The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 3: The Aranya Parva of the Mahabharata

Great and interesting meanings have been read into the Mahabharata epic, and the more we go into its secrets and implications, the more may we be able to relate it to human life in general. Do we not hear it said again and again that the more we study the Bhagavadgita, the deeper is the meaning that one discovers in it? If that is the case with the Bhagavadgita, that is also the case with the Mahabharata because in a comparison, we may say, if the Bhagavadgita is the soul, the Mahabharata is the body. So the spirit of the Bhagavadgita is embodied in the epic of the Mahabharata. If the Bhagavadgita is a gospel for all life, the Mahabharata epic is a dramatic description of the performances of man as such.

In the early days of spiritual aspiration, it is natural for those days to appear very fine, like a beautiful rising sun. At dawn the sun is so cool that we never feel that it can get extremely hot. Pleasant is the contour of the golden orb that rises in the east. Its internal nature and capacity will be known in midsummer. Early days are happy days. Childhood days and student days are days of freedom, with a kind of satisfaction born of not knowing much of the meaning of life. If all knowing is a great joy, not knowing anything is also a kind of joy. They are two types of extremes. Little babies know nothing, and the spiritual seeking in the early days is like a sapling, a tender plant, and a tender plant is very beautiful to see. It is not manifesting in that budding age the ruggedness of the huge tree that it is going to become one day in the future. A little baby plant with tender leaves, how beautiful it is!

I was referring to the implications and suggestiveness of the first book of the Mahabharata, the Adi Parva, and the subsequent occurrences, the interesting transitional periods one passes through, and if we can study our own selves as spiritual seekers in the story of the Mahabharata, it will be easy for us to discover that spiritual life is not a smooth-sailing affair. It is not blindly walking on a beaten track, a cemented road. There are ups and downs, and zigzag movements. In the initial stage, there is a total oblivion of the difficulty on the path. Every one of us is in that condition, or has been in that condition.

“I shall search for God. There is nothing meaningful in life except the vision of God, communion with God, the realisation of God.” How beautiful is this aspiration! But whoever has passed some years in this world carrying this aspiration in one's mind will be able to recollect how unintelligent and unclear that enthusiastic feeling was. It was a wonderful feeling. Nothing could be more wonderful, more beautiful, more pious and praiseworthy, and yet it sowed the seeds of difficulty later. Irregularities of behaviour psychically began to manifest. We were not so very clear and positive later on. There were suspicions, doubts, and tendencies of problems, though they did not actually manifest. It is something like what we nowadays call a Cold War, not an actual conflict. It is a kind of uneasiness, and a not knowing what is the direction that is to be actually taken.

In our transitional period of aspiration, which originally was a single beaten track of movement towards only God in the early age, we think, “Neither I want this, nor that. It is only the Father in heaven that I am after. Spiritual salvation is the goal of my soul, and I have no other aspiration.” But with a little more growth into the final maturity of the adolescent and the earlier ages of being an adult in spiritual life, doubts arise in the mind. They are all accepted, logically feasible, valid doubts; and these doubts generally, most often, do not leave a person till the end of life.

What are these doubts? They are the voices of the world speaking at the same time, simultaneously with the earlier voice which said that the aim of life is spiritual realisation, union with the Almighty. No wife of a husband will refuse to accept that God is the Ultimate Reality. Everyone will say, “Yes, I understand.” But when the husband insists on these issues and becomes pronounced in his love for God in actual outward behaviour, the dear wife, who is the partner of this husband in the house, who cannot deny that God is the Supreme Being and the Ultimate Reality, will add, “You have to listen to my voice also a little bit. I understand, my dear husband, that God is to be pursued, but I am also here, and you cannot say that I am not here.” This is what the world tells you when you say, “I shall pursue God.” The world replies that you have to consider that it is also existing there. “I have been with you,” says the wife, “and you cannot say that you have nothing to do with me.” Though religious life is highly praiseworthy and it is the aim of everybody, the world says, “I understand what you say, but you have to listen to what I say also.”

This is a difficulty. You do not know what to do. The pulls of the earth reveal themselves in the forms of justifiable doubts, and you feel a duty towards the world. Mature minds begin to feel a difficulty of this kind – and highly mature minds, not ordinary mature ones. Sometimes there are humanitarian pulls from the earthly side, social pulls, and we may not be far wrong if we think they can be even nationally motivated, political pulls which may look like spiritually motivated aspirations. But there are subtler calls of the earth, not so gross as the pulls of humanitarian outlook and social behaviour. The subtler ones are called the instincts and the impulses of the lower nature, as we generally call them. They bring about a tussle in the personality.

I was casually mentioning yesterday that we live in different levels of personality, not only in one level. We live in all the fourteen worlds at the same time. We are the physical body – yes, right. We are also the sense organs; that is also right. We are the prana, yes. We are the mind; that is also true. And we have a reason, an intellect to think. That is also correct. Now, all these layers of our personality are valid expressions and reasonable levels, requiring justifiable attention. We cannot over-emphasise any particular level. Sometimes, in an over-enthusiastic mood, we are likely to lay excessive emphasis on one particular level. It is said that harmony is yoga, and it should be understood as harmony in every blessed thing – harmony in eating, harmony in daily routines, harmony in social behaviour, harmony in your performance of office work or vocational duty, and also harmony in your duty to the inner layers of your own personality. When it is said that yoga is balance, there is a wide meaning inside this statement. Anything can be stuffed into it. Balance is yoga. “All life is yoga,” say some yogis. Sri Aurobindo was fond of emphasising that all life is yoga. What is meant by saying that all life is yoga? And if, at the same time, we say that yoga is balance, then all life is balance. It can be any kind of balance. It is a very great joy to believe that life is balance, and we are not supposed to upset the balance.

In the adolescence of spiritual aspiration certain turmoils of the psyche may manifest themselves in different degrees of expression, and they can be of any shape: one thing in me, one thing in you, and in different persons it is different things. Each one has to write for one's own satisfaction, at least in one's own mind, an autobiography of one's own self. You need not write a book. At least you may be aware of your own autobiography: How was I when I was a little boy? How was I when I was a little girl? What was I doing? What was I thinking? Am I thinking the same thing now? Why should I change my mind now? Traverse your thought through the whole gamut of the life that you have lived from your childhood days, as far as you can remember in your mind. Much of it you may remember, and some minor details you may not remember. You will be surprised at the varieties of experience that you have passed through, and the multitudinous variety of your likes and dislikes, many of which have been dropped as meaningless but which appeared very meaningful in earlier days. “When I was fourteen or fifteen, what were my likes and dislikes? Are they the same today when I am fifty or sixty? Why have they changed? Was I right at that time, or am I right now?” Compare your own status in different levels of your advance in psychological development. This is what I mean by saying to write your own autobiography in your mind, and judge yourself. “What has happened to me today, and what are the justifications for my outlook today as it is?”

What are the difficulties of a spiritual seeker? These are the difficulties the Pandavas had to face. They had even to be exiled into the forest. The third Parva of the Mahabharata is called the Aranya Parva, or the Vana Parva. The exuberance of a tentative placement in luxury and security gave place to a sudden bolt from the blue, unexpectedly come from the skies, as it were, and the royal prince seated on the throne found himself in the thick of the forest. Oh, what a pity was Yudhisthira's fate!

My dear spiritual seeker, we find ourselves in a wilderness after some time. We hop from place to place in search of different kinds of spiritual security and atmosphere. It is a kind of psychic wilderness where we do not know how to properly place ourselves. It is an exile from our original aspiration and the satisfaction and security, the balance of approach and positivity that we seemed to have in our minds in the early days. The Kauravas drove the Pandavas out into the forest.

The wild tendencies within us, which are also in this kingdom of our personality, gain an upper hand. In one interesting, humorous place Acharya Sankara, in his commentary on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, says the devils in the universe are more in number than the gods. It is a very amusing statement indeed. The devils are greater in number than these gods. Why should the gods be small in number and the devils be more? Anyway, each one of you can make a commentary on this sentence of Acharya Sankara. The gods get defeated. Sometimes even gods get defeated. In our epic stories and Puranas, we hear of gods being dethroned and vanquished by asuric forces. The Pandavas, the virtuous, good, righteous ones, are in the thick of the wilderness of the forest, and the licentious, greedy and unsympathetic forces of the Kauravas are on the throne.

This should not happen to a spiritual seeker. One has to guard oneself against such a predicament. Whatever be the security we may have, however much we may guard ourselves, yet we may find ourselves in the position of the Pandavas. There is a glory of young age of spiritual aspiration. I am not referring to our physical age. Spiritual aspiration also has a young age, which is exuberant and joyous. We feel that we are happy if we have all facilities, and sometimes we appear very elevated as seekers if we become pundits, learned in the sutras, masters of commentaries, or teach in a classical style of language. All these are satisfactions, no doubt. We are enthroned in something. In the Sabha Parva there is enthronement, but the trouble is yet to come. Trouble comes only when the unattended impulses inside are going to speak in their own voice. Unattended impulses are those with which we have not yet made peace.

As I gave a homely example, it would not be possible for the husband to suddenly kick away the wife and go to a meditational mood. He has some duty to the house. The house is this body and everything that is there, and the furniture of this personality, our property, is not easily forsaken with impunity. I do not say that everyone should pass through this stage of wilderness, but mostly everyone passes through that. Everyone falls into a pit, and then wakes up. “Oh, I'm sorry. Here is a pit. I shall not go in this direction.” But we will know it only after falling, not before. Nobody can instruct us not to go there. Desires, instincts and impulses are irrational, like naughty children. They will not listen to any advice, and we have to fall and break our neck. Then we will say, “I made a mistake. In future I will not go there.”

Then what happens? In spiritual life what is required is sincerity, honesty of purpose, and a genuineness of acquisition. They say there is nothing else required except that. Yet, even very sincere souls are sometimes put to a hard test. We cannot say that the Pandavas were not sincere. They were very sincere, good souls, but they had to undergo this difficulty. What a hardship!

In one place, Kunti prays to the Lord to express the troubles all her children had to pass through and the mysterious way in which God's help came to their succour. And in the end, old Bhishma regretfully states, “What a pity, my dear people! You are good souls, with great mastery in warfare, indomitable strength, great learning, and a person like Krishna as your friend. With all that, you had to suffer untold misery in life. Indeed, mysterious is fate. Providence is difficult to understand.” This is what Bhishma uttered in the end. With such security and facility, such hardship had to be faced and could not be avoided.

All of us, all spiritual seekers, are basically good persons. A sincerely aspiring spiritual seeker is a great asset to this Earth. They are what we call the salt of the earth. Such people are rare to find. A soul that seeks satisfaction in a super-mundane reality, and longs only for that as the only worthwhile thing, is a great manifestation of force, a divinity on Earth. And Yudhisthira stood for that ideal of super-mundane aspiration and righteousness, what we call the righteousness of the kingdom of God, but that righteousness also had to tread the path of thorns. Why should it be like that? Even today, people are not able to understand why such good souls should have been exiled into the forest. For what fault were they exiled?

We may say there was some indiscretion. There are occasions when we may be able to read some meaning of indiscretion on the part of even good ones, which leads to their difficulty and problems. We may accept this point of view also. Even an extremely good person is susceptible to erroneous action, due to what we may call an error of judgment at a particular moment. As we say, why did Yudhisthira have to play dice? He could have withheld himself from that, and so on. Likewise, spiritual seeking may also sometimes get involved in a slight error of judgment, and that error consists in an imbalance of attitude, some protest coming from an unattended part of our personality and society.

In the beginning, it is a protest from society. We will have so many difficulties when we try to free ourselves from the tangles of family attachment, social attachment, etc. Many people come to this ashram who are between two horns of a dilemma. They cannot stay here, they cannot stay there, and they want to stay here, they want to stay there. Such difficulties arise. There is a pull from here, and a pull from there also. And even when we seem to have settled this issue, we will find that we might not have judiciously done it. Sometimes we may vehemently settle an issue. That vehement settling is not a judicious settling. We may settle an issue by giving some pain to one party, which is also one kind of settling. But here, in dealing with our mind, we may not be wise in settling the issue of its demands by giving pain to it from some side, against its own will. Yoga, as is the case with any other enterprise in life, is a sort of educational career. We have to educate ourselves. Force of will is not to be applied except when it is applied as a sort of educational method. It should not be merely a vehemence of the ego or the force of the rod. Sometimes this difficulty is before us.

Every spiritual seeker, every sadhaka, should have time to sit alone for one hour every day. Sit under a tree somewhere. Do not chat with people unless, of course, it is a helpful person. Why do you chat unnecessarily? If it is an equal to you or it is a superior person like a Guru, you can chat with him, but do not chat with youngsters. You should go on thinking, “What is my difficulty?” Do you believe that there is no difficulty? And you will not be able to know yourself much, except when you are totally alone to yourself. In the din of the noise of work and social engagement, you lose your personality in the psychology of the crowd, and you will not know anything about yourself. In a large crowd of noise and celebration and function, you forget even your appetite and hunger. You can even miss your meal; you don't bother about it because of the immense satisfaction of the crowd and the noise. But when you are alone, you feel your appetite and would like to have food.

All the things that are inside the mind will slowly start moving when you are alone. There should be no noise. Even scorpions and lizards in the house will not move if you make a lot of noise. They will be still or go into a hole.  We make a lot of noise in our life, and so all our impulses are buried inside. This is what psychoanalysts call suppression and repression of impulses, which are not likely to be good for the health of the psyche. They create complexes – a kind of odd behaviour which we sometimes have. Our behaviour is not always very fine and happy, cultured and sweet. Oftentimes we become odd. It is not that we want to be odd, but we suddenly feel pulled to behave like that due to the pressure of something inside. We may repent for it afterwards, but yet we lose our balance occasionally, even in the outside behaviour of our personality, let alone in our balance inside. Therefore, each one of us should find time to sit alone.

And you should never hide your faults to your own self. Nobody would like to tom-tom one's own faults to society, because there is a conflict between desire and social reality. This is what psychology and psychoanalysis say. Human longings do not always concur with social norms, and this is what is meant by conflict with reality causing revolt and various complexes in the individuals of society. But it is better to know one's own position: “I have this weakness in me.” Otherwise, if you do not settle these issues, they will gain an upper hand. A silent enemy should not be considered as a friend merely because it is silent. Silent impulses are not necessarily absent problems. They are present potentialities of future difficulties.

Again, a question may arise: what are these difficulties? They are nothing but the calls of our own personality, the calls of our involvements. Anything in which you are involved is a reality and, as I said, our difficulty is a conflict with reality. What are the realities? Anything with which you are concerned is a reality for you. If you are not concerned with anything, it is not a reality. As a citizen of a country, the national law is a reality. You should not say it is not there. You cannot come in conflict with that.

Then there are social norms. You are in an ashram, for instance. You have to live like the other people in the ashram. There are certain systems and norms of behaviour. It is not possible to behave as you would behave in a railway train or in a circus tent, and so on. An ashram is an ashram. If you are in some other place, it is a different matter. And you have got a physical body. It is a reality. Who says it is not a reality? If you say you are not involved in it, then it is not reality. As I mentioned, a reality is that with which you are involved and which you consider as real. Do you consider the body as real or unreal? If you say it is unreal, very good, no problem. But if you say it is real, then to whatever extent it is real, to that extent you have a duty. If you do not do that duty, it will show its strength, and you know what it will do. So are the internal layers, all the layers: prana, senses, mind, emotion, feeling, prejudices, likes and dislikes. And, of course, there is the final aspiration for God. As the Atman inside, you long for God. That is a reality. But is it the only reality, or have you any other reality? Be honest to yourself.

We live in fourteen worlds, as I mentioned. All these layers are the worlds, and each tollgate has to be paid a tax. Even if there are twenty tollgates, twenty times you have to pay the tax. You cannot say that you have paid once. “Now further you cannot go,” the collector will say. So these are the taxes that we owe to the layers of our personality. We take a bath every day, we clean our teeth, have ablutions, and have breakfast. This is the tax that we are paying to this body. Otherwise, it will say, “No, you cannot move.” You cannot tell the body, “You are unreal. Don't talk to me.” It will say, “To the extent I am real, you must pay the tax.” Likewise, every impulse will tell you this. If certain injudicious behaviour of yours causes trouble, then the tax collector rises up and prevents you from advancing. Then even your good intentions get suppressed by the legal mandates of unattended issues, which are the realities in which you are involved. Otherwise, you will be exiles.

However, God is always with us. We have a terrible situation to face in this world. The whole world is a battlefield of the Mahabharata, yes, but Sri Krishna is always with us. All the terrific philosophy, difficult to understand, expressed in the Third Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, the crux of the whole of karma yoga, was hard even for Arjuna's mind to comprehend. Is it possible? Is such a thing possible? It is possible, because whenever you find yourself in a crisis of this difficulty of the impossibility to advance, the finger of God will operate if you are sincere. That is the Avatara. Sambhavāmi yuge yuge (4.8): “I shall come and help you. You may be in trouble, but I shall help you.”

So is this drama of life, which has several stages. As Shakespeare mentioned somewhere, the life of man is all a theatre. The world is a large stage, and we are all dramatis personae. The personalities of the Mahabharata are actually not Yudhisthira, Arjuna, Bhima, Duryodhana. There is no Karna, Arjuna, or anyone. We are the people. It is a story about ourselves only; therefore, we shall be happy because as the Pandavas suffered, we may be also suffering in some way, but we shall also have the satisfaction that the great Master is with us. He shall not leave us. Even in the forest he will come and talk to us. So be happy.