The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita- 5.2 -Swami Krishnananda.

 =================================================

==================================================

Wednesday, January 12, 2022. 6:00AM.

Chapter-5.God is Our Eternal Friend - 2.

=================================================

=================================================

A question arises—what is going to be our fate? Who is to awaken us from the sleep of this ignorance? The Bhagavadgita is again the answer. It is an answer to all our questions in all the stages of their manifestation. There is a subtle power that works throughout the world, which is invisible to the senses and uncognisable by the mind. There is a mysterious presence pervading and enveloping all things, sustaining everything, connecting one thing with another thing and maintaining a balance of relationship among all things. Its manifestation at every juncture of time, at every crucial moment, is the rectifying factor behind every erroneous movement of things. The mysterious descent of this Universal presence into temporal events is what is called the avatara, the Divine Incarnation.

God manifests Himself at all times, and this manifestation is a perpetual process. Divine grace is like the flood of a river or the flow of the oceanic waves that never cease. God never withdraws His grace; He is an unconditional Giver. There is a perpetual flow of charity from the benign hands of the Almighty, and His charity is not merely material. He is not giving something out of Himself—He is giving Himself. The charity that comes from God is not a charity of objects, as is the case with the charity of people—it is a sacrifice of Himself that He makes. A self-abandonment is performed by the great Almighty in the incarnation that He takes, in the blessings that He gives, and in the grace that He bestows.

So there is a great solace for all of us in the midst of the turmoil of life, in the sorrows of our days and the grief through which we are passing every moment of time. Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata, abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srjmyaham. Paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya ca duskrtam, dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge is an eternal gospel. This one gospel is enough to keep us rejoicing day and night, completely forgetful of all the apparent sorrows of life. If anything is alive, it is God. Everything is dead without Him. This life force takes effective measures at the proper moment, whenever there is a conflict of forces. This conflict of power is the yuga. It has various connotations and denotations. Any kind of friction is a yuga, and one power colliding with another power is a yugasandhi. It may be of the yugas known as krita, dvapara, treta and kali, the well known classifications of time measurement, or it may be any other type of sandhi or transitional period.

It is in the period of transition, which works like anarchy, that we find ourselves at a loss; where our brains do not function, intellects are not adequate to the purpose, and we feel totally out of gear. Our efforts fail when we are in a period of transition, when we are neither here nor there. At that moment it is that the Universal power reveals itself as the avatara, the Incarnation. The divine hand is the mysterious aid that comes unasked. That is the peculiarity of God's grace; we do not ask for it—it comes unasked. While people grudgingly give some charity when asked, God gives abundantly even when not asked, because He is omniscient. He knows the secret and the needs of the world and the necessity of the whole cosmos. There is a complete evolution of forces, as it were, throughout the universe, whenever there is any difficulty at any point in space or in time.

To be continued ..

===================================================