The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita : Ch-12. Part-2.

Chapter 12: The Entry of the Soul into the Supreme Being

Part-2.

From the immense involvement of the individual in the requirements of the social structure, portrayed before us in a picturesque manner in the first chapter of the Gita, we are led along the other chapters, beginning from the second onwards, where the emphasis is on the individual rather than society, because the confrontation of the individual in respect of society has much to do with the internal structure of the individual himself.

What we call human society is a kind of mutual individualistic reactions among human units, and these reactions are nothing else but projections of the human psyche in different ways.

The study of society cannot be independent of the study of the human individual in its internal characteristics or components.

So the emphasis, right up from society in the first chapter, is towards the individual essence known as the Atman, which is taken into consideration for discussion from the second chapter onwards.

But the Atman is not brought to the light of day at the very commencement.

There is a gradual extrication of the individual from the clutches of society.

It is not done immediately and at once, as a sort of wrenching of the individual from the atmosphere of social relationship; there is no question of ‘wrenching’ in the practice of yoga.

Everything is a very harmonious, gradational and healthy movement, as in the growth of an individual from babyhood into adulthood, etc.

We do not jump to the sky in the practice of yoga.

There is no revolution of any kind.

There is an imperceptible, gradational, organismic rise from the lower stage to the higher stage.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ....