Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita
PRINT PAGE
Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita
The tale of Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita was written around 2000 BC and is a story within an epic poem called the Mahabharata. It is set in Ancient India at a time when war, greed, corruption, depravity and absolute evil reigned over all. It is a symbolic tale of the battle between Light and darkness, written by a teacher of the Ageless Wisdom, that has universal and timeless relevance for all of us. The Gita is one of the greatest works on philosophy, science and religion ever offered to humanity, and is a treatise on the nature of evil and the true meaning of love, family and brotherhood.
Krishna in this tale is the Divine messenger, the World Teacher, the representative of God, and Arjuna is his student, a warrior, and the representative of all humanity.
Whether we consider Krishna a character in a story, a god of Hindu mythology, or an actual historical figure, the message that comes through the body known as Krishna is the same, for it is the expression of Love, which comes from the one source, which is God.
The message of Krishna is one of true love; there is a truth to love that is far greater than the ideal we have been conditioned by the institution of family to think it is.
We have been raised in a way to believe that family is everything, that ‘blood is thicker than water’, that we must be loyal to our blood family and live and die for its members and by its rules. But family is not blood, duty or obligation; true family is a vibrational alignment, an alignment to the energy of Love and Truth, or not.
We have been raised to think that love is something we have to work for, to achieve, to earn recognition and acceptance for by hard work or sacrifice, but love is far grander than that.
Love is an energy, a beholding quality that holds us all in space and allows us to be all of who we are without imposition or compression. Love holds us as its equal, that we may come to know again we are that same love, and when we know that in our bodies, we in turn hold all others in our sphere in that same and equal love.
The story of Krishna and Arjuna
The story of Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita brought forth the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom so that humanity could resurrect itself out of its individual desires and return to true love and brotherhood.
Master Krishna in this symbolic story delivers Truth by showing Arjuna the lies, deception and illusion he has been constrained by – by taking on ideals and beliefs about family, duty, loyalty etc. – and showing him how to cut the ties that bind him by making life not only about people, but about the quality of energy first and foremost.
The Gita is a message to humanity and Arjuna is our symbolic representative. Arjuna’s dilemma on the battlefield – facing his corrupted family and loved ones and having to go to war with them so that Truth will once again prevail – is our dilemma in everyday life; learning to see people, including our loved ones, as vessels of energy first and foremost and human beings second and thereafter, and being willing to read which energy is coming through them at any moment and respond accordingly.
All of this learning takes place in the Kurukshetra (the field ‘kshetra’ where the battle between the Kurus and the Pandava brothers takes place). The battle is known as the Mahabharata –– the mother of all battles. This battle between members of the one family symbolises the internal battle that mankind has been facing since the beginning of time – the internal and eternal conflict between our alignment to Fire (symbolised by The Pandavas) or its opposing Evil force – Astral Prana (symbolised by The Kurus). This is in essence the battle that takes place within us all between the Divine Light we are from and its corrupted ill-reflections in the field of shadows which is our earthly reality – and all of this occurring in the body of God’s Atma, which is the true Kshetra.
The Bhagavad Gita is thus timeless and universal in its application to all spheres of life …
It offers us the understanding of the inner mechanics of how life truly works; that the battles we think we experience – the complexities, struggles, difficulties of human life – are in fact self-created, and that the source of the conflict lies within. We have a spirit, a fragment of us that chose to separate from the Soul, from the whole, and therein lies the source of all our ‘battles’.
While we choose to live in separation from the whole, to carve out an individual existence, life can seem lonely, arduous, complex, a struggle, a ‘battle’ which we never seem to ‘win’. In separation we experience an eternal unrest that we attempt to assuage by indulging in all manner of desires that we say are ‘ours’, but these are illusory thoughts, pictures and dreams that are fed to us to keep us in the perpetual motion of chasing them to try and temporarily distract us from or relieve us of the eternal unsettlement that can never rest until we humbly surrender to our Soul.
Through the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna shows us that there is a way out of this separative existence and back to the divinity we innately are, and that the way lies within – renouncing our illusory and separative desires and surrendering to the whole we cannot but be part of. Krishna shows Arjuna that while in human form we cannot be completely free of creation (the collective ideals and beliefs that bind us to be individuals and not a one-unified Brotherhood); we can continually be a student of the Yoga of Renunciation and work towards letting go of our desires, of the false lure that creation has over us. This becomes possible through the Yoga of Action, where the mind and body are connected and act as one when we move in conscious presence, in accordance with our Soul.
Ultimately, the Yoga of Renunciation is the renunciation of Pranic energy, and the Yoga of Action is the alignment to Fire.
Arjuna’s inward resilience and strength is deeply illuminated when he understands who Krishna truly is via the sermons on the battlefield in the Gita. His own inner purpose shines forth when he renounces creation (his spirit, doubts, desires, thoughts, intentions) and surrenders to the Divine Plan, thus showing all of humanity that this can be done by absolute obedience and alignment to the evolutionary offering that is constantly being presented to all of us, all of the time.
By the end of the Bhagavad Gita’s sermons, Arjuna has arisen from his dilemma – arisen up and out of the shadows and into the light of awareness – and thus becomes a True Yogi (Universal Man) by the union of the Yoga of Action and the Yoga of Renunciation into the Yoga of Wisdom.
Through the ageless teachings of the Gita we can develop an awareness of energy and life, and a knowing of how we can be in life in our purest essence.
The truth of Krishna’s teachings
The Bhagavad Gita is the story of a great battle, but through it we learn that the ‘great battle’ is the ultimate illusion, for in truth there is no fight at all. The constant battle that we think we have to fight is an internal one, a self-created picture that we choose to indulge in, led by the ‘free will’ of our spirit.
Krishna’s teachings reveal that the epic battle between the Light and the dark only exists because we create it so; that the darkness, or creation, or life as we know it here on Earth, is created by us, fed by us, perpetuated by all of us to keep us in constant motion and away from the Divine stillness that lies within.
Krishna’s expression and teachings offer humanity the opportunity to symbolically reflect on the battle of dark versus Light, only to reveal that it is in fact never truly a battle, nor a fight, but that true self-salvation is merely and simply a surrender to the stillness that already lives within you.
These teachings offer healing for the world of a very dark age-old picture that keeps most, if not almost all, very misguided and on the never ending merry-go-round – that is, that life is a battle – for if there is ever a battle within you, then there will never be true rest, never a true surrender and therefore never a true confirmation of the Universal Truth and the fact that the knowing of all that you truly are, a Son of God, already lives within you.
Detaching from the lie (picture) of the battle, one will recognise that it is indeed only the choice of free will to subscribe to the picture that it is a battle that in fact creates the battle. The fight is an internal one, of the spirit choosing to live in the illusion of separation to the Soul, and in the end the battle is nothing more than a symbol of the unrest or lack of surrender that the spirit, and controlled son of man, accepts as reality.
Krishna specifically teaches that there is in truth no battle, no fight to win, that it is about letting go of the picture that it is a battle, and to seek the only true choice there is that leads you back to your Soul and God, true self-salvation, that is, the choice to truly surrender to your Soul, which brings a confirmation of all that you are, for all that you are lives forever within, and in this place you know that the battle does not truly exist at all, but that you are already everything that you thought you desired.
Filed under
