The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita- 3.1 -Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, August 16, 2020. 8:03. PM.
Chapter-3. The World is the Face of God - 1.
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1.
In the journey of spiritual practice, there are many halting places on the way. It is not a direct flight without any stop in-between. At the very inception of this endeavor known as spiritual sadhana, there is an upheaval of the powers of aspiration, an innocent longing for God and a confidence that one would reach God—perhaps the same kind of confidence that a child has in catching the moon. The innocence and the credulity do not permit the acceptance of the difficulties involved in this pursuit. There is simplicity, sincerity and honesty coupled with ignorance, and this is practically the circumstance of every spiritual seeker. There is a humble innocence, very praiseworthy, but it is also attended with ignorance of the problems on the path and the difficulties of attaining God. The innocence of childhood is simplicity incarnate. Everyone loves a simple, innocent child, and everyone is happy about a simple, innocent seeker of truth. The Pandavas—we are studying certain implications of the Mahabharata—were innocent children playing with their own cousins, the Kauravas, and they would never have dreams, even with the farthest stretch of their imaginations, of the forthcoming catastrophes in the life to come.

2.
There is a peculiar circumstance in which the seeker finds himself at the outset, and there is a tentative picture presented before the mind of a seeker of great success. The intense austerity that we practise—the japa, the studies, the prayers, the worships—attract attention from everyone, and we become an object of adoration. Yudhishthira was crowned with the rajasuya sacrifice; it was a great glory indeed. The world begins to know us as a great austere seeker and a man of God; but the vision of people is different from the vision of God. It is inscrutable, and no one can say what the way of God is. The most compassionate conceivable and the hardest nut to crack—all combined in one, as it were, appears to be the attitude of God. Great difficulty, hardship and judicial strictness coupled with parental affection is the characteristic that is generally attributed to God. Law and love combined together; justice and affection both seem to be blended in Him. We cannot understand how these go together, but they do go, and perhaps they have to be together in a mysterious manner which the human mind cannot grasp. The justice of God is not contrary to the response that is evinced from Him by the affection that the seeker develops in respect of God. The love that is divine is compatible with law that is justice.

3.
But the human concept of law and the human concept of love both require emendation. There is a cosmically interpretation and a standpoint taken on the basis of an interdependence of things, when things are looked at from the point of view of God. But human minds are not made in that manner. The interdependence or the interconnections of things in a universal manner is a theoretical concept which surpasses the imagination of the individual, and in practice it escapes notice wholly. We take an individualistic view of things, a finite attitude towards objects, bifurcating the relationship of one with the other, and therefore unexpected consequences follow from our attitude to things. Our satisfaction need not necessarily to be taken as a sign of success, because our satisfaction is that which satisfies our individuality. The satisfaction of an individual is not really a genuine and a permanent satisfaction. It flies away like the wind, and it moves as the individual moves.

To be continued ...

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