The Greatest Spiritual Confrontation Of The World: The Secret Of Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is an important book in the life of a spiritual seeker. It is not a book of One of the most important driving forces on this planet Earth is action. The very . secret meaning has already been revealed) should become involved — to show that . They are doing injustice and it should be confronted. Not to.
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For in spite of the fact that the Bhagavad Gita has been known for so short a time in the West, yet its holiness has so taken our hearts by storm, so to say, that we are inclined to approach it from the start with this feeling of holiness without making it clear to ourselves what the starting-point of the poem really is. Let us for once place this before us quite dispassionately, perhaps even a little grotesquely. A poem is here before us that from the very first sets us in the midst of a wild and stormy battle.

We are introduced to a scene of action that is hardly less wild than that into which Homer straightway places us in the Iliad. We go further and are confronted in this scene with something which Arjuna — one of the foremost, perhaps the foremost of the personalities in the Song — feels from the start to be a fratricidal conflict. He comes before us as one who is horror-stricken by the battle, for he sees there among the enemy his own blood relations.

His bow falls from his grasp when it becomes clear to him that he is to enter a murderous strife with men who are descended from the same ancestors as himself, men in whose veins flows the same blood as his own. We almost begin to sympathize with him when he drops his bow and recoils before the awful battle between brothers.

Then before our gaze arises Krishna, the great spiritual teacher of Arjuna, and a wonderful, sublime teaching is brought before us in vivid colors in such a way that it appears as a teaching given to his pupil. But to what is all this leading? That is the question we must first of all set before us, because it is not enough just to give ourselves up to the holy teaching in the words of Krishna to Arjuna.

The circumstances of its giving must also be studied. We must visualize the situation in which Krishna exhorts Arjuna not to quail before this battle with his brothers but take up his bow and hurl himself with all his might into the devastating conflict. Krishna's teachings emerge amid the battle like a cloud of spiritual light that at first is incomprehensible, and they require Arjuna not to recoil but to stand firm and do his duty in it. When we bring this picture before our eyes it is almost as though the teaching becomes transformed by its setting.

Then again this setting leads us further into the, whole weaving of the Song of the Mahabharata , the mighty song of which the Bhagavad Gita is only a part. The teaching of Krishna leads us out into the storms of everyday life, into the wild confusion of human battles, errors and earthly strife. His teaching appears almost like a justification of these human conflicts.

If we bring this picture before us quite dispassionately, perhaps the Bhagavad Gita will suggest to us altogether different questions from those that arise when — imagining we can understand them — we alight upon something similar to what we are accustomed to find in ordinary works of literature.

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So it is perhaps necessary to point first to this setting of the Gita in order to realize its world-historic significance, and then be able to see how it can be of increasing and special significance in our own time. I have already said that this majestic song came into the Western world as something completely new, and almost equally new were the feelings, perceptions and thoughts that lie behind it.

For what did Western civilization really know of Eastern culture before it became acquainted with the Bhagavad Gita? Apart from various things that have only become known in this last century, very little indeed! If we accept certain movements that remained secret, Western civilization has had no direct knowledge of what is actually the central nerve impulse of the whole of this great poem.

When we approach such a thing we feel how little human language, philosophy, ideas, serving for everyday life, are sufficient for it; how little they suffice for describing such heights of the spiritual life of man upon earth. We need something quite different from ordinary descriptions to give expression to what shines out to us from such a revelation of the spirit of man.


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I should like first to place two pictures before you so you may have a foundation for further descriptions. The one is taken from the book itself, the other from the spiritual life of the West. This can be comparatively easily understood, whereas the one from the book appears for the moment quite remote. Beginning then with the latter, we are told how, in the midst of the battle, Krishna appears and unveils before Arjuna cosmic secrets, great immense teachings. Then his pupil is overcome by the strong desire to see the form, the spiritual form of this soul, to have knowledge of him who is speaking such sublime things.

He begs Krishna to show himself to him in such manner as he can in his true spirit form. Then Krishna appears to him later we shall return to this description in his form — a form that embraces all things, a great, sublime, glorious beauty, a nobility that reveals cosmic mysteries. We shall see there is little in the world to approach the glory of this description of how the sublime spirit form of the teacher is revealed to the clairvoyant eye of his pupil. Before Arjuna's gaze lies the wild battlefield where much blood will have to flow and where the fratricidal struggle is to develop.

The soul of Krishna's disciple is to be wafted away from this battlefield of devastation. It is to perceive and plunge into a world where Krishna lives in his true form. That is a world of holiest blessedness, withdrawn from all strife and conflict, a world where the secrets of existence are unveiled, far removed from everyday affairs. Yet to that world man's soul belongs in its most inward, most essential being.

The soul is now to have knowledge of it. Then it will have the possibility of descending again and re-entering the confused and devastating battles of this our world. In truth, as we follow the description of this picture we may ask ourselves what is really taking place in Arjuna's soul? It is as though the raging battle in which it stands were forced upon it because this soul feels itself related to a heavenly world in which there is no human suffering, no battle, no death.

It longs to rise into a world of the eternal, but with the inevitable force that can come only from the impulse of so sublime a being as Krishna, this soul must be forced downward into the chaotic confusion of the battle. Arjuna would gladly turn away from all this chaos, for the life of earth around him appears as something strange and far away, altogether unrelated to his soul.

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We can distinctly feel this soul is still one of those who long for the higher worlds, who would live with the Gods, and who feel human life as something foreign and incomprehensible to them. In truth a wondrous picture, containing things of sublime import! A hero, Arjuna, surrounded by other heroes and by the warrior hosts — a hero who feels all that is spread before him as unfamiliar and remote — and a God, Krishna, who is needed to direct him to this world.

He does not understand this world until Krishna makes it comprehensible to him. It may sound paradoxical, but I know that those who can enter into the matter more deeply will understand me when I say that Arjuna stands there like a human soul to whom the earthly side of the world has first to be made comprehensible. Now this Bhagavad Gita comes to men of the West who undoubtedly have an understanding for earthly things!

It comes to men who have attained such a high degree of materialistic civilization that they have a very good understanding for all that is earthly. It has to be understood by souls who are separated by a deep gulf from all that a genuine observation shows Arjuna's soul to be. All that to which Arjuna shows no inclination, needing Krishna to tame him down to earthly things, seems to the Westerner quite intelligible and obvious. The difficulty for him lies rather in being able to lift himself up to Arjuna, to whom has to be imparted an understanding of what is well understood in the West, the sense matters of earthly life.

A God, Krishna, must make our civilization and culture intelligible to Arjuna. How easy it is in our time for a person to understand what surrounds him! He needs no Krishna. It is well for once to see clearly the mighty gulfs that can lie between different human natures, and not to think it too easy for a Western soul to understand a nature like that of Krishna or Arjuna. Arjuna is a man, but utterly different from those who have slowly and gradually evolved in Western civilization.

That is one picture I wanted to bring you, for words cannot lead us more than a very little way into these things. Pictures that we can grasp with our souls can do better because they speak not only to understanding but to that in us which on earth will always be deeper than our understanding — to our power of perception and to our feeling. Now I would like to place another picture before you, one not less sublime than that from the Bhagavad Gita but that stands infinitely nearer to Western culture.

Here in the West we have a beautiful, poetic picture that Western man knows and that means much for him. But first let us ask, to what extent does Western mankind really believe that this being of Krishna once appeared before Arjuna and spoke those words? We are now at the starting-point of a concept of the world that will lead us on until this is no mere matter of belief, but of knowledge. We are however only at the beginning of this anthroposophical concept of the world that will lead us to knowledge.

The second picture is much nearer to us. It contains something to which Western civilization can respond. We look back some five centuries before the founding of Christianity to a soul whom one of the greatest spirits of Western lands made the central figure of all his thought and writing. We look back to Socrates. We look to him in the spirit in the hour of his death, even as Plato describes him in the circle of his disciples in the famous discourse on the immortality of the soul.

Now let him stand before us in the hours that preceded his entrance into the spiritual worlds. There he is, surrounded by his disciples, and in the face of death he speaks to them of the immortality of the soul. Many people read this wonderful discourse that Plato has given us in order to describe the scene of his dying teacher. But people in these days read only words, only concepts and ideas. There are even those — I do not mean to censure them — in whom this wonderful scene of Plato arouses questions as to the logical justification of what the dying Socrates sets forth to his disciples.

They cannot feel there is something more for the human soul, that something more important lives there, of far greater significance than logical proofs and scientific arguments. Let us imagine all that Socrates says on immortality to be spoken by a man of great culture, depth and refinement, in the circle of his pupils, but in a different situation from that of Socrates, under different circumstances.

Even if the words of this man were a hundred times more logically sound than those of Socrates, in spite of all they will perhaps have a hundred times less value. This will only be fully grasped when people begin to understand that there is something for the human soul of more value, even if less plausible, than the most strictly correct logical demonstrations.

If any highly educated and cultured man speaks to his pupils on the immortality of the soul, it can indeed have significance.

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But its significance is not revealed in what he says — I know I am now saying something paradoxical but it is true — its significance depends also on the fact that the teacher, having spoken these words to his pupils, passes on to look after the ordinary affairs of life, and his pupils do the same. But Socrates speaks in the hour that immediately precedes his passage through the gates of death. He gives out his teaching in a moment when in the next instant his soul is to be severed from his bodily form.

It is one thing to speak about immortality to the pupils he is leaving behind in the hour of his own death — which does not meet him unexpectedly but as an event predetermined by destiny — and another thing to return after such a discourse to the ordinary business of living.

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It is not the words of Socrates that should work on us as much as the situation under which he speaks them. Let us take all the power of this scene, all that we receive from Socrates' conversation with his pupils on immortality, the full immediate force of this picture. What do we have before us? It is the world of everyday life in Greek times; the world whose conflicts and struggles led to the result that the best of the country's sons was condemned to drink the hemlock. That it needs a Socrates to lead the earthly souls until they gain an outlook into the spiritual worlds, that it needs him to do this by means of the strongest proofs, that is, by his deed , is something that is indeed comprehensible to Western souls.

They can gain an understanding for the Socratic culture.


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  4. We only grasp Western civilization in a right sense when we recognize that in this respect it has been a Socratic civilization throughout the centuries. Krishna starts His message of love by enlightening Arjuna: All of us long for lasting love, but we seek it on the material platform that is inherently fleeing. In the Gita, Krishna offers a concise overview of the various paths for spiritual progress — karma-yoga the path of detached action , jnana-yoga the path of analysis , dhyana-yoga the path of meditation and bhakti-yoga the path of love.

    Simultaneously throughout the Gita 2. As the Gita progresses, the clues become more and more explicit; the secret secret becomes an increasingly open secret till its emotional climax at its end Hear this from me, for it is for your benefit.

    Is the Bhagavad-gita an extremist book? |

    Always think of me, become my devotee, worship me and offer your homage unto me. Thus you will come to me without fail. I promise you this because you are my very dear friend. Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reactions. Let us now look at three aspects of the Gita that are at times misunderstood.

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    The Bhagavad-gita is sometimes misunderstood as calling for violence due to its battlefield setting. However, the Gita uses that setting to demonstrate that its call for transcendence is practical, responsible and dynamic. The practicality of spirituality: Many people feel that spirituality is too other-worldly and so is impractical or irrelevant given the urgent practical demands of this world.

    By showing how its spiritual wisdom solaced and empowered a responsible head of state, Arjuna, who broke down on a battlefield, the Gita illustrates poignantly the universal applicability of its teachings. The social responsibility of spiritualists: While the Bhagavad-gita offers a message that can guide any individual in any circumstance to personal transcendence, peace and fulfillment, it also recognizes that people at large can benefit from its message only when the prevailing sociopolitical order fosters moral and spiritual integrity.

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    When the ruling heads of state are morally and spiritually depraved, as they were before the Kurushetra war, assertive action is essential to prevent people from being exploited, abused and ruined. The Mahabharata sections preceding the narration of the Gita describe vividly. Instead, the Gita advocates pragmatic assertive action for protecting basic human rights.

    That violence should be the last expression of such assertiveness — and never anything other than the last — is illustrated by the exhaustive peace efforts that preceded it. The very fact that several globally acclaimed champions of non-violence like Mahatma Gandhi found inspiration in the message of the Gita demonstrates that violence is not its core message.

    The inner dynamics of spirituality: Then, the battlefield setting, in addition to its historicity, represents our internal consciousness that features the battle between godly desires and ungodly desires. Each of us needs to win this inner battle if we are to play our part in establishing moral and spiritual integrity in society and not let our ungodly attachments to selfish interests sabotage our godly aspirations for personal integrity.

    The eleventh chapter of the Gita describes the universal form of God which emits blazing flames of destruction and devours all directions. Though such a conception of God may seem brutal and ghastly, it underpins a subtle but essential truth: God is not primarily the destroyer, but the restorer; when the temporary stands in the way of the eternal, as it does for all of us who are infatuated to the temporary and neglectful of the eternal, God destroys the temporary to make way for the eternal. Moreover, a careful reading of the full eleventh chapter reveals its essential import.

    Arjuna asks to see the universal form of God, becomes terrified on seeing the destruction therein and immediately changes his mind asking to be shown the beautiful two-handed form of Krishna once again. Just as the destructiveness of the universal form serves to re-direct Arjuna to the beauty of Krishna, similarly, the Gita teaches us, that the destruction and death that beset the world can serve to re-direct our heart to the eternality and the beauty of Krishna.

    Some of us may be disturbed when we encounter in the Bhagavad-gita words that indicate strong value judgments: To gain a proper understanding of why they are used, we need to contextualize them philosophically:. Value judgments emerge from values, which in turn grow out of a philosophy. If we go beyond the value judgments to the values and the philosophy, we will often find that the philosophy has a sense of its own. And once we understand the philosophy, we will find that its resulting values are not so different from our own.

    Then, with this intellectual framework in place, the value judgments will become at least intelligible, even if not acceptable. In other words, we need to judge the values before we judge the value judgments.