The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 4.7& 5-1. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 11, June 2024 06:40.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita: 
Chapter 4: Stories from the Aranya Parva - 7.
Chapter 5: The Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata-1.

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Once that veil of vacuousness and darkness is pierced through and the life of an unknown existence, an undiscovered existence, the Virat Parva is over, we will find the light of the universe radiantly beaming forth on our face, and the whole world will be at our back. The world will tell us, “I am with you.” In the beginning it told us, “Don't talk to me. I have nothing to do with you. You have left me, so I shall also not talk to you.” This kind of retort may come from the world, and we may be in that condition of sorrow: “Oh, I have nothing.” But we have to pass that step of the test given to us by the forces of nature. It is a psychological condition which the mind has to pass through due to detachment and inward freedom that it has achieved from the emotional connections it had with outward objects.


So, in the beginning there is a kickback, as it were, given by those centres which were befriended by the human emotions and feelings, but that kick is a temporary kick. Immediately the tables will be turned, and we will find that our enemies become friends. The world which was a horror and a terrible place to live will become heaven in one minute because the world is not hell; it is the creation of God, and God has not created anything ungodly. Nothing can come from God except that which is divine, so we should not imagine that He has created hell, and so on. It is only a temporary state of our involvement in a peculiar predicament of detachment from external connections, and then Sri Krishna comes with the whole army of help. We shall also wait for that day.

Chapter 4: Stories from the Aranya Parva - Ends here

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Chapter 5: The Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata-1.

There is a tremendous tension of enthusiasm, as we may call it, in the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata. When a function is to take place on a crucial occasion, important enough to attract the attention of the whole community, of all people, a kind of emotional tension rises to the surface: “Oh, the jubilee is coming!” Day and night great preparations are made, and it is seen that everything is done precisely, meticulously, to perfection. Such interesting, stirring and active descriptions we have in the Udyoga Parva of the jubilant, vigorous, virile preparations, raising our hair on end. The word udyoga means intense effort, preparation, toil, and making things ready with energetic motivation. All this is suggestive of the word udyoga.

This particular book, the Udyoga Parva, is a classic in a very important sense. There is high literary beauty in the style of writing, and the poet's outlook rises to its pinnacle of perception, as it were, because it is the aim of a crucial action that is contemplated and is to take place. The mind is up in arms before the body is active. The mind has already started doing what the body has yet to do. That is the psychological background of the great battle to be narrated in several books which follow the Udyoga Parva.

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Continued

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