Krishnas Speech at the Battleground chapter fourteen by Ramesh Mukhopadhyaya

DEATH AND IMMORTALITY Fear death? Death implies the death of the body. The owner of the body generally puts on fresh robes of flesh and bone and is born again. If the self or the owner of the body can face the worldly life in right sport, the self need not undergo births and deaths. But he self can live in such a state for 4320000000 years. After that the Creator’s day ends. At that moment, everything whatever becomes unmanifest and retires in the shelf of Krishna. Nothing is annihilated, of course. The self, which has been liberated from birth and death cycle, also retires into Krishna at that time as unmanifest. But, right knowledge can help to overcome that also. Then the self need not become unmanifest , when the world becomes unmanifest. That is Krishna’s promise. One should know that the Cosmic Being receives the seed from Krishna and hence springs the creation. In other words, the appearance of the Cosmic Being has been caused by the seed of Krishna. Whatever image is brought forth in any womb whatever is brought forth by the Cosmic Being. Thus the Cosmic Being here functions as Nature. The seed is nothing else but the reflection of the self on Nature. The image on the Nature is shackled by the three qualities which make Nature. And the image falls in the trap of the body. The neutral quality among them, light up and binds everything with joy and wisdom. The positive quality on the other hand is a passionate lover and a rash hero. It binds the soul through attachment to action and their consequences. It is unquenchable thirst. The negative quality always takes the body for the self. It is error, sloth and sleep. All these three qualities exist in every man. Krishna asks Arjuna to subdue positive and negative qualities so that the neutral quality is surely enthroned in a being, at once there is a festival of light or Diwali in its mind and body. When the positive quality presides over a person, greed, inactivity, action with self-interested motive, restlessness and longing for enjoyment govern him. Obtuseness of mind and the senses, disinclination to perform one’s obligatory duties, frivolity and stupor- all these appear when a person is overwhelmed with negative qualities. Thus, the despondency of Arjuna was a sudden fit of negative qualities. When a man of neutral nature dies, he goes to higher worlds like heaven. He who dies a positive doer, is born in a family and society where attachment to action is acute. Those who die with preponderant negative qualities are often born a sub-human organism. The neutral doer, they say, reap harvests of happiness. The positive doer reaps sufferings. The negative doer reaps ignorance as the fruit of his action. Wisdom follows from the neutral quality, greed from the positive one and error and stupor from negative quality. Once one knows that these three qualities are the springs of action one is bound by them. One eats when one has to and one sleeps when one has to. If one can transcend all these three qualities one conquers birth and death, old age and grief. Krishna has already told us about the effects of neutral quality on a character. But what are the marks of a person who rises above the three qualities? Arjuna poses this question. Krishna replies: One who does not hail the light of wisdom Or, harness the heroic aptitudes of action Of hate or hide his own ignorance. Nor longs for them nor lament their extinction One who is just a witness Of the tendencies aworking in the self And lets them do their do’s Without relenting to their pelf One who remains the same in joy and sorrow And who greets the stone and the gold with equal love. And welcomes both friends and foe with a good morrow Honour and insult are equal in whose scale Who has given up every initiative in life Has surely transcended the three qualities With which Nature binds them to strive. Krishna says that such a man is not affected by the destruction of the universe. Where does he inhabit then? Myriads of universes light up and blow out like the light of the fire-flies. He dwells in a world beyond those universes. It is the universe where every particle of dust is made of the love of Krishna. It is Golaka. The way to the bloody path of war can be transformed into the way to Golaka if one remains prostrate at the feet of Krishna at heart.