The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 31: The Message of the Sixth Chapter

The Bhagavadgita, which is an intensely practical message, is wholly concentrated on self-discipline for the sake of dhyana, or the meditation which the self within has to carry on for union with its own higher nature. Various aspects of this discipline have been mentioned briefly in several of the verses, and nothing has been left unsaid. All necessary details in this regard have been emphatically touched upon in their proper context, leading up to a succinct narration of the inner constituents of spiritual experience which supervenes when the higher self engulfs the lower self.

Here, at the end of the message, there is a promise, as it were, given by the invading higher self as God speaking to man, or the Absolute giving a promise to all that is phenomenal and relative. Wherever the higher is, which is the determining factor of the life of the lower, there shall be peace prevailing everywhere, and security will be the blessedness of the self that has surrendered itself entirely to the higher.

yo māṃ paśyati sarvatra sarvaṃ ca mayi paśyati,
tasyāhaṃ na praṇaśyāmi sa ca me na praṇaśyati (BG 6.30).
sarvabhūtasthitaṃ yo māṃ bhajaty ekatvam āsthitaḥ,
sarvathā vartamānopi sa yogī mayi vartate (BG 6.31).
ātmaupamyena sarvatra samaṃ paśyati yorjuna,
sukhaṃ vā yadi vā duḥkhaṃ sa yogī paramo mataḥ (BG 6.32).

To see or behold the uniformity of selfhood in the entire jurisdiction of one's experience would be to live in a state of non-objectivity because the perception of selfhood is, at the same time, a union established between oneself and one's whole environment. The higher self, or the larger self spoken of here, is the environment of the lower self, which ordinarily looks like an external world which has to be contacted through the sense organs and the mind. The world we look at and encounter in our daily life is our larger self. When it appears as a coordinated system of individual units, we regard this larger self as a society, which outlook of ours impels us to carry on social welfare work, for instance, an impulsion which is actually the motivation from the selfhood that is ingrained in the so-called multitude of individuals forming this social world of external experience.

The sympathy that we feel for people, the charitable nature we would like to extend in respect of others, is basically a spiritual impulse. It is the larger self summoning the smaller self. It has not become intensely and wholly spiritual as yet. Hence, a socially sympathetic attitude is a mild form of spiritual outlook of life inasmuch as it is, at the same time, diluted with the perception of isolated units. One's own larger self is this world of human society, and even the world of nature which attracts us, impels, compels and requires of us to develop an attitude of harmony with it. This compulsion arises on account of our inwardly being living participants in the working of this whole world of our so-called external experience. If this were not to be so, if our world, natural or social, were not to be a part of our essential nature, there would be no impulsion from within us to be in a state of harmony with it. We would not have anything to do with a world of which we are not a part – a part really, livingly, vitally, and not as a mechanised part.

Hence, the call of the self is irresistible. It manifests itself as our attitudes of coordination such as family bonds, love and friendship, sympathy, mercy, helpfulness, and a feeling for others. These are psychologically manifest actions of the still-deeper reality of a unitary being, which is our true self, which appears as a large atmosphere outside. Yo māṃ paśyati sarvatra sarvaṃ ca mayi paśyati, tasyāhaṃ na praṇaśyāmi sa ca me na praṇaśyati: He who beholds the Self in all the things which otherwise appear as external objects and persons, he who beholds all things in this widely spread-out Self and, at the same time, conversely, beholds the one Self in all beings, is never forsaken at any time, because who will forsake you except that which is outside you? It may be an outsideness felt even in our own false personality.

We, as human individuals, also have a true personality and a makeshift personality, a kind of personality of which we may be afraid. We may be frightened about our own selves. There are features in us which can cause fear to us. A person can be afraid of himself due to the fact there is a real person and also a false person, a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde. Both are present in one person, and these two personalities are the two voices speaking – often at the same time, and severally at other times – in the language of a unitary divine selfhood, and also in the distracting clamour of a desire-filled family of sense organs.

Hence, insecure is that person who sees a duality between the self and its atmosphere, which atmosphere may be the area occupied by the false selfhood of one's own self, the apparent individuality of one's self, which is also a false self, or the secondary self of the world of nature and human beings outside. So there is a dual aspect of this fear which can overtake a person under specific conditions. The world may frighten us, and we ourselves may be a fearsome element to our own selves. The dual aspect of operation even in a single individual is the cause behind psychopathological conditions and impulsions to commit such atrocious and desperate actions as suicide. It is as if the self wants to kill itself. Which self is killing itself? It is difficult in this muddled form of thinking to distinguish between the two mix-ups of aspects of one's own personality. There is an atrocious fear that is injected into the personality arising from a false vesture of an externality which is hanging on one's true nature as a coat, as it were, which sometimes appears as a beloved friend. Even a false friend may appear to be a nice friend, but is not a true friend.

So fears which arise due to this artificial association of the true self with the false vesture appearing as an individual, as this psychophysical personality, or as an association socially and physically existing outside in nature, vanish in a second when that which has caused this duality between the self and its environment vanishes and the self is seen in that which looks like an outward object. Then there is security, because security is a name we give to the protection we gain from our environment. We have a psychological environment in ourselves and a social environment outside. Both these have to be unified with our true self.

The art of meditation described in this chapter of the Bhagavadgita should pave the way to this realisation of the true self hiddenly masquerading as the other forms of experience. Our love for our own self as this person, and our love for objects of sense outside, are both certain temporal manifestations of the integrality that the real self vehemently wants to maintain. Even that which we cannot consider as really a part of our existence here, which is redundantly hanging outside in the world as unrelated to us, is also our concern because it is there. It is not merely the source of fear that is our concern. Our concern is also in respect of that which is the object of our consciousness. Anything that we are conscious of as existing there as a reality – not merely that which we love and hate, but even those things which are objects of our mere awareness of there being something outside as an object – they too are manifestations of the self.

So in the unification of all the ingredients of experience into the integrality of selfhood it is necessary to melt all forms of spatial and temporal intervention in our experience so that the experiencer feels its own presence in that which is experienced, and vice versa. This is the finale of yoga experience. There is not much use in going into details of the actual character of this experience, because one who has not tasted it directly will not be able to form a concept of it. Conceptualisation of a transcendent presence will not be able to present a true picture of what that experience could be. Because all conceptualisation is an abstraction of reality, the content thereof will always elude the grasp of this conceptualisation. Hence, suffice it to say that the four verses which almost conclude the essential message of the Sixth Chapter glorify the presence of the Divine in all things and the perennial support that anyone can expect from this permanent presence anywhere, and the fact that fearlessness rules the world. In this world where God is the ruler, fear cannot be. Such a yoga is this grand yoga of spiritual identity with the creative principle of the universe.

The great student Arjuna is perturbed. This is a grand description indeed of the magnificent possibilities of human nature, spiritual meditation rising up into an experience of cosmic identity for which arduous effort is called for by way of sense-control and restraint of the mental operations. The mind is hard to control. We cannot tie the violent and tempestuous wind and put it inside our bag, and similar is the mind in its rapacious behaviour – so cyclonic, uncontrollable and tempestuous. How would one control the mind?

Arjuna addresses Bhagavan Sri Krishna, “Do you not believe, O great Master, that a person who honestly endeavours to betake himself to this great yoga of meditation but fails in achieving his goal will be broken to pieces like rent clouds? He will lose both the here and the hereafter. Because of the fact of the austerity of his life, he has lost the pleasures of this earth, and because of the impossibility of reaching this height of spiritual blessedness, he has lost the other world. Would not be the state of affairs most pitiable, losing both this world and the other world? This world has gone because of the austere life; the other world has gone because it is not coming. What is your opinion? Is it not a tragedy that one may have to face if it does not become possible for a person to achieve the goal of life, this end as it is described as the finale of meditation in one's own present life? If one dies, what happens? In this attempt at the practice of meditation, even if it is honestly conducted, sincerely carried on, if the goal is not achieved in this very life and death overtakes that person, what would be the fate of that person?”

“There is no cause for anxiety,” is the reply of the great Master of yoga. Na hi kalyāṇakṛt kaścid (BG 6.40): “Whoever is engaged in doing good will not reap sorrow.” It is true that this yoga is hard to attain because the mind is fickle in its nature, and ordinarily this is not a feasible way of living. This is a hard life, a difficult life, not meant for the commonality of mankind. A speciality of blessedness, as it were, is necessary; a grace may be required in order to equip oneself with the strength to face this difficult disciplinary system of yoga meditation. Nevertheless, even a little that is done in this direction should be considered as a credit, and it shall not be a loss. By continuous practice, by abhyasa, one gains momentum in this practice, and death is not the end of life, as birth is not the beginning of life. Life is an interconnected association of life with life. There is no such thing as individual life in this world. Hence, it is puerile to imagine that someone is born individuallly somewhere unconnected with other things in the world and helplessly dies in a corner unwept, unhonoured and unsung. This is not going to be. There is a careful documentation of every event that is taking place anywhere in the cosmos. Everything is recorded everywhere in all its minutiae, and no event, call it birth or call it death, can go unnoticed by this cosmic record keeper. There is a note made of everything that is done, everything that is taking place, and every thought and feeling and action shall be noticed. They shall be carefully noted because we do not live in an isolated cosmos.

We are living in a universe which is not a chaos where anything is anywhere and anything can happen in any manner whatsoever. Such a thing is not the rule of life. There is a precision maintained in the operation of things, and every event, whatever be its nature, is causally related to the other conditioning factors which are internally related to the event that took place, and so the coming of a person as an individual at the time of birth or the going of a person at the time of death is not actually a person coming and a person going. It is one condition getting reshuffled into another condition. It is a particular arrangement of associations getting rearranged into a new pattern of arrangement in the structure of the universe, making out thereby that a new type of relationship is established between this centre which acted like the coming in the form of a birth, or the going in the form of a death. Thus, the coming and going, the birth and the death of people in the eye of cosmic regulations is not actually the coming and going of individualities. There are no persons for the universe. Things and persons, individuals, are a chimera for this large organisation which we call the universal organisation. Hence, all effort which is in the nature of an event that takes place somewhere produces an impact upon the whole atmosphere of which it is a content and a unit, and every event may be said to be a universal event in this manner. If a sparrow falls, the stars may know it. Hence, unnoticed no man is born, and unsung nobody dies.

Thus, the Lord says that there need be no fear in this regard. There shall be a rearrangement of the conditions of the life of a dying person in a new atmosphere in which that condition will find itself. Actually, the person is a condition rather than a thing. We, as human beings, for instance, are not to be regarded as solid bodies. We are certain circumstances prevailing, conditions operating, and certain forces ignited for the purpose of action in a particular manner. The world is made up of forces, conditions, events, energies, fluids rather than solids. Hence, our efforts are also a sort of participation in our maintenance of relationship with the cosmical environment. Hence, all that we do and all that we think and feel will be eternally known to the ruling principals of the universe and our good actions are not destroyed when we die. If death is the destruction of what we do, there is no point in doing anything in this world because death can overtake a person any day. It can be tomorrow. Knowing well that any moment can be the time of the passing of a person, who would like to lift a finger in this world if not for the fact that there is an internal and subtle belief of the continuance of the merit of the action performed? Who would like to be good and do good if that goodness in our nature and the goodness in our action is to be violated immediately and defiled by the hands of death taking possession of us the next moment? We have an unintelligible belief in the possibility of the continuance and the reward that we expect from the good deeds that we perform, irrespective of the fact that our life may be cut off the next moment.

“So Arjuna, what are you afraid of? There is the possibility of this yogin taking rebirth in glorious families where circumstances are conducive to the continuance of the effort.” It is not that once again we start at the beginning. The propulsion, the momentum and the cumulative force of all the good things that we did earlier will be mustered in and garnered into a concentrated harvest for utilisation in our present existence, or our future one, and so there is a continuous onward march of the soul in its spiritual evolution. There is a rise from level to level. The ascent of the soul to Godhead is a process of spiritual evolution. It is a reshuffling of the lower coil for entering into a newer and finer one so that the involvement of the soul becomes more and more intimate, friendly, ethereal, fine, shining and radiant like an angelic personality until it becomes all radiance, a flood of divinity. Hence, there is no loss of effort in this world. All good effort, all sincere motivation, all pious action shall be blessed by the Almighty's ordinance, which is a permanent sanction of the reward of justice for every little sincere participation in the purpose of God's creation.

Hence, there is no cause for anxiety that people who are denied the blessing of this realisation in this particular physical life for certain reasons are really lost souls. There are no lost souls. Every gain is a permanent gain. Even a little gain is a gain after all, and it shall be a spiritual benefit. So one should engage oneself in this yoga of communion with Reality with unremitting effort.

So goes the message of the Sixth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. We could imagine the importance of this intricate theme of yoga meditation from the length of time that we had to take in making some sense of this message, because it is intensely practical. Very little theorisation is here. It is a down-to-earth engagement of the seeker in something that is to be done just now.

In the light of all the instructions provided in the earlier chapters, from the first onwards, the Bhagavadgita, as we have noticed, is a complete teaching. It takes us along the path of an involution of our spiritual involvement gradually. In a cosmological order, we may say, the manner of the ascent of the soul to the ultimate Godhead is almost a reverse of the process of the coming down of the soul in its descent from God. The Supreme Being willed the cosmos, created this universe, made this a whole picture which this whole being of God visualised as a totally beautiful substance. This wholeness of the picture of creation God willed out of His total will.