Verses 2.1–2.3🔗

Arjuna was distraught with pity and despair. His pity was for his opposition that consisted of his svajanam, kinsmen, elders, teachers, relatives and friends. He despaired at the thought of what would happen if he did have to kill them. He had collapsed in his chariot and his bow and arrow had slipped from his hands. Kṛṣṇa allowed Arjuna to exhaust himself, physically, emotionally and spiritually. He listened to him carefully, completely. Kṛṣṇa wanted to give Arjuna time to open his mind, heart and being to Him, Arjuna’s friend, guide and master, so that His answers would penetrate Arjuna’s very being. Then He spoke for the first time, as if opening His being directly.

Bhagavān Kṛṣṇa says, ‘My dear Arjuna, how have you acquired these impurities? They do not at all befit a man who knows the value of life. They lead not to higher planes but to infamy, akīrti karam arjuna.’ śrī bhagavān uvāca kutas tvā kaśmalam idaṁ viṣame samupasthitam I anārya juṣṭam asvargyam akīrti karam arjuna II 2.2 This verse is connected to the next one. ‘O Pārtha! Do not yield to this degrading impotence. It does not befit you. Give up such petty powerlessness of heart and arise, O Parantapa, destroyer of enemy.’ klaibyaṁ mā sma gamaḥ pārtha naitat tvayy upapadyate I kṣudraṁ hṛdaya daurbalyaṁ tyaktvottiṣṭha parantapa II 2.3 Kṛṣṇa gives the direction to the whole Gītā with this one truth to awaken Arjuna from his delusory incompletions.

Kṛṣṇa is the true Master and does not beat around the bush. Understand that Kṛṣṇa is not a philosopher; He addresses the dilemma of Arjuna straightaway. Kṛṣṇa asks Arjuna directly, ‘How did such impurities, such incompletions come upon you? They are not for a man like you. They will not lead you to higher planes but only defame you.’ In the next verse He asks Arjuna to give up this powerlessness and asks him to arise, addressing him as ‘Parantapa, destroyer of the enemy.’ Kṛṣṇa knows Arjuna’s root thought pattern. Please understand that Arjuna is not depressed because of a spiritual search. It is just that he does not want a solution; he wants only support.

Understand, asking for solutions and asking for support are two different things. What Arjuna needs is support, not a solution. This is why Kṛṣṇa does not speak of spirituality in these two verses. Arjuna’s root thought pattern originates from fear and worry. His maṇipūraka cakra (navel center) and svādiṣṭhāna cakra (being center), energy centers that get locked due to worry and fear, are now completely locked! Because of his fear pattern, he has deep seated incompletions, stress and worry. Kṛṣṇa addresses Arjuna’s deep fear and powerlessness straightaway without any philosophy, and asks him to give up his foolish weakness and get up and fight—tyaktvottiṣṭha parantapa. He does not offer any consolation, just a straightforward scolding, and a slap to awaken him!

Kṛṣṇa Hits Arjuna’s Root Pattern If Arjuna had been in a mood of stotra, meaning devotional surrender that he reaches only later on, these two verses would have served as sūtra or techniques for him. Had he been without fear and expressed full faith and devotion in Kṛṣṇa, these two verses would have been enough to wake him up and stand powerfully. At this point, Arjuna is in the state to be intellectually convinced and Kṛṣṇa employs śāstra as the right approach. Since he was not in the mood of stotra, not yet ready with devotion and faith, Kṛṣṇa had to create the śāstra or method, to bring him to the stotra state.

The whole issue was due to his root pattern of fear plus worry and powerlessness because of this fear. All our depression, worry patterns are nothing but root pattern of a deep fear of life, a deep self-doubt, fear of expansion and fear of losing something. You need to stand up and complete with your root thought patterns to be rid of them. Please understand, even your ignorance is nothing but your fear of expansion.Manytimes,youcontinuetopretendtobeinignorance,becauseof yourfearoffailure. There are many levels of fear: fear of losing our wealth and status, fear of losing a limb or our health, fear of losing our near and dear ones and fear of the unknown or death.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says that Arjuna is not behaving as an ārya, a word that can be interpreted as a nobleman; an integrated human, not a particular race or caste. Vedic literatures say that an ārya is one who is evolved, cultured, integrated and authentic, a prince amongst men. Arjuna is confronted with all the four fears: fear that he may lose whatever he possesses, that he may be maimed in the war, that he may lose his near and dear ones, and fourth, that he may lose his very life. These fears have in turn led to his powerlessness of heart. Understand, all your fears, all your anxieties, all your patterns are directed only in one line—fear of your possibilities!

Listen! Your bigness frightens you. You always believe that you are suffocated by your smallness. NO! You are suffocated by your bigness! Whenever bigness is demanded of you, whenever you feel you are being ‘forced’toexpand,youshrinkevenfurtherintoyourcomfortzone.Arjuna’s tiredness, his weakness, his powerlessness all these are nothing but the resistance he has to seeing his own bigness! That is why, when someone tells you that you are weak, poor and a sinner, it is so easy to accept it. But if someone tells you that you are Divine, you are powerful, you are complete, your whole identity starts trembling with fear! Arjuna trembles and collapses totally fearing his bigness, shrinking into his weak-heartedness!

But life always demands your expansion, because expansion is the natural law of life. Here, Kṛṣṇa, the source of life, demands Arjuna to stand up and expand into his powerfulness, and give up his degrading powerlessness unbefitting an ārya prince, who is also famous as parantapa, conqueror of enemies. But Arjuna is carrying such a deep fear of life, especially fear of life in the form of other people—because people are the most living expression of Life! The whole Kaurava army and his dear ones are the people who now represent his deepest fears of life. Listen! The more you engage with life, the greater the expansion that will be demanded of you.

Whenever you are feeling weak, tired, and powerless, the first thing you should do is this: immediately take on ten responsibilities and commit to fulfill them within an impossibly short time! Shake your inner space so powerfully with that commitment that there will be no way for weakness and tiredness to grow inside you. Kṛṣṇa directly addresses this weakness, powerlessness in Arjuna and the fear of life in the form of his kinsmen with the śāstra, the explanation of wisdom that is directed to the head, the intellect. He shakes Arjuna’s inner space demanding of him to take up the responsibility to stand up and commit to powerfully uproot all his impossibilities, and fight— tyaktvottiṣṭha parantapa!

Later on in the Gītā, in the eleventh chapter, after beholding Kṛṣṇa’s cosmic vision, Arjuna realizes who Kṛṣṇa truly is; that He is beyond everything and beyond his imagination, his comprehension. He is not surprised any longer that all the deities worship Him and surrender to Him. Kṛṣṇa then repeats the same words that He says now, after which the Gītā ends and Arjuna engages in the war. ThesesamewordsutteredbyKṛṣṇalateron,whenArjunaisinthestate of stotra, a state of pure devotion and faith, become the sūtra, the technique of enlightenment for Arjuna. Listen! When you are in devotion, you will just live life. You will not have any fear. Fear is always out of powerlessness.

When you are in love, you will not know anything called fear or worry. That stage is yet to happen. Since Arjuna is not yet in the devotional state now, these words are only plain wisdom. Kṛṣṇa is not a philosopher; He is a personification of enlightenment, of infinite powerfulness. All philosophy is an attempt to convince the other to do what the philosopher wants of him. Philosophers are the most dangerous people who invent logical reasons that encage, enslave or engage you to follow their words. Here Kṛṣṇa straightaway enriches by giving the conclusion directly to Arjuna. However, as Arjuna is not in the complete space to receive it because he is not mature enough to assimilate it, Kṛṣṇa needs to give Arjuna the experience.

Please listen! When you started having a root pattern, when you first had powerlessness, after that you never grow. Arjuna’s age is sealed mentally. Physically he may be a grown-up, as a warrior among warriors, but mentally his age is sealed. Only when Kṛṣṇa gives the experience of His own space of completion to Arjuna, he expands; he becomes powerful, he matures into a ripened enlightened soul. There is a beautiful story in the Upaniṣads: A disciple goes to the Master and asks, ‘O master! Teach me atmajñāna, knowledge of inner Self.’ The disciple, unable to believe this, thinks to himself, ‘How can I be God? I am still afraid of my wife.

I have all these problems and a thousand questions!’ Only when the Master proves to him that the Master himself is God, the disciple trusts the Master’s words. The Master needs to first prove that he is God in order to make repeatingthatHeisallofthis.KṛṣṇalaterexplainsHisgloryandthatallthe deities, Vedas, the scriptural wisdom, are worshipping at His feet; the whole world is in Him. He makes these incredible statements that would appear egoistic to a normal person. And yet Kṛṣṇa says all this, even at the risk of being misunderstood. He repeats that He is God to make you WithauthorityHestates,‘IamGod’tomakeyourealizethatyouareGod. Continuously human beings resist expansion. Incarnations happen on the planet to remind human beings about their possibilities, to expand human consciousness.

That is why again and again they are doubted. Arjuna is Nara, human being who resists his expansion, and Śrī Kṛṣṇa is Nārāyaṇa, Divine Incarnate who reminds him of his highest possibility of expansion—that he is God, that Nara is the reflection of Nārāyaṇa, who is mirroring the infinite inner space of God! You would not believe the words of ordinary people. You need to listen to the words from a source of authority that has the right to say them. Here Kṛṣṇa says the same words that He repeats throughout the entire Gītā. But as of now Arjuna is not able to take it all in. It is too much for him to grasp in his present condition.

Once Kṛṣṇa proves His divinity, Arjuna believes His words and is ready to follow them. Similarly, when masters prove their divinity and express great powers or miracles of their energies, they do not do so for their ego satisfaction. They do them to prove that they are God, so that Understand: when I am expressing the aṣṭa-mahā-siddhis, extraordinary eight yogic powers, it is not to show that I am extraordinary; it is just to show that it is possible for you! Nothing more is required than carrying the space of possibility, with the understanding—‘When Swamiji can do it, I can do it!’ That’s all! It is the authority with which Kṛṣṇa is seen transmitting the Gītā that makes it a scripture.

‘I am the Divine,’ says Kṛṣṇa. ‘If you believe in Me, you too shall realize your inner divinity.’ It is this profound and yet simple message that has resounded so deeply in the hearts, minds and beings of generations of Hindus, in turn establishing the scriptural sanctity of the Gītā. Possibility of Sudden Enlightenment Here all the verses of the Gītā are reduced to just two verses by Kṛṣṇa. He straightaway addresses and completes the root pattern where Arjuna is stuck, that is in his need for name and fame or rajas. A man who is centered on satva, goodness, who has neither greed nor lethargy but a neutral attitude, will work out of compassion.

A man who is centered on rajas will work only for name and fame. A man who is centered on tamas, lethargy, will work only for sensual pleasures. Duryodhana works only through tamas, which explains his cruel and gross behavior. Dharmarāja Yudhiṣṭira works on satva, out of compassion. Here Arjuna is centered on rajas, therefore he is working only for name and fame. This is why Kṛṣṇa asks him not to work in this way as it would ultimately bring Arjuna a bad name, akīrti karam arjuna. This is how He straightaway puts His hand on the tumor, the tumor that is the subtle root pattern working within Arjuna. Fortunately for us, Arjuna is not intelligent enough.

Or rather, he acts as if he is not intelligent enough to understand these words. He has lived with Kṛṣṇa for more than thirty years in close friendship and must have intelligence. He puts his questions and doubts not for himself but for enriching the future generations and for the whole of humankind. Most of the time our problems are very simple. It is we who complicate them. Our patterns are not as big as we think they are. When we verbalize, analyze, label and associate with them as impossibilities, we have created a whole new problem that had not existed earlier in our being. You have only one mind.

You can either use it to enrich yourself in solving the problem, or it will naturally enslave you in creating more problems. Understand that if you are not solving your existing problems, you will be creating more problems. At the level of the mind, there is no position of simply standing, no status quo—you either climb or fall, you are either in space of possible or impossible! Here Kṛṣṇa straightaway addresses Arjuna’s root pattern. Kṛṣṇa is not creating any philosophy but gives the answer straightaway in just one line. However, as Arjuna is not mature enough because of his root pattern, he has to be given an intellectual explanation of his possibility.

All Western philosophies begin with logical analysis and end with the conclusion. All Eastern processes begin with the conclusion and then give the analysis. Eastern masters are compassionate. They first give us the option of grasping the solution, if we have the intelligence. They expect us to transform with just the trust in them. If we don’t have this qualification of grasping and trusting, they have no other option but to go into detailed explanation, they start the regular process. Here Kṛṣṇa tries the first method of sudden enlightenment, the immediate liberation, the ultimate possibility but Arjuna is not mature enough to receive it or comprehend it. So Kṛṣṇa now starts the process of explaining it to him stepby-step.

Kṛṣṇa is God and So are You! There are two ways in which people react to the sanctity and divinity of Kṛṣṇa in Bhagavad Gītā. To one set of people, Kṛṣṇa has no special qualification to be called divine and these people may not even believe in anything such as the Divine. As atheists or agnostics, the only way such people can be convinced is initially through the rationale of the dialogue in the Gītā. The dialogue surpasses anything written in any language at any point in time in its clarity and wisdom. The message of Kṛṣṇa is universal and timeless. Those who do not accept and understand, itjustmeansthatasofnow,itisnottheirtimetounderstandandtransform. The laws of nature do not change just because we do not accept and understand them.

The earth was always round and never flat and it always revolved around the sun, even when the societal leaders denied these truths and killed people for expounding these truths. There is another class of people who say that there is only Kṛṣṇa, who is divine and all other divine manifestations have no relevance. One such group of people came to me after I had spoken on the Gītā, very perturbed. They said, ‘From what you say, we see that you accept the divinity of Kṛṣṇa.’ I said, ‘Yes, I very much do. He is the Pūrṇāvatār, the complete incarnation.’ They complained, ‘Then how can you worship Śiva in your ashram?

We believe you have a Dakśināmūrti (Śiva) temple in your Bidadi ashram in India. How can you do this?’ I asked them, ‘Have you read Anu Gītā which is also another part of Mahābhārat?’ They said, ‘No.’ I then explained to them about Anu Gītā: After the war, Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa are together and Arjuna says, ‘Dear Kṛṣṇa, I do not remember all of what you taught me at the battlefield, when you delivered the Gītā to me. Can you please enlighten me again?’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Oh, you have forgotten? I too have forgotten what I then said!’ Arjuna exclaims, ‘Kṛṣṇa, how is that possible?’ Kṛṣṇa says, ‘At that point I was Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, the universal Kṛṣṇa.

I was Bhagavān, Superconsciousness. I was the Divine. Now, I am Vāsudeva Kṛṣṇa, son of Vāsudeva. So, I do not remember what I spoke to you as Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa. I shall try and remember.’ What he remembered and recounted was Anu Gītā. Kṛṣṇa, as Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, is the Divine energy, the formless Brahman, the same as Śiva, Viṣṇu or Devī. He is the ultimate Truth, the Puruṣottama, as are these other manifestations of the same Brahman. It is only the ignorant cows of Kṛṣṇa who fight with the equally ignorant monkeys of Rāma, forgetting that Rāma and Kṛṣṇa are both the same energy. The constant, repetitive reference to Bhagavān in the Gītā is to emphasize this point that Kṛṣṇa is not just the mere charioteer of Arjuna, Pārthasārathi, or Keśava, destroyer of the demon Keśin or Madhusūdana, destroyer of the demon Madhu, but that He is Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Energy, who is formless and nameless.

This is also to reinforce the satya, truth that you too, like Arjuna, are God and no less. Understanding the divinity of Kṛṣṇa is a step to intranalysing and living one’s own divinity. That possibility of divinity is what completes and liberates. That is why Ādī Śankaracārya, the great Incarnation sings in Bhaja Govindaṁ, ‘Even a little reading of the Bhagavad Gītā will liberate you from death.’ Surrender Is Not Based On Powerlessness