Verses 1.40–1.47🔗

By now, Arjuna had become desperate. His arguments seemed weak, even to him. They include the tragic impact this war would have on future generations and the entire Kuru race. Arjuna starts quoting the scriptures of social laws to explain to Kṛṣṇa the evil his destructive actions would bring to the noble lineage, which would lead to the decline in commitment to the rites and rituals that make society civilized and moral. He then elaborated upon these immoral and unrighteous acts. He said that women in the family would become unchaste and result in children of mixed castes, which would be undesirable. Those who destroy family traditions would ruin all sacred practices and such people had no place to go but hell.

To understand what Arjuna said, it is importanttounderstandtheoriginofthecastetraditioninHindureligion. At the age of five, a child was given to the care of a spiritual Master by the parents in the ancient Indian education system called gurukul. The Master became mother, father and teacher to the child. In the gurukul itself, the science of completion was taught to the child. The child grows up as a complete being. The child’s natural aptitudes formed the basis for the caste classification, varṇāśrama. Brāhmaṇas (priests/teachers), kṣatriyas (kings/warriors), vaiśyas (tradesmen) and śūdras (service) are these four classes. The Vedic gurukul system was not concerned with whether the child’s parents were brāhmaṇa or vaiśya. Irrespective of parentage, children were taught the Gāyatri mantra at age seven, which allowed their natural intelligence to blossom.

If the Guru found that the child had the naturalaptitudetolearnthescriptures,hewouldbetrainedasabrāhmaṇa. Others were trained to enrich through materially relevant arts and sciences to re-enter the world with a mature and complete personality. Over time, this caste system was corrupted through human greed. Those who believed that they were doing more responsible work, and therefore were more respected, such as the brāhmaṇas and kṣatriyas, decided to pass on their caste qualification to their children as if it was their birthright. Such a practice had no scriptural sanction. Arjuna’s doubts about caste pollution had no scriptural base or merit. What he referred to became the societal norm because of human greed, the collective root patterns of society.

There were many instances of caste mixture even in the great Kuru lineage that Arjuna claimed would be destroyed. Satyavati, his great grandmother, was a fisherman’s daughter. Arjuna himself had wives who were not of kṣatriya lineage by birth. He talked as if mired in total confusion when he linked practice of rites and rituals with morality and chastity. His logic was distorted. Rites and rituals, as prescribed in the scriptures, are an expression of one’s inner completion. Completion is not created by blind practice of rites and rituals. Arjuna voiced the sentiments of organized religion and priesthood, which derive their power and monetary base from such rites and rituals.

This is how, in each culture and religion, the power of the priestly class was established, as if they were the sole mediators to God. Arjuna talked about ancestral worship and implied that the offspring of mixed caste have no right to make offerings to their ancestors, leaving them lost in the realms beyond death. It is the confusion that has prevailed over the ages that Arjuna captured and presented. He raises doubts on behalf of mankind and seeks clarification. There are no ancestral spirits waiting to be pacified by us. If the spirit is enlightened it merges with the infinite energy. If not, it gets reborn within three kṣanas, three moments.

Hell and heaven are in our minds. They are psychological spaces, not geographical places. We are in hell when we are depressed, guilty, and in suffering and incompletion. We are in heaven when we are in completion and feel and express love, joy and gratitude. Arjuna is not a fool; he understands all this perfectly. Yet, he voices his doubts as if ignorant, as if confused. He acts out of compassion for humanity when he articulates these self-doubts so that the Divine, Kṛṣṇa can answer and destroy the root of the selfdoubt. A thoughtful man of integrity like Arjuna cannot talk about the lack of chastity of women without blaming the men who are equally responsible.

He reflects here the superior attitude of men over the ages, those who have treated women with undue superiority. The doubts he voices are those of the society he lives in, and those doubts have not changed in thousands of years. Please listen! The truths expounded in the Gītā are about personal transformation. Each verse of the Gītā is a sūtra, a technique that can work on your being and transform you. That is how Kṛṣṇa brings Arjuna into the space of completion. Completion is the space and state where you will be totally connected with life and with people in your life in the present moment without any limiting, restraining influence of the past happening in your life.

The essence of the Gītā is living in the space of completion in the present moment. Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahamsa used to say that the Gītā is ‘tāgi’, a corruption of the word ‘tyāga’ that means renunciation or surrender. Gītā is about surrendering the past and the future incompletions to the present and experiencing completion. Now, Arjuna was ready to give up on himself. He had collapsed both psychologically and physiologically. His cognition was totally imbalanced and he was now completely powerless. He was all set to run away from the battlefield and escape from the reality of his responsibility. He had convinced himself through his own illusory arguments that what he had embarked upon was evil, nothing but evil, and therefore he wanted no part of it.

He said, ‘I am ready to lay down arms and be defenseless. Let Duryodhana and his men kill me.’ For a kṣatriya to say this means one of two things: His act is one of total surrender, or powerlessness of extreme confusion. A kṣatriya warrior, a supreme warrior such as Arjuna knows no fear. It is neither fear of death nor fear of injury that compels him to say what he did. Arjuna was not in a space of total surrender yet. Nor was he in the space of ahiṁsā, nonviolence. He was not in tune with the Cosmic Consciousness—the space of non-duality, advaita, the experiential expression of infinity to say that—‘Killing others is killing myself, as I feel they are one with me.’

His arguments about not killing his kinsmen being like killing himself were born out of his incompletions,and not out of self-realization or completion. Arjuna’s desperation was becoming extreme. He was an intelligent, thoughtful man, who was torn between his responsibilities as a kṣatriya prince, and the scriptural codes of morality. His distress, his delusion, his powerlessness was now complete. He sat down, unable to bear the weight of his emotions. He put down his bow and arrows, which signified that he was out of the battle. He was as far away from reality as he could possibly get. Arjuna, the greatest of warriors and men of his time, Bharataṛṣabha, was in the depths of despair due to the conflict between his inner and outer identities, his upbringing and value systems, his root patterns.

Arjuna, at thispoint, wasno example of a truekṣatriya. Arjuna, now being human, was a true example of mankind. He was torn between darkness and light, between patterns and possibility. He was experiencing deep conflict between the unconscious patterns that were driving him and the possibility, the reality of what he ought to do. The clarity that would come about with the grace of the greatest Master, would be his Enlightenment, his complete Completion. The darkness that surrounded Arjuna at this stage was māyā, the illusion that prevents us from perceiving the Truth of Reality that pervades all our experiences. Yā mā iti māyā—that which is not real but appears as absolute is māyā.

Māyā is not unreal in the sense that it does not exist. Māyā truly exists as reality. It veils, it covers reality, the ultimate Truth—the truth of our inner divinity, our infinite powerfulness; and therefore it is unreal, an illusion. Had Arjuna been enlightened as Kṛṣṇa, he would not have been tormented by the play of his māyā. Had Arjuna been a Duryodhana, or even a Bhīma, whose individual consciousness was not awakened, he would have accepted the māyā without question. But, Arjuna is Nara, he is intelligent, partially awakened, he is a seeker. He is in the presence of the greatest of all Masters. He is struggling to rid himself of his māyā and seek clarity.

It is Arjuna’s root pattern that created the māyā of powerlessness in him. His own unaligned identities and his own identification with who he was, along with his conviction that he should preserve his lineage— all these delusory incompletions created the illusion in him that he was something other than who he was. These gaps between his identities created the self-doubt in him that he should do something other than what he was there to do. All of us come into this world with no identity. As we grow we collect labels describing ourselves as mother, father, brother, employer, enemy and so on. We become so associated with the labels and their accessories that we forget who we really are!

We forget to associate ourselveswithourtruespaceofcompletionandinsteadassociatewithour incompletions. Our life is then about seeking completion and happiness in the wrong places. Listen. Eternal happiness that constantly flows as bliss is always within. You cannot find it outside. You cannot reach it through material possessions, through relationships, through selfish philanthropy. Just as we learned how to stop feeling blissful, we can relearn how to connect with our blissful nature again. That is the process of relearning that Arjuna was going through. The process of Inner Awakening at the hands of the Master was about to begin. If we become integrated and authentic to that process, and follow it carefully over the eighteen chapters that the Master takes His disciple through, we too can become awakened, complete and blissful.

Ādī Śaṅkara says beautifully: If you imbibe even a little of Bhagavad Gītā, if you drink even a drop of Gaṅgā water, if you think even once about that great Master Śrī Kṛṣṇa, you will never have to face death. Thus ends the first chapter named Arjunaviṣāda Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga of Arjuna’s Dilemma,’ of Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśāstra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna-saṁvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa, Arjuna. You Are God Make no mistake, you are divine! Whatever state you are in now, you are still divine within! Let Krsna tell you how to live and radiate your divine potential.