The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 9-5&6: Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday 17, November 2024, 06:30.
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity:9-5&6.
Chapter 9: The Classification of Society-5&6
The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita: 
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on Bhagavadgita Jayanti

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The three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, manifest themselves as the various limbs of the subtle body. What are these limbs of the subtle body? They are many in number. For instance, the character of your intellect, the manner of the performance and the action of your intellect, is also decided by the proportion of the distribution of these three forces in your personality. The preponderance of any one of these sattva, rajas or tamas gunas in your intellect, in your understanding, will decide the extent of your understanding. Hence, it does not mean that everyone can understand things in the same way. Tamas can predominate, rajas can predominate, or sattva can predominate. Your emotions are also decided by the proportion of the distribution of these three gunas. The manas, the mind, is also conditioned by these three gunas.

Then there are the sense organs – the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue and the sense of touch. These are the senses of knowledge, and the senses through which the desires of the psyche inside get manifested outside. The eye has a desire, the ear has a desire, and all the senses have desires. It does not mean that every eye has the same desire. But what kind of desire can the eye have? What do you want to see, what do you want to hear, what do you want to taste, what do you want to touch? This nature of the object that the sense organs in a particular individual crave will depend upon the kind of preponderance of the gunas in that particular individual, so it does not mean that everyone wants the same thing. You may not like to see what I want to see, and so on. The sense organs operate in different individuals according to the particular vehemence of the gunas in the individual.

Then the pranas are there – prana, apana, vyana, udana, samana. They are the soldiers of action which are prompted to perform their duties according to the propulsion of the understanding and the emotions, and the energy of the sense organs. They are like the army or the police. They are driven to act, and the instruments they use are the physical body, the physical limbs. They are the vehicles. So finally it means that everything that anyone is consists of just these three principal forces. They are the chief ministers of the cabinet of the government of the human personality, as it were. Whatever they say is to be done.

Your relationship to things in the world, and your obligation to the world in terms of these relationships, will be dependent upon the extent of the manifestation of these gunas which constitute you, and you will be fit to act only in that manner, to that extent, as would be permitted by the preponderance of any one of these gunas or any two of the gunas, etc., because you cannot be other than what you are. You cannot try to do something differently than what is permitted by your nature. The word 'nature', prakriti, is sometimes used in the Bhagavadgita. Prakriti in a cosmical sense is 'something'. It also means 'the natural tendency of a person'. You cannot go contrary to your natural tendency.

Now, here is a very peculiar mandate before us. 'You cannot go contrary to your tendency' does not imply that you have a sanction or a license to do as you like. It does not mean that. It means something very subtle. Very careful we have to be in understanding what it means. Who can go against one's own nature? This does not mean a license to act as one likes. It is a caution exercised: Beware! Red light! The red flag is shown there; be cautious. There is a road breaker or a tollgate or some such thing. Beware!

What is meant by this bewareness? It shows that inasmuch as your conduct is decided and determined by your nature, and you cannot act contrary to it – you can act only in accordance with it, not more, not less – your contribution to the solidarity of society will be to the extent of the permission granted by your nature at that given moment in that state of your evolution. It is not a license to act in a libidinous or a selfish way, but it is a concession given to you to do only that much as you can under the conditions in which you are placed because of the preponderance of the gunas. Nobody will ask you to lift an elephant's weight. You have not got that strength. Only the elephant can lift a larger weight, but you can also lift some weight. That will depend upon what you are.

It has already been noticed that human society is an interrelated, interconnected, interdependent organism. It is one person, as it were, and humanity, therefore, may be considered as one thought in a general sense. It is not one thought in a detailed or particular sense, just as the legs are not the head, the nose is not the eyes, yet they all constitute one body, and we can consider them as one organism. I am not you; you are not another. Everyone is different from everybody else. Yet, in spite of this difference in detail, we are the human species. As humans we are categorised under a particular class of thinking. We think as human beings. We do not think like trees and hills and reptiles, and so on. Therefore, the human way of thinking is considered here as the standpoint of the observation of duty and the performance thereof.

Continued

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