Chapter Three
The Human Disciple
Note 3.8
Arjuna's Demands for Clarity about Divine Law
▀ ▄ ▀ Confusion of Arjuna - Sin in Action
Krishna is talking of Nature! He does not enlighten Arjuna about what he needs most at the moment – How to resolve the issue of the sin in action with which he is preoccupied?
On the one hand we are told to act as per our own nature and on the other hand we see that this very nature is the main cause which drives men as if by force and apparently against their better will into sin and guilt.
Arjuna’s practical intelligence is further baffled when Krishna reveals his secret when he asserts that it was he who in ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga. This knowledge had since then lost to humanity. Now he is again revealing it to Arjuna. His demand for an explanation provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose (Yada yada hi dharmasya, glanir bhavati Bharat…. = Whenever there is decline in the Dharma in this country Bharat…..I take birth….to lift the country out of…).
Arjuna is again perplexed by Krishna’s further statement reconciling action and renunciation of action.
Arjuna again asks for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest. – not these ‘mingled’ words. When finally Arjuna fully understands the nature of Yoga which he is invited to embrace, he is appalled by its difficulty.
His pragmatic nature is accustomed to act from mental will and preference and desire. This makes it extremely difficult for him to adopt this Yoga.
He is now more frustrated than before. In dismay Arjuna asks about what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails.
Does it not then lose both the worlds –
▀ First, this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind, and
▀ Second, the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires
Having failed from both these worlds, does one perish like a dissolving cloud ?
Having at last passed this stage of difficulty all the doubts and perplexities of Arjuna are now resolved. He now knows that it is the Divine which must be his law.
But here again and as always before this stage, Arjuna aims at a clear and decisive knowledge which will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action.
Arjuna now wants a clear-cut criteria which will help him to distinguish Divine from the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience. He wants to know about the great manifestations of the Divine’s self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realize it by meditation. He wonders as to will it be possible for him to see even now the divine cosmic Form of That. It is actually speaking to Arjuna at this very moment through the veil of the human mind and body. Arjuna has now one more last and final question.
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The Human Disciple
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