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1.1 Introduction
In this chapter we will look at some Indian-born
sages from the perspective of Pure Consciousness Mysticism, primarily at
the figure of Krishna, but also 19th and 20th century mystics including
Sri Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Mother Meera.
The latter figures are well documented (Meera is still alive at the time
of writing), meaning that they are accessible as persons, in contrast
to Krishna however, they have been selected for the purpose of shedding
light onto his possible personhood. We will focus on the figure of Krishna
as revealed in the sacred Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita, though what
little we know from other sources is mentioned. The Gita takes a
similar place for Hindus that the four Gospels do for Christians; it is
both new and a codification of what went before (Jesus: 'Do not suppose
that I come to abolish the law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish
but to complete [1]'; Krishna: 'Sacred action is described in the Vedas
and these come from the Eternal, and therefore is the Eternal everpresent
in sacrifice [2]'). Strictly, the Gita is not a canonical text for
the Hindu religion (these are the Vedas) though sometimes the Gita
is called the fifth Veda. It is probably one of the more difficult texts
to tackle from the perspective of Pure Consciousness Mysticism, not because
the text poses difficulties for this analysis, but because of the special
place that the text has as a sacred book. The figure of Krishna is problematic
for the same reasons, for Krishna takes the place of both God and Jesus
(approximately) for Hindus, and millions of words have been spoken and written
about him over the last 20 to 25 centuries. Problems arise because many
say that either he is not a historical person, or that he is God, or a god,
or some combination of these. In the West Aristotle's law of the excluded
middle does not easily allow for a person to be God and a man, and much
of Christian theology has become an endless form of mental gymnastics to
accommodate this contradiction. Thankfully, the Hindu tradition allows for
a more fluid thinking, where such a contradiction does not bring intellectual
stalemate but intellectual creativity. Neither is the question of historicity
so important in India as in the West, and it is also of little importance
to this analysis because the value of the text lies mainly in the reality
that it expresses.
It has been stated in the introduction to Pure Consciousness Mysticism that
as a world-view it has no dependence on the concept of divine beings, so
Krishna can either be ignored as myth, treated as metaphor, or considered
as an ordinary human being with unusual insights. It is the latter treatment
that we shall accord him, and if this offends anyone I ask for patience,
because the intention is that his teachings should emerge from this with
renewed vigour, not with ridicule. The very reason for choosing the Gita
is that it is hard to find a text within which the infinite, the eternal,
and the embracive shine more strongly. The Gita, as mentioned above,
is in some senses a summary of the Vedas which precede it, which are also
remarkable for the infinite, the eternal and the embracive. In Eastern religions
the mystical is more apparent than in Western religions, so the idea of
a mystical critique being radically different from a religious critique
is not easily supported in an Eastern context. It follows from this that
some, though not all, the conclusions drawn here about the Gita will
be familiar to those who have a background in Indian thought. The central
proposition of PCM is that it represents a relationship with reality that
is available to anyone: hence, in examining Krishna as a man, we are asking
what is his reality (for it seems godlike), and how it is available to ordinary
people, particularly those living in the West today. The particular nature
of the Gita means also that the secondary questions raised are to
do with devotion and renunciation.
Krishna's life has some similarities with that of Jesus. The circumstances
of their births (according to what texts we have) are similar: both were
born in humble surroundings under the threat of death by a king who feared
the future man as a rival; in Jesus's case the prophecy was given to Herod
of a coming 'King of the Jews', and in Krishna's case to his uncle (king
Kansa) of a young pretender to the throne. Krishna was born in captivity
rather than a stable, and escaped to be brought up by villagers; on discovering
this Kansa had the baby boys in his kingdom killed, as did Herod, though
Krishna's story is placed between two and five hundred years earlier. While
similarities in their teachings exist, the princely nature of Krishna gave
his life a different flavour; for example he was educated, knew the Hindu
scriptures well, and engaged in the politics and administration of a small
kingdom. The deaths of the two men could not be more different however:
Jesus died on the cross, while Krishna died in a hunting accident while
asleep under a tree. The accidental nature of his death reflects the unpredictable
and light-hearted universe that Krishna inhabited: the manner of his death
had no significance at all.
Krishna's boyhood is recounted in legends; his body was blue (or black in
some versions); he was as naughty a child as you could wish, stealing food
and jewellery to bedeck himself with, even peeing in other households. He
was notorious for liking butter, and in one episode was caught by his adoptive
mother who asked to look in his mouth for proof. He tried to avoid this,
but when he did open his mouth she saw the sun and the moon and this stars
inside it, and in her shock let him get away. Another well-known episode
took place later in his youth when he stole the clothes of the cow-girls
(gopis) who were bathing in the river. The girls were forced to come out
of the river naked in order to retrieve their clothes, covering their modesty
with their hands, but he tricked them into folding their hands on their
heads before allowing them their clothes back. These stories are a mixture
of the irrepressible prankster and the divine being who performs miracles,
like picking up a mountain to protect his village. The gopis all loved him,
but one in particular: Radha, who was to be his deepest love, though not
his wife. Krishna was a lover on an epic scale, in his early years spending
his nights with Radha in the forest, while later supposedly marrying 16,000
women. Radha was an integral part of Krishna's life their love was legendary,
and like all of the events in Krishna's mythology, larger than life. The
two names are so interlinked that variations on 'Radhakrishna' as a name
are seen throughout India; for example a well-known modern writer on Hinduism
and Buddhism is called Radhakrishnan. Such was the strength of their bond
that Krishna and Radha supposedly even incarnated in the same body, in 1486,
in the form of the sage Chaitanya. A devotee of Chaitanya is confused, for
where he had seen a renouncer, he starts to see in him the form of Krishna.
Chaitanya says that his intense love of Krishna causes him to see Krishna,
as he would see him anywhere or in anything, but the devotee is not satisfied
with his explanation telling him to give up the pretence, upon which Chaitanya
reveals himself in the dual form. The devotee faints after which Chaitanya
revives him, again in the form of a renouncer, saying that he has revealed
his nature to no one else, and to keep it a secret [3]. While some may wish to take
this episode literally (as with all the myths about Krishna), Chaitanya
is more likely to be using the figures of Krishna and Radha as representing
the fundamental male and female energies, otherwise represented in Hinduism
in the persons of Shiva and Shakti, or in the concepts of Purusha and Prakrti
(see Abhayananda for further examples [4]).
The Mahabharata within which the Gita appears is a classical
Indian epic written in Sanskrit, traditionally ascribed to a legendary sage
Vyasa, but possibly compiled by many anonymous poets and Hindu priests.
The date of the Mahabharata is given variously as between the 5th
century BC and the 4th century AD, or between 3000 AD and 1500 AD. The poem
is composed of more than 90,000 couplets that relate the turbulent history
of the ancient kingdom of Kurukshetra, which is a town in the present-day
state of Haryana in India and the traditional site of the battleground of
the great war. The Bhagavad Gita is eighteen chapters long,
perhaps representing the eighteen days of the war. The Mahabharata
tells the story of the Kurus and the Pandavas, two closely-related clans,
and how they came to war over the kingdom of Kurukshetra, which Duryodhana,
the head of the Kurus, was temporarily in control of. The Pandavas were
the rightful heirs, though this was clouded by problems of lineage and a
game of dice which resulted in their exile. On return from exile they found
that Duryodhana had consolidated his power and the Pandavas, which included
Arjuna as the central character of the Gita, were forced into a fratricidal
war. Almost as bad for Arjuna as facing the prospect of killing family members
was that of killing old retainers at the court, including various teachers
and gurus that were dependent on their patron Duryodhana.
Krishna (a prince from a neighbouring kingdom) was a friend and brother-in-law
of Arjuna, having had contact with the Pandava brothers from the time of
their joint marriage to Draupadi. Krishna encouraged Arjuna to court his
sister and lent him his chariot to abduct her (a traditional method of courtship
apparently) and soothed the irate relatives afterwards. Krishna in the Mahabharata
was a minor figure who acted strangely: he was approached by leaders of
both sides, Arjuna and Duryodhana, and was asked for help. He said that
out of love for them both he would offer one his army, and the other himself
(he had already fruitlessly tried to mediate between them for peace); Arjuna
was given first choice and he chose Krishna, while Duryodhana received the
army the scene was set for the great war that followed. Later in the Mahabharata,
once battle commenced, Krishna, having made one of the most extraordinary
and spiritually-motivated decision that the commander of an army could possibly
do (join the side of good out of principle, but give his army to the wicked
out of fairness), then proceeded to use all kind of trickery to help defeat
the opposition, (magical ones as well as human ones) that some commentators
have since found contemptible.
Many say that the serious divinity that Krishna reveals in the Gita
is a different person to the Krishna of legend, not finding it easy to reconcile
a naughty child, prodigious philanderer, warrior and cheat on the battlefield,
dancer, showy dresser, and player of the flute on one hand (as if those
weren't enough contradictions already!) with the teacher of the highest
spirituality shown in the Gita. As no one can really separate out
any facts from the myths and poetry that surround Krishna, he is open to
many interpretations; for example I have been influenced by Bhagwan Shree
Rajneesh's Krishna - The Man and His Philosophy [5]. We shall be looking at the
Krishna as revealed in the Bhagavad Gita, however, and the
other stories concerning his life are only mentioned here to give an idea
of how he is perceived amongst Hindus.
1.2 The Bhagavad Gita
In the first chapter of the Gita the
scene is set for the battle, giving a list of the participants on both sides.
Krishna has agreed to be Arjuna's charioteer, as a way of entering the war
as a non-combatant traditionally this is in intimate role, as the charioteer
protects the warrior in danger, sings his successes (the charioteer is bard
also), stays silent on his failures, and may even prevent him from fleeing
the battle, as Krishna does here. [6] Given the teachings that follow, which indicate the
'divine' nature of Krishna, this is a humble task, and symbolic of Krishna's
friendship for Arjuna. Arjuna asks him to drive the chariot between the
opposing armies in the tense silence that precedes battle. Once Arjuna sees
his many friends, relatives and revered teachers amongst the opposing army,
he is overcome with grief at the prospect of their deaths and his part in
their deaths. Krishna spends the rest of the Gita persuading Arjuna
to fight. Much hand-wringing and soul-searching has gone on ever since about
the role of the so-called divine being Krishna persuading Arjuna to fight:
pacifists like Mahatma Gandhi later insisted that this fight was purely
a symbolic fight between good and evil. Most scholars consider that the
battle at Kurukshetra did take place in fact and resulted in a carnage on
such a scale that the Indian psyche in some ways never recovered. The Jain
religion, one of extreme non-violence (even to insects), could not come
to terms with Krishna's actions, so in their mythology he was sent straight
to hell, though after a bit of thought they decided that he would start
a new round of Jain saints (tirthankaras) in the next cycle of creation.
(Indian religions deal with new prophets in odd ways: Jainism sent
Krishna to hell, while Hinduism pondered over the Buddha for a while, and
then decided that he came from hell to lead people astray in particular
over the caste system.)
How though does Krishna respond to Arjuna's initial despair? First he tells
Arjuna to snap out of it, more or less, to which Arjuna responds that he
would rather become a beggar than a king at the expense of the deaths of
his revered teachers. Krishna then repeats a piece of ancient Hindu wisdom:
that nothing dies, or is born; that if the body is destroyed the soul simply
moves on to another in other words Krishna starts his instruction to Arjuna
by reminding him of the principle of reincarnation. (The following extracts,
as all in this chapter, are from Juan Mascaró's translation [7].)
11 Thy
tears are for those beyond tears; and are thy words words of wisdom? The
wise grieve not for those who live; and they grieve not for those who die
for life and death shall pass away.
12 Because
we all have been for all time: I, and thou, and those kings of men. And
we all shall be for all time, we all for ever and ever.
13 As
the Spirit of our mortal body wanders on in childhood and youth and old
age, the Spirit wanders on to a new body: of this the sage has no doubts.
14 From
the world of the senses, Arjuna, comes heat and comes cold, and pleasure
and pain. They come and they go: they are transient. Arise above them,
strong soul.
15 The
man whom these cannot move, whose soul is one, beyond pleasure and pain,
is worthy of life in Eternity.
16 The
unreal never is: the Real never is not. This truth indeed has been seen
by those who can see the true.
17 Interwoven
in his creation, the Spirit is beyond destruction. No one can bring to
an end the Spirit which is everlasting.
18 For
beyond time he dwells in these bodies, though these bodies have an end
in their time; but he remains immeasurable, immortal. Therefore, great
warrior, carry on thy fight.
19 If
any man thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows
the ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot
die. (pages 49 - 50)
Mascaró uses the word 'Spirit' in this passage for the eternal core
of a person, but no equivalent is found in van Buitenen's more scholarly
translation: instead he refers to the imperishable, and translates verse
16 to include a reference to the interface between being and non-being. [8] This
is only mentioned because although the term 'Spirit' could be a useful shorthand
for the concept of 'the interface between being and non-being', it is not
until later in this book that ideas concerning this interface will be developed.
For now it is recommended that any words such as 'Spirit' be treated more
as a poetic necessity than a term that can be precisely defined (in fact
it is just because of Mascaró poetic gift that his translation is
used here in preference to van Buitenen's or any other's).
Reincarnation as a teaching or principle is not a common factor amongst
the mystics, and so it is not directly part of the PCM world-view. However,
in many cases, as here, it is way of dealing with the eternal: it is part
of the teachings of the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Yoga Sutras; India was
steeped in it, yet Krishna needed to remind Arjuna of it. Clearly, reincarnation
was part of the ultimate reality that Krishna existed in, while it was not
part of Arjuna's reality, any more than it is for most people; whether from
the East, where it is a prevalent belief, or in the West where it is not.
Mystics of the East often express their sense of deathlessness in terms
of reincarnation, while mystics of the West tend to be more vague. It is
part of many occult traditions in the West however, Rudolf Steiner for one
having lectured and written voluminously on the subject. Krishna is not
suggesting that Arjuna kill his opponents simply because of reincarnation
however, as one could justify any killing on that basis. Reincarnation is
introduced to lead Arjuna to find the deathless in himself, and, as incarnation
is central to any account of mysticism, we also need to consider the possibilities
and implications of reincarnation. By incarnation one normally means
the concept that the human spirit, soul, consciousness, mind, ego, awareness,
or whatever, becomes associated with the human body. It may sound a little
vague to lump all these concepts together, but in practice it is very hard
to identify and separate any of these entities: spirit, soul, consciousness,
mind, ego, or awareness. Or, if one is psychoanalytically minded; ego, id,
superconscious, unconscious, subconscious. Or if one is versed in Indian
concepts; Atman and Brahman. As academics, one needs these concepts, but
if, in silence, one explores oneself, what does one find? There is one's
body, and something else, something that perceives. Incarnation is about
the relationship between this something, Mascaró calls it Spirit,
and the human body, while reincarnation is about the moving of this something
from one body to another, including possibly all forms of living organism,
or even inanimate objects.
Without contemplating reincarnation, some of the questions posed by the
Gita are hard to consider, the key one in this context being identity.
Reincarnation is a difficult subject, arousing strong opinions, and perhaps
it better belongs to the world of the occult, but it is too central to the
Gita, and to the question of one's identity, to ignore. The difficulty
with reincarnation, like any aspects of the occult, is that, without direct
evidence, one has no reason to treat it other than a plausible or implausible
theory, depending on one's inclinations. Rudolf Steiner prefaced his Occult
Science with the promise that his work was scientific in the
sense that his theories can be verified by anyone who cares to enter the
'spirit world' [9]. In some way the parallel with conventional science
holds up: anyone with a billion-dollar particle accelerator and a doctorate
in particle physics can verify the existence of baryons and leptons. In
practice even verifying Newton's laws of motion with a hundred-dollar school
science kit is hard to do: I used to teach this for years and found the
results that sixth-formers actually obtained were only likely to convince
the most precise and sensitive of student. Few people can stand up and verify
Steiner's occult science as a whole, but it just so happens that in the
case of reincarnation I have some experiences which convince me of its truth,
at least as far as myself goes. Those with no personal experience of reincarnation
tend to fall into two camps: those instinctively in favour on the basis
of hoping that either they were somebody important in a previous life, or
that they will not disappear completely at death; and those instinctively
against on the basis that 'I am me; how could I have been somebody else?'
Rational arguments can then put forward for either case. However, it is
a crucial point in relationship with the ideas Krishna is putting forward:
if there is reincarnation, what about my identity? We will discuss this
in more detail later, but for now I will describe some personal experiences
related to reincarnation which changed my own views on identity.
In my mid-twenties I participated in psychotherapy workshops and meditation
techniques, even doing a one-day workshop with the legendary R.D.Laing,
who seemed at the time to live mostly in a whisky bottle. I was also a follower
of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later known as Osho) for a while, and joined
a group called Subud. Some teachers or group leaders were good, some were
bad; one advantage to the very eclectic route I took was that it was easier
to tell the good practitioners after a while. There is much concern these
days about unlicensed therapists, particularly hypnotherapists, and the
dangers of 'false memory syndrome', and there are probably dubious practices
going on. However, either I was lucky or I had enough discrimination to
avoid any particularly bad experiences, and it became a period of getting
to know myself, and to explore the effects of some childhood events that
had shaped my psychology. A common therapy at that time was 're-birthing',
a group-oriented way of re-living the birth trauma, where members of the
group would physically constrict the subject as they went through an emotional
simulation of the trauma (or so-called trauma). My first past-life experience
actually took place in a meditation, part of a week's retreat involving
re-birthing, which was normally of an hour's length and consisted of some
simple hand-movements to music of gongs and bells. Half-way through I began
to experience an extreme form of distress, and because of the nature of
the group I was with, I allowed this to take over. I would add that it was
only because of the circumstances and because of a period of acclimatisation
to such possibilities that I could let go: more recently, in the wonderful
though highly formal surroundings of the British Library reading room, I
was moved to tears by something I was reading, but suppressed the emotions
and was left with a headache all day (there is a time and a place for everything).
The distress that I felt in the meditation reached such a pitch that I started
screaming, which rudely interrupted the meditation for the others, but,
having experience with re-birthing, they gathered round and proceeded to
help me re-live the birth trauma. It turned out that I was re-living a death
not a birth, for my screams reached a crescendo, after which I said, 'They
killed my with knives", and collapsed. The cook came from the kitchen
and needed comforting, for she said that the screams were the worst thing
she had ever heard. In the meantime I was left in a different world: I somehow
'became' another personality, a violent individual from the 10th century,
and it was some hours before I felt myself again. This was the start of
a period of exploration of past lives; I found a number of hypnotherapists
who had experience in this area. One of them in particular, Joe Weselowski,
had made it a speciality: he had been a conventional hypnotherapist for
years, but found to his distaste that people would go 'off the bottom' as
it were, and dredge up stuff prior to birth this was not supposed to happen.
In the end he decided to go with it, becoming convinced of the validity
of these experiences, and we worked together for a while. Past life therapy
is useful for some individuals: in my case I was drawn to it by a 'bleeding
through' of past life issues that could not be dealt with in other ways;
however it suffers from the problem of most types of regression therapy
that it can encourage self-obsession. I fell into this trap to some extent,
but also found it a route to the transcendent, which Weselowski was wary
of and could not help me with: I found that in some sessions I would pass
beyond any 'personal' material and enter a more cosmic awareness, where
the planetary system and the stars seemed to be directly perceivable and
inside of me. I only mention this because the nature of this perception
is not unlike the imagination, and because such 'visions' will be discussed
later I would like to stress their ordinariness at the outset.
This is not the place to go into the details of my own experiences, as I
don't want to make an issue of reincarnation; however, it did profoundly
change my attitude to my sense of identity, and to death of course. It leaves
me in a difficult position: I would like to assign reincarnation to the
area of the occult, and therefore leave it out, but as it is integral to
my weltanschauing and therefore to this analysis of the Gita
it is only fair to say why. Another reading of the same experiences could
be made through C.G.Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, but this
approach begs the question: why experience particular memories if the source
is collective? Many suspect that Jung was in fact sympathetic to reincarnation,
and that material suppressed by the family executors of his estate would
demonstrate it. It is worth pointing out that Jung's orientation is more
towards the archaic in the psyche than to the transcendent (at least in
the terms of PCM), and that reincarnation would not be that out of place
in his thinking. However there is not space here to argue in detail this
assessment of Jung.
There is another aspect of reincarnation worth investigating, and that is
karma, which is the idea that actions in one life lead to results
in another: good actions lead to a 'better' birth, happy circumstances and
so on, while bad actions lead to a life or lives of misery. My own understanding
of my past lives, as far as it goes, shows this to be true: apparently I
was a baron in Wales in around 960 A.D., and murdered, raped and tortured
in the pursuit of power. The karmic come-back was not only to die an unpleasant
death at the end of that life, but to spend the next thousand years worth
of lives (with no gaps between them as far as I can tell) in miserable circumstances.
This perception has naturally affected the way I live, and caused me to
reflect on the workings of karma. Imagine for example a soldier in the trenches
of the first world war. He might kill thirty enemy soldiers a day, with
no karmic result: it is his job as soldier, as it was Arjuna's. Yet, imagine
that the hundredth man to die at his hands was pulling a white handkerchief
from his pocket as our soldier shot him something barely glimpsed; he saw
it in time to prevent his finger squeezing the trigger, and many thoughts
went through his mind at that moment: is his opponent surrendering? Is he
blowing his nose, cleaning his gun, or was it imagined? Our soldier is subject
to many pressures: how did he cope with the horrible deaths of his friends
around him day in and day out? Does fear get the better of him? Do military
orders over-ride his compassion? Let us say that every bullet fired up to
then had been accompanied by no undue emotion, but out of the moral confusion
of the situation that last bullet was fired with a livid access of instantaneous
hatred: karma arises. Real life situations are like this commonplace until
that one moment where the sum total of what one is is called into question,
and one's action then stays with one for the rest of one's life, or, if
one believes in reincarnation, for many lives. This is why, I believe, that
Krishna, having been unable to prevent the war, goes for it whole-heartedly:
war always was the ultimate test of a human being, and it was in Krishna's
character to be a provoker of situations. The urgency of any life or death
situation lays bare an individual in the intensity of the moment: there
is no time to think or dissemble. However I would add that it is probably
no longer acceptable to see war in these terms, for the simple reason that
technology has made it a matter of too much destruction even for Krishna
I think. The pilot of the Enola Gay was doing his job, as Krishna exhorted
Arjuna to do, but there was nothing immediate about the situation
either for the pilot or for the victims of the bomb, and the karmic ramifications
remain unfathomable.
Karma is a useful concept, but at the end of the day it is a mechanical
one, like the theory of gravitation. It may be the engine behind the drama
of the universe, but any deeper knowledge of it must belong to the realms
of the occult, as does the idea of the 'Akashic records', for example. Karma's
relevance to Indian mysticism lies in the idea that liberation not only
involves not being reborn, but that an individual's karma must somehow 'balance'
or be pure before enlightenment is possible. Although reincarnation in terms
of Pure Consciousness Mysticism may be a way of introducing the eternal,
it is ultimately irrelevant however because PCM stresses the eternal now.
Let us return from this digression to the Gita. Krishna's argument
develops, saying that there is no greater good for a member of the warrior
caste than to fight in a righteous war: not to fight would be dishonour.
If he dies he is glorious in heaven, if he lives he is glorious on earth.
Krishna then proposes one of the central themes of the Gita: that
salvation lies in carrying out the work one's life leads one to, without
attachment to the outcome. Arjuna's whole life leads to this point:
he is a soldier, and to abandon his duty at this point is to attach significance
to the outcome (i.e. the deaths of his friends and relatives), and it is
for life as a whole to determine the outcome. Arjuna should set his heart
on the work, in the way that any tradesman does for example, but not on
its reward. Wisdom and peace lies in surrendering the fruits of work, but
to work nevertheless.
Arjuna then asks what is the work of the man of wisdom, and what is his
peace; Krishna then gets deeper into his exposition: work for its own sake
and not for its reward are to do with desirelessness. Peace is freedom from
the violence of the senses; desires arise from pleasures of the senses.
Much of the widely varying interpretations of the Gita now depend
on the reading of Krishna's subtle and lengthy explanations of these ideas.
At one extreme one can take Krishna to be advocating 'holy works' (though
this doesn't quite square to our modern sensibilities concerning the killing
of relatives and teachers) and a life of religious convention: chastity,
poverty and obedience, and at the other extreme to be advocating a secular
life where all acts are rendered sacred through an inner transforming discipline.
In chapter three Arjuna then asks the obvious question: if Krishna values
wisdom and peace (or understanding or vision in the various translations)
above acts, why does he insist on Arjuna pursuing the war? Krishna now expands
on the differences between a holy, or consecrated action, and renunciation
of action.
9 The
world is in the bonds of action, unless the action is consecration. Let
thy actions then be pure, free from the bonds of desire.
10 Thus
spoke the Lord of Creation when he made both man and sacrifice: 'By sacrifice
thou shalt multiply and obtain all thy desires.
11 By
sacrifice shalt thou honour the gods and the gods will then love thee.
And thus in harmony with them shalt thou attain the supreme good.
12 For
pleased with thy sacrifice, the gods will grant to thee the joy of all
thy desires. Only a thief would enjoy their gifts and not offer them in
sacrifice'.
13 Holy
men who take as food the remains of sacrifice become free from all their
sins; but the unholy who have feasts for themselves eat food that is in
truth sin.
14 Food
is the life of all beings, and all food comes from rain above. Sacrifice
brings the rain from heaven, and sacrifice is sacred action.
15 Sacred
action is described in the Vedas and these come from the Eternal, and therefore
is the Eternal everpresent in sacrifice.
16 Thus
was the Wheel of the Law set in motion, and that man lives indeed in vain
who in sinful life of pleasures helps not in its revolutions.
17 But
the man who has found joy of the Spirit and in the Spirit has satisfaction,
who in the Spirit has found peace, that man is beyond the law of action.
18 He
is beyond what is done and beyond what is not done, and in all his works
he is beyond the help of mortal beings.
19 In
liberty from the bonds of attachment, do thou therefore the work to be
done: for the man whose work is pure attains indeed the Supreme. (page
57)
In the previous extract Krishna was describing
the principle of reincarnation in straightforward terms, that is with little
reference to exclusively Hindu concepts, but in this extract he is talking
about consecrated action in terms that are culturally dependent. He introduces
a Lord of Creation, and makes references to specific practices of consecration
described in the Vedas, which are unique to the religion of Hinduism. It
is the job of the PCM critique to subtract out such cultural and religious
superstructures in the expression of universals, in this case the universal
theme of consecration. In PCM terminology there are no gods or a single
God, so consecration is to be seen in terms of disinterestedness and devotion.
The disinterestedness springs clearly from the extract and requires no religious
background to understand: by acting in a disinterested but committed way,
one removes the bitterness of failure and the intoxication of triumph and
retains the tranquillity necessary for pure consciousness. How do we relate
the devotional aspect of consecration to PCM however? Devotion is a central
theme in the Gita, and is emphasised by many mystics indeed it is
often an obvious part of their orientation towards ultimate reality. It
is a complex issue however, partly because other mystics place little emphasis
on it, or expressly forbid the expression of devotion towards themselves,
and partly because of this very confusion: is the devotion towards the person
of the mystic or to what they represent? This question will be dealt with
in greater depth later, as other devotional aspects of the Gita reveal
themselves.
Krishna is adamant that by merely refraining from action one is not free
from it, firstly because one may dwell on the pleasures of action mentally,
and secondly because in a profound sense one cannot live without action:
even the life of the body would not be there without action. It is the inner
space from which action comes that leads to bondage or freedom: Krishna
repeats that it is attachment to the action and its outcomes that is bondage.
By removing selfish desires from the action it becomes pure and leaves the
individual in peace and inner freedom.
This is very difficult: Arjuna is about to enter battle, both as a commander
and as a warrior in his own right; he will initiate killings, and he will
personally kill, and in the thick of battle any of his kinsmen, friends,
or teachers may appear in front of him. How can he be at peace in his actions?
How can he consecrate these actions? How can he avoid the kind of karmic
consequences described earlier in connection with our imaginary soldier?
The war is just; his enemies are making false claims on the kingdom but
nevertheless Krishna is asking Arjuna to virtually destroy the world that
produced him. Krishna then says that if your aim in any action is the good
of all, then your acts are consecrated. He goes on to talk about himself,
a brief outline that he later expands on.
22 I
have no work to do in all the worlds, Arjuna for these are mine. I have
nothing to obtain, because I have all. Yet I work.
23 If
I was not bound to action, never-tiring, everlastingly, men that follow
many paths would follow my path of inaction.
24 If
ever my work had an end, these worlds would end in destruction, confusion
would reign within all: this would be the death of all beings. (page 58)
In this statement Krishna ceases to be what we recognise as a man, and speaks
as God. Few mystics are bold enough to speak like this, though some are
explicit about their identity with God, for example Mansur al-Hallaj who
was executed for it after ten years in prison in Baghdad. When Krishna says
that all the worlds are his is this a supernatural statement (which means
in PCM either occult or fantasy), or is it a way of expressing the unitive
state that many mystics describe? Many other mystics also say that they
have nothing to obtain because they have all, but does that just mean low
expectations? Or do they know the same truth as Krishna, but usually put
in a less colourful way? We will reflect on this throughout the book, but
let us note for now that Krishna adds to what mystics say in a very important
way: he has all, and yet he works. What's more he claims that if
he did not work, the universe itself would fall apart. Can we test such
a statement in our own lives? Yes, I would say, if I ceased to do anything
I would become ill, and my universe would fall apart, and I would land up
on a drip in hospital, and eventually die, and with it the universe. This
is not the same, one can say, as the universe coming to an end! This is
just a bit of verbal trickery. No, I would reply, but we will look at the
implications of this later.
Krishna leaves this theme for now and says that the wise do not disturb
the unwise with these ideas, but rather, shows by example, working for the
good of all. The wise man sees how some forces of Nature act on other forces
of Nature, and becomes not their slave. This is another important part of
the teachings in the Gita: everything, including oneself as
body, thought and emotion, is under the forces of Nature, and interact with
other forces of Nature. From some vantage point where the forces of Nature
do not act, it is possible to stand back and watch nature act out its drama,
even through the violence of the battlefield. What separates Arjuna and
Krishna is that Krishna has this vantage point, has made his home there,
and Arjuna lacks it; Krishna is using Arjuna's crisis to lead him there:
the outcome of whether he fights or not is immaterial. Krishna stresses
that even the wise man is under the impulse of his own nature, so what use
is restraint? Arjuna should do his duty, and to realise that to die in one's
duty is life, whereas to live another's is death. Duty is probably not the
best word to use here as it implies an obligation to some human, local,
secular authority: Krishna means something more than this, something deeper,
something related to the growth of an individual to their unique potential,
unique flowering.
References for Krishna, part One
[1] Matthew 5:17, the Revised English Bible
[2]
Gita 3:15
[3]
O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger (Ed. and Trans.), Textual Sources for the Study
of Hinduism, Manchester University Press, 1988, p. 157
[4]
Abhayananda, S. History of Mysticism - The Unchanging Testament,
Atma Books, Naples, Florida, 1987, prologue.
[5]
Rajneesh, B.S., Krishna - The Man and His Philosophy, Oregon: Rajneesh
Foundation Internation, 1985
[6]
Buitenen, van, J.A.B., (Trans.) The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata,
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981, p.5
[7]
Mascaró, Juan (Trans.), The Bhagavad Gita, London: Penguin
Books, 1962.
[8]
Buitenen, van, J.A.B., (Trans.) The Bhagavadgita in the Mahabharata,
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1981, pages 75 and
162
[9]
Steiner. R. Occult Science - An Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1986,
p.8
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