The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita

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Chapter 1: The Universal Scope of the Bhagavadgita

 Last part-

 We know very well, every one of us, that our devotions and our religious practices do not cover the whole of our lives. We have a piety inside our rooms, and a different religion altogether when we walk on the road or purchase a packet of biscuits in the shop, are traveling in the bus or journeying in the train. If our confrontation of life in these various aspects in which we are unwittingly and necessarily involved can be charged with the spirit of religion, we can be said to be truly religious, and that God will help us everywhere, and we need not run to another temporal God for solution of our daily problems. All temporality is a manifestation of eternity, and that which is eternal should be capable of interpreting temporal situations, also. And the Bhagavadgita as an eternal message is supposed to be a protection to us even in our temporal dealings and our work-a-day life. It is all things put together, like a mother to us; our relationship with our mother is not merely religious – it is everything. We can run to it for a cup of tea, a spoon of sugar, and we will see that the Gita has specifically pinpointed even these little things to relieve us of tension in all the layers of our being. The Bhagavadgita caters not merely to our outer personality but that essentiality of personality in us which is related to all things in the world, the whole of creation. We are not just citizens of Rishikesh or Uttar Pradesh or India or even this Earth. 
We have a passport with us for entering into the various planes of existence. We are citizens of the creation of God and this earth is not our only habitat. We have a duty which far surpasses our temporal obligations and tentative demands as nationals of a particular country or units in a particular community, etc. We have an obligation transcending the limits and the boundaries of the nation and the society in which we are born. When we fulfill the requirements of law, abide by the law that reigns supreme or operates in the atmosphere, that law is supposed to take care of us. Law protects. It does not always punish. It protects when we abide by it. It punishes when we disregard and disobey it. Our sufferings in life are therefore to be attributed to our disobedience of the law that operates in this world. We may be thinking that we are obeying a kind of law of a particular country, of a community and a family in which we are born. We think that is all-in-all, and that is enough to take care of us. But we know that if we are confined merely to the obedience of the law that prevails only within our family, and are disobedient to the law of the nation as a whole, our obedience to the family-law is not going to help us. 
The national law will pursue us, because we have disregarded it, notwithstanding the fact that we are humbly obedient to the family-law. And we can extend the analogy, further. The international law is also important, and if we kick it aside, as if it is nothing, and we are obstinately patriotic in respect of our own little country, that also would not be a solace to us. Our whole country can be placed in a precarious situation because of its disobedience to the international set-up of things. Such is the case with everything, everywhere. We may be obedient to the little laws of this land, but we may be disobedient to a higher law, not merely the international law, but the inter-planary law, the universal law as we may call it. That may take action against us if we are ignorant of its workings. The Bhagavadgita displays before us the structure of the universal law that operates everywhere. And if we can abide by it, it shall supremely protect us as the protection that we can expect from the Central Constitution of a Government, and our little laws are subsumed under it. Such is the beauty of this message, the Bhagavadgita.

 Swami Krishnananda

 CHAPTER-1 : ENDS.

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