Chapter Two
The Divine Teacher
Note 2.5
Krishna as Historical and Spiritual Character
▀ ▄ ▀ Krishna as Historical and Spiritual Character
From this tradition the Gita may have gathered
▀ Many of its elements.
▀ Even the foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion and works.
▀ Perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or atleast one of the early teachers of this school
In spite of its later form the Gita may well represent the teaching of Krishna in Indian thought. The connection of that teaching with
The historical Krishna
Arjuna
The war of Kurukshetra
may be something more than a dramatic fiction.
In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical character and the Avatar. His worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been well established by the time when the old story and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form. This is apparently from the fifth to the first centuries B.C. Story or legend of the Avatar’s early life in Vrindavan has also been hinted in the poem.
This has been developed by the Puranas into an intense and powerful spiritual symbol. It has exercised very profound influence on the religious mind of India.
We also have an account of the life of Krishna in the Harivansha. It is very evidently full of legends which perhaps formed the basis of the Puranic accounts.
All this information is of considerable historical importance. However, it has no importance at all to our present purpose. We are concerned only with the figure of the divine Teacher as it is presented to us in the Gita.
We are also concerned with the Power for which it there stands in the spiritual illumination of the human being.
The Gita accepts the human Avatarhood. This is seen when the Lord speaks of the repeated and the constant manifestation of the Divine in humanity. He the eternal Unborn assumes to clothe itself apparently in finite form, the condition of becoming which we call birth. This he does by his Maya and by the power of the infinite Consciousness. But is not this upon which stress is laid. The stress is laid on
▀ The transcendent, the cosmic and the internal Divine.
▀ Source of all things
▀ Master of all
▀ Godhead secret in man
When the Gita speaks of the
▀ Doer of violent Asuric austerities troubling the God within
▀ Sin of those who despise the Divine lodged in the human body
▀ Same Godhead destroying our ignorance by the blazing lamp of knowledge.
it is referring to this internal divinity.
The divine who speaks to the human soul in the Gita is this eternal Avatar and the God in man. It is the divine Consciousness always present in the human being who manifested in a visible form. He illumines the meaning of life and the secret of the divine action. He gives it the light of the divine knowledge and guidance. He offers assuring and fortifying word of the Master of existence in the hour when it comes face with the painful mystery of the world. This is what the Indian religious consciousness seeks to make near to itself. This it does in whatever form This includes :
Symbolic human image it enshrines in its temples
In the worship of its Avatars.
In the devotion to the human Guru through whom the voice of the one world-Teacher makes itself heard.
Through these it strives to awaken to that inner voice, to unveil that form of the Formless and stand face to face with that manifest divine Power, Love and Knowledge.
....... ▀ ▄ Chapter Two - Note 5 ▄ ▀ ........
The Divine Teacher
.......... to continue
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