Sri Krishna as Revealed in All Our Levels of Reality 2. Swami Krishnananda

09/11/2018
(Spoken on May 1, 1983)
2.

If philosophy is essentially the tracing of effects to their causes and the attempt to interpret every event, every occurrence, every phenomenon in the light of a cause behind which there is no further cause, then the instruction that permanent and perennial success or happiness can be had only where Krishna and Arjuna are seated in one chariot may have a deeper meaning than what is visible on the surface.

It is perhaps evident to any inquisitive understanding that Krishna and Arjuna have to be in one chariot at every level of being, and not merely in the physical field of the Mahabharata. The gospel of the Bhagavadgita itself is a teaching that is given from many angles of vision, inasmuch as the problems of life are multifaceted and so the remedies also have to be of similar character and potency.

Our difficulties do not arise from one side only. Misfortunes never come singly, as the old saying goes. It drops on our head like a hailstorm when it comes, and we will find ourselves in such a mess that we would not be able to easily discover the source of our difficulty. We are likely to trace the problems of life to immediate causes. For example, we think that we sneeze because we walked through the rain. We have an easy answer to the phenomenon of a sneeze, a cold, a headache and the like.

Likewise, we have an immediate answer as an explanation for every event and every phenomenon of life, but rarely do we go behind these immediate antecedents of our difficulties and try to locate the ultimate root and permanent solution of the problem of life, which is the theme that is taken up for discussion in the Bhagavadgita.

If we live a multifaceted life, and if our existence is not exhausted merely by the physical level or by our physical body, and if it is true that we have inwardly in our own selves layers of being which are transcendent to or beyond the physical and the visible level, then the solution provided in the last verse of the Bhagavadgita as the coming together of Krishna and Arjuna in a single chariot should be an occurrence in every level of being. These principles have to be united in all the stages of our life, in all the angles of vision that may be the means of our knowledge in the world, and in every blessed thing that we perhaps are.

Now, inasmuch as the Bhagavadgita is philosophical, ethical and mystical, a Brahma-vidya and a Yoga Shastra, the art of the integration of being, we may say, this act of blending or integration is to be effected in the different levels from which the teaching of Sri Krishna emanates.

A keen student of the Bhagavadgita would have observed that a single answer is not available, but a manifold answer is poured forth through the different verses of the Bhagavadgita, often making us feel that there is, as it were, a contradiction in the statements made. There is a sociological point of view sometimes visible to us at the very beginning of the Gita, a point of view of the Sankhya even in the classical sense, a point of view which is purely political, economic and personal, a point of view which may be called ethical and moral, a point of view which is cosmical, natural, universal, and a point of view which is perhaps Absolute.

From these standpoints the teaching seems to be surging forth and, therefore, considering the last verse of the Bhagavadgita as a sort of a concentrated shape that the teaching has taken, we may have to see through the meaning of this verse and attempt to discover something which is applicable to all those levels and standpoints which were taken into consideration when the gospel was delivered.

To be continued ..