The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita-2.5 -Swami Krishnananda.

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07/04/2020.
Chapter 2- Challenges of the Spiritual Seeker - 5.
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1.

#The Udyoga Parva, which describes in a beautiful manner the assembly of the princes of the time in the court of Virata, goes further into greater detail of the contemplations of these princes. 

*There are difficulties in the decisions to be taken—what is to be done? 

**There are various opinions coming forth from various parties. Whenever a personality faces the world, the universe in front of it, it has various interpretations of it. Are we to make friends with it? 

###Are we somehow or other to adjust ourselves with it, to make its law our own law? 

####Are we to change the world, or are we to change ourselves—which is better? 

#####What is the relationship between me and the world? 

***These were the questions, the deliberations of the great assemblies that were held prior to the war of the Mahabharata. Ambassadors were sent on both sides; there was concourse between one party and the other party. A decision was difficult to take. We cannot finally come to a conclusion as to our relationship with the world. We always have favoured the things of sense and the delights of reason. 

"This difficulty persists even to the last moment, until doom, we may say, because the evaluations of things in terms of worldly experience continue even at the last point of spiritual aspiration."
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2.

#God-realisation is interpreted in terms of sense experience and psychical satisfaction. If we read the history of the evolutionary process of religion, we find that people always hesitated to touch the last point, and always satisfied themselves with everything but that last deciding factor.

##It will not be clear to us what is it that we are actually asking for, unless the logical limit of the conclusion is reached. But we never want to reach the logical conclusion of anything. 

###We leave everything halfway. We somehow or other adjust ourselves with the law of things and then allow the things to rule us, though in a different manner. We may not be servants, vassals or underlings of an emperor, but the subjection continues. 

####The freedom of the spirit is not a possession of any status or an acquisition of a power that is empirical, but a complete dissolving of all empirical values and an awakening into a new set of values altogether, which the mind at present can never even dream. 

"Hence to think God would be a futility. The mind cannot think, because all thoughts are conditioned by evaluations, which again are nothing but interpretations of sense."

To be continued ....


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