The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita-Chapter-2.2

29/11/2018
Chapter 2: The Battlefield of Life - 2.

The cosmical impulse corresponding to this psychological impasse through which we are passing is designated in the language of Indian philosophy, especially the Vedanta, the Samkhya and the Yoga, as the process of the matrix of all things known as prakriti, a Sanskrit word which means the original substance of all creation. The material of the universe is called prakriti. It is constituted of certain processes, parts, energies or properties.

These are known as sattva, rajas and tamas. The property of tamas indicates inertia, fixity, immobility. Rajas is the name that we give to the impulsion dragging everything outwardly into the space-time-complex and compelling everything to relate itself to things outside. Sattva is the counter-balancing urge which obliges everything to maintain an individuality of internal status, which requires all to maintain a balance and not lose the alignment in the inner layers of personality or the external relationships in society.

If there is no alignment in the inward structure of our psyche, we can go crazy, become neurotic and a patient psychopathological. Health is the harmony of the layers of our personalities. If they are disbalanced we are sick physically or psychologically. There is a necessity to maintain inward balance. But that will not do entirely; we have also to maintain a similar balance in our relationship outside. There should be a balanced relationship between ‘you’ and ‘me’, for instance, a balanced relationship with the five elements—earth, water, fire, air and ether—the climatic conditions and the many other conditions that constitute what we call the outward life of individuals, and ourselves.

There is, thus, a conflict everywhere, cosmically and individually. Life is a battle, a situation which does not require a commentary. It is a struggle from birth to death. It is a process of confronting something or the other every day, a necessity that we feel every moment of time to resolve a situation that has arisen in front of us. When we wake up in the morning, we are face to face with the reality that confronts us as a conflict. We have conflicts inside and conflicts outside.

We are not always happy, because happiness is the outcome of a rare preponderance of sattva guna, the balancing part within us, and to the extent we are balanced inwardly and outwardly, to that extent we are also happy, delighted and joyous. To the extent rajas preponderates in us, there is a tendency to upset everything; it may be an upsetting of the layers of our own individual personality or the upsetting of our relationships with the outside world.

Any kind of upsetting of an existing balance is the tendency to the absence of joy, which is tantamount to an entering into grief and sorrow.

To be continued ..