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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.
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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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