Krishnas speech at the battleground chapter nine

HE SLAUGHTER-HOUSE COULD BE THE BRIDAL BED FOR THE SELF When Krishna says, “I am the world” or I rule the world” he does not say it the way LOUIS XIV, the king of France said, “I am the state”. The ‘I’ OF Louis xiv was but located in human frame. The ‘I’ of Krishna is the realisation of his own self in every self and of every self in his own self. Any one from the prince to the beggar can say like Krishna if he has the same realisation. When Krishna says that he is the world, he means that everybody can say like that. He wants everyone to be like him. Everyone should understand that he is the world. Then nothing goes wrong with the world. Man is however, thereby unburdened of the weary weight of this unintelligible world. The whole universe is a unity despite its particulars. The particulars are meaningless if there is no system ruling the universe. One cannot locate man as something independent of his environment like Newtonian particles, just as a particle is a wave and at the same time a particle, similarly a man is and yet if he does not fit in the dynamic scheme of the universe he does not exist. In order to understand this one must ascend the height of Krishna’s realisation. Of course, Krishna began his arguments taking into account the particulars like the feelings of heat and cold. His discourse was initially about “That” or ‘the truth’. Gradually he argued that my person could identify the ‘Me’ with ‘That’ and vice versa. Right now he speaks of truth as if he is himself the truth. He now speaks about himself only more frequently than ever. However his words may not go down with the rabble. Hence he again and over again reminds that the common run of men cannot understand his god-head. Though a man of many miracles and never out of wit in his lifetime Krishna has been the object of slander and jealousy. The world knows not its great men. He, who never wept in public, perhaps shows his hidden grievances against the world for not recognising him as the soul of their souls. Yes, the supreme being is ever in tears lamenting that the world does not hearken to his summons to home. He is our home. But Krishna does not say it from a pulpit. He betrays his own emotions to his friend Arjuna. Or else Krishna is not that fool to say before all the world that he is their supreme god. Krishna asks for submission from Arjuna his friend. Let each one worship one’s own god as the supreme being. One will get all that one could derive from the worship of Krishna. Krishna now tells Arjuna that he will be expounding the royal road to the realisation of the higher self. Arjuna has already been free from envy. So he can see the road. The road consists of knowing and unknowing. It is in consonance with the laws operating in the universe. That is why it is easy. It gives one the direct experience of the higher truth. The arguments begin with an a priori proposition. Krishna says that it is he who pervades the world. The world abides in him. But he does not abide in the world. The myriads of the lives in the universe spring from him and are sustained by him. But they do not serve any purpose of the supreme being. The supreme being is beyond any world whatever. He needs no shelter. He is his own shelter. How is it that the world and its myriads of lives abide in Krishna and yet do not abide in Krishna? The wind blows through the skies. And still if the wind were not there the skies would be as ever. The whole existence as such melts away after a period in the very nature of Krishna. Then with the beginning of a new period, the world begins all over again at his will. Conjuring with the aid of his own nature Krishna creates the world again and again. The world is but mesmerised with the powers of the nature employed by Krishna. But this act of the world and the maintenance of the same with the aid of nature and its spell does not bind him. He frankly disowns his responsibility for what he does. That Krishna disowns his responsibility may sound very queer to us. The ideal gentleman in our society is one who has the sense of responsibility. We want a responsible government. The government wants a responsible rabble that will be all for war when there is war and all for peace when there is peace. Women want responsible husbands and husbands want responsible wives. The children want a responsible father and a father wants responsible children. But Krishna is the greatest of the deconstructionists. He says that the sense of responsibility is a value like other values such as beauty and ugliness truth and falsehood, good and bad chastity and unchastity. They are all man’s own creation. They are hollow sham. He says that one must not take the responsibility of the acts of his senses even. One walks and one knows that one is walking. One sits one knows that one is sitting. One is aware of one’s body. One sees a sight and knows that it is the eye that sees. One smells something and knows that it is the nose that smells. One contemplates on the death of one’s body. The vultures gorge the hunger with one’s putrified flesh. One knows that one is not the body. One should sit in meditation with all attention to one’s breathing. One knows that one’s body breaths. The body is not one’s own self. Let desires pop in and pop out of the mind. Let happiness and sorrow come and go in his mind. He is aware of that. He knows that they are the winds that enter into his bone-house from without. He can just shut them out by closing all the nine doors of his bone-house. One must neither defend any value judgment, nor protest against it. The sense of responsibility is a creation of the mind. It at once underlines the irresponsibility of the mind. In order to become a friend one has to be an enemy. If we look upon life through the gaze of different eyes we will find different value judgments. There are men with whom virtue means writhing under the lash. There are men with whom virtue is lashing others. There are men with whom the will to equality is a virtue. They say that they will bring storms of vengeance upon earth to destroy those who are not like them. There are others who call virtue the slothfulness of their vices. And again there are those who love attitude. They think that there is virtue. They show their sympathy to those who are poor. At the same time they joy in the joy of a scoundrel who thrives on the blood of their follow men. They talk to humanity. They kneel before gods. They speak high flown flamboyant. But they do not understand a single word that they utter. So there is no universally applicable virtue at all. But Krishna does not say that the society with all its values should be undone. On the other hand let everything be there as it is. Just as it is with the explosion of the neutron bomb. Nothing is destroyed thereby in a city; all the houses and roads remain intact. One need not shirk off one’s responsibility in the face of such a world view. One need not assert one’s responsibilities as well. One should go with the times; but one should look upon one’s acts from a perspective of detachment. One need not worry for any misfortune. Whatever misfortune, if any, is the seed of action carried forward from earlier birth. The seed will sprout and then die. One should observe how it occurs without being affected by it. One need not be happy also for one’s victorious in life. Just as Krishna asks us to be indifferent to what our senses and mind do, similarly he also remains indifferent to what leaps from his nature. Just as we observe that we are happy or unhappy. Similarly Krishna observes what happens to his nature and to world. Just as the senses operate with the aid of the self, although the self is not a partaker of its pleasure and grief. Similarly, nature creates the world using the self of Krishna. But Krishna in no way is affected by the joys and sorrows of the world. Men cannot gauge him from outside. He is the supreme lord of the existence. Those who do not understand this are fools. Their hopes, activities, knowledge, judgment come to naught. They go to blaze. Their devils draw them. Nature itself becomes the devil. The great men however take refuge in the superior nature of Krishna and worship him with all their heart. Even Krishna creates through his nature. Since the whole environment of self, its mind, body, the society, the outer nature are created by the being of the nature itself; every self must act through nature. When we strive for Krishna, nature stands between us and Krishna (nothing binds Krishna however; he can see through nature also; no veil can bar him. He can reveal himself to the bedevilled heart at his will). Nature is of two types. One is the superior nature that is intimate with Krishna. The other is the inferior nature born of the superior nature only. The inferior nature takes the shape of devils at its will to waylay the errant. The great man however takes refuge in the superior nature of Krishna and worships him with the whole heart. They always sing in praise of Krishna. They prostrate before him with love and submission. Thus they are always in contact with him. Others worship Krishna through their efforts to understand him. One may take Krishna as identical with the world and with one’s self. Another might try to understand Krishna as separate from the world and yet he is one with the world. Actually no one knows what Krishna is. Even if one knows one cannot describe him. He is this and that. He is not not-this; he is not not-that. He is neither not not-this nor not not that. When a revolving circle is projected on a screen, it looks like an oscillation between one point and another. But the Krishna, the wheel, combines the opposites and transcends them. Krishna says that he is himself the paraphernalia of a business activity. He is himself the labour and capital. He is himself the entrepreneur and the labourer. He is himself its management principles. He is himself the product. He is himself marketed. He is himself the market and the customers. He is the father and the mother and the nurse of the existence. He is the object of all knowledge and experience. He is the sacred word or Aum. He is himself the three principles of creation maintenance and destruction. He is himself the goal and the guardian, master and the witness, shelter and protector friend and creator destruction and the site of destruction. He is the undying seed of the phenomenal world. He is the sun that heats the earth. He is death. In the form of death he robs the earth of its waters only to give the same back to earth thousand-fold in life-giving rains. Those who, however, lead a life without taking heed of Krishna also worship him. They enjoy themselves long in the heaven. Once their virtues are worn out they have to come back to the journeys of life again. It is just like doing well in the Olympic, one can enjoy the rewards of one’s victory for five years only. Thereafter one must return to the Olympic contest again. This does not mean that those who are good and virtuous do not go far because they do not worship Krishna. Krishna does not ask anyone to go over to him. Let the Hundred Brothers stand to their stance. What Krishna means is that those who are good and virtuous are limited by their faith in goodness and virtue. They do not have equal love for everybody. They observe rituals in life. They get out of life what they themselves desire. On the other hand Krishna says that one looks upon all value judgments as equally empty of content will get Krishna only, even if they do not believe in any god. But spiritual achievement is difficult for them who do not believe in any god at all. Krishna the personal god takes the charge of the past accumulations and future prospects of one who worships him whole heartedly. Krishna affirms that those who worship different gods also worship him. But their worship is not proper unless they take their god to be supreme being. Those who know that worshipping any god whatever means worshipping the supreme being attain eternal peace. But those who do not know that go to gods at most. Others who worship their ancestors as their ancestors, only go to the abode of the ancestors and not beyond. Some others might worship power for the sake of power only. They will become Prime Minister or Presidents some day in this life here or in lives to come. But those who pursue power knowing that thereby they serve the supreme being or Krishna, are sure to get eternal joy. In other words the awareness of the supreme being in every action is the point. But what is awareness? I see a cup. It is a perception based on the awareness of the cup. If I am excited over the cu, the awareness is blurred. If I try to be aware of my awareness, I find that it is the Me which is aware of the cup. What is me? Me is the construct of the past which has seen many a cup before it sees the present one. So the Me is not I. When I observe myself, I am not the myself which I observe. But could there be no awareness of things without the awareness of the ‘I’? When such awareness is attained there is attention. It pleases Krishna. Krishna does not want lip service to him. The attention of his devotee must be directed to the supreme being, call it by any name, Bachhus, Apollo, Christ, gold, sex, power, Krishna. One need not worship Krishna with great ceremony. He is happy with leaves and flowers and fruits and water whatever the devotee can afford to give him. The Maharaja airlines must serve its passengers in the first class with pate de foie gra and param ham and croissant, accompanied with red wine, Lanson Rose and White wine Schloss Johannesburgher. Red wine must be served at 45 degree Farenheit and white wine must be served at 65 degree Farenheit. But no such rules apply to Krishna. He can take poison even, if offered with devotion. Once upon a time the gods and te demons churned the ocean greedy of nectar. Once one seeks nectar one is sure to find poison as well. Then the great god of destruction drank the whole poison to save the world. Lord Buddha in course of his wide wanderings met a poor man, who offered him pork with great devotion. It was not fit for digestion. The lord asked his devotee not to give the pork to anyone else. But he himself took it gladly. Buddha died for that. But he asked his nearest disciple not to wail over it. Rather he said that he who gave him the last food, should be happy for that. One can give one’s god whatever one chooses to. A chain-smoker should offer his Krishna packets of camel cigarette every day. There was a great saint in Banaras in the 19th century. His name was Trailangya Swami. One day he found to piss before god. When a devotee was surprised at this, the saint communicated to him in writing that it was the holy water of the Ganges that he offered to his god. The saint was always plunged in the meditation of the supreme being. So he had no distinction between the sacred and the profane, the clean and the dirty. We offer sweets to a friend when he visits our house. But god is always with us and in us. We need not offer anything specially to god. Here is Krishna, the deconstructionist. He says that let life be as it is. The devotee may be very much busy in different activities of life. A man may chase woman. But let him offer the pleasures of womanising to his god. Krishna says that, “Do whatever you choose, eat whatever you like, bestow wealth upon anyone you prefer”. (There was a king who gave away gold. Who received it? Who else but the queen). Krishna says, “Work hard for any pursuit whatever. But remember that the pleasures thereof must be offered to me”. So everything will remain intact as it has been. The house-holder will count his coins after his whole day’s bone-breaking labour. Only thing is that the pleasures of counting the coins should be Krishna’s. There is lot of difference between the possessiveness of Krishna and that of the mortals. If a man loves his woman he asks her to earn for him to get wine for him, to prepare food for him, to lie down with him, to make publicity for the books he writes and so on. Can a man tell his wife that even if she lies down with somebody else, keeping him in mind, he will remain ever happy with her? The answer is an emphatic ‘No’. Instead of bestowing on Krishna all the pleasures and pains resulting from one’s activity, if one shoulders them on one’s own, one must be bound by such actions. They will raise walls on the path of liberation. But if one does whatever one chooses and thinks that one does only in the capacity of a servant of one’s god Krishna, one has renounced the world. Actions will not bind such a person. Krishna says that no one is dear to him. He hates no one. He looks upon everyone with equal regards. Nevertheless, those who worship him reside in him and he also resides in them. Even if it is a rogue who worships, he should be deemed as a saint. Because he has been intelligent enough to choose the right vocation. He will be transformed in no time. He will attain eternal bliss. Krishna proudly announces that his followers are never destroyed. Krishna, however, hereby does not guarantee any material security for his worshippers. Often the devotees of the supreme being are poor and hated. They are often killed by men. But that does not mean that they are destroyed. Women, merchants, workers and those who are outcastes, all of them will attain the highest bliss, if they worship Krishna. Needless to say that the priests and the kings will be rewarded with bliss. Thus clearly Krishna says that he is the god of the down- trodden and the backward class. But that does not mean that Krishna asks them to be docile to their master. They may choose to fight for women’s rights or for socialism, if they will. Only thing is they should do it as servants of Krishna. They should give away the joys and tears of their venture to Krishna. Krishna now asks Arjuna to think always of Krishna only. Arjuna should be always devoted to him. Arjuna should always worship him. Krishna asks Arjuna in front of the whole assembly to prostrate at his feet. If Arjuna takes refuge in Krishna like that, Arjuna will be ever in communion with Krishna. Even in the midst of gory strife, while man is slaughtered by man, the self unites with the self in an ecstasy. Click here to Reply VVVBHAD