery of the cosmos. And so one cannot teach it in a mathematical or scientific manner, or purely in the light of logic. It is a mystery. Life is a mystery, and it is not mathematics. It is not an equation. We cannot say that ‘this plus that is equal to that’—that is not possible in spiritual sadhana. It is very difficult task. It is an art rather than a science, we may say. Well, coming to the point, this difficulty that the spiritual seeker faces, as he advances on the path, is similar to the difficulties of the Pandavas. He comes back; he changes the outlook of life and accelerates in sadhana by new techniques, by the help that he receives from well- wishers—may be teachers, may be friends, may be books, may be libraries, may be circumstances. He gains some sort of superiority, importance, by the sadhana shakti.

But here is a caution that has to be written on a placard when we may have the complacency that we are advancing in the spirit. The rajasuya sacrifice was the crowning glory of success for the Pandavas, but that very glory was a curse upon them which increased the jealousy of the Kauravas and ended in their being turned out of the kingdom into the wilderness. So the little satisfaction, the little vision that we have in meditation, and the little satisfaction that we are on the right path may rouse the jealousy of the natural forces with whom we have not become friends, for reasons which cannot be explained at present.

The external forces, the objective forces, are the Kauravas. The forces that are subjective may be likened to the Pandavas. So the Mahabharata is a war between the subject and the object. Now, what this object is, is also very difficult to explain. It may be a pencil; it may be a wristwatch; it may be one single item in this world that we may call an object. It may be one human being who may be in the position of an object. It may be a whole family, it may be an entire community, and it may be the whole human set-up, the entire mankind or the whole physical universe—it is an object in front of us. The irreconcilability between the subjective attitude of consciousness with its objective structure is the preparation for the Mahabharata battle. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to give a very homely example. Fire can burn ghee, as everyone knows. If we pour ghee over fire, the ghee will be no more. It is simply burned to nothing; it simply becomes vapourised. Yes, it is true, fire has the power to burn ghee and destroy it completely. But, says Sri Ramakrishna, if we pour one quintal of ghee over one spark of fire, what will happen to that fire? Though it is true, in principle, that fire can burn ghee, that one spark of the fire will be extinguished by the quintal of ghee that we poured.

So, in the earlier stages, the aspiring spiritual aspirant is like the spark, and the whole world is like a hundred quintals of sticks that are poured over it, and it cannot be faced. The world cannot be faced by the individual seeker in the earlier stages—it is too much for us. We cry, “It is too much, it is too much, I cannot bear this anymore.” Hunger on one side, thirst on another side, illness on both sides and an unhappy atmosphere of various types around us. There is nothing that we can say is okay—everything is irreconcilable, everything is at sixes and sevens. So, when this has been reached by the powerful objective forces in retaliation to the various suppressive attitudes that we have put on by the rejection of life by the so-called vairagya, sannyasa, renunciation, whatever it is; when a retaliation is set up by the forces of nature, we are in the same condition as the Pandavas. The glory of the rajasuya goes, and after the anointing on the throne that was done in the midst of all, we weep.

The seekers are not safe even at the gate of heaven, as John Bunyan put it in his Pilgrim’s Progress. There is a possibility of there being a hole leading to hell even at the entrance to heaven. A big gate leads straight to heaven and we are just there, standing. But there is a pit, like a manhole, and we fall in. And where do we go? Into Yama’s abode. Well, it is strange that there is a hole there, just at the entrance to heaven. This is possible, says John Bunyan, and says everyone. The idea is that the boat can sink even near the other shore—not necessarily in the middle. The point is that we have to be very cautious about the powers of the world. The world is not a petty cat or a mouse in front of us, and we should not be under the impression that we are great yogis who can simply tie the whole world with our fingers. It is not so. We are not Krishnas, blessing Arjuna with one hand. We are babies, spiritually. And the baby Pandavas were not an equal match to the terror of the Kauravas, who had the tactics of the time, who could counterblast the little aspirations of the spirit which were about to blossom in the hearts of the Pandavas.

Goodness does not always succeed in the earlier stages. Truth triumphs not always. In the Ramayana, Ravana appears at times to be more glorious than Rama. Valmiki describes eloquently the significance of Ravana, and many a time one could almost imagine that Ravana was Valmiki’s favourite. It looks as if Valmiki was writing from the side of Ravana. The idea behind it is that the glory of the world sometimes can obliterate the sprinkling of the fire of the spirit inside in the early stages of sadhana. It is not true that the Absolute will manifest itself in us at once, though the little spark in us is a spark of the Absolute. Let us not forget that it is after all a spark, though it is of the Absolute. The the magnitude of the universe is so large that the material within us, the magnitude of the spark, is incompatible with it.

Now, quality is important, and quantity is not unimportant. While we assess the value of a thing from the point of view of quality, we are doing the right thing, no doubt, but it is not true that quantity has no value at all. It has a value. For instance, one British pound may be qualitatively more than one Indian rupee; but a hundred thousand rupees may be greater than one pound, though the quality from the point of view of foreign exchange may place the pound in a superior category to the rupee. Likewise we may say that qualitatively the spirit in us is superior to the whole world; it is true. The little spark in us is far superior to the entire physical universe. But, and it is a very important ‘but’, we should not forget that it is a spark, and it cannot, in its babyhood of innocence and credulity, face these terrible asuras of objects. When it makes the mistake of facing them prematurely, it faces the destiny of the Pandavas in the wilderness of the forest, as they were in the Aranyaparva. Well, what sufferings they had to undergo in the forest, we need not describe. The worst condition imaginable was the lot of the Pandavas. The great hero Yudhishthira wept—the man who would not weep easily. He asked the sage whom he met in the forest, “Vrihadasva, great Master, have you seen any more unfortunate being in this world than myself?”

Well, these words must have come from the mouth of Yudhishthira with a torrent of tears in his eyes. “Have you seen, great Master, a more unfortunate being than myself in this world?” To pacify the poor Yudhishthira the great sage said, “Yes, there was one who was also suffering. He was King Nala.” The great story of Nala and Damayanti is recounted in the Aranyaparva of the Mahabharata, but this is beside the issue. The point at this moment is that even after a tentative degree of success in spiritual practice, we are not out of danger until and unless we are in a position to make alliance with the divine powers, not before that, and the Pandavas had no alliance with divine powers up to that time. They were various individuals working on the strength of their own arms, which was not enough before the might of this whole world. This is a very interesting subject, relevant to spiritual practice, and will be pursued later on.