SOME THOUGHTS ON THE BHAGAWAD GITA---7

July 16, 2009

Hari OmIn the Gita we find the Lord advising Arjuna to renounce his physical, emotional and intellectual estimates of his teacher and his grandsire(Bhishma) and, in fact, to renounce the whole battlefield problem and to re-evaluate the situation from his spiritual understanding. This subtle pyscho-physical shock treatment by the Lord does immense good to Arjuna. The Lord explains how men of true wisdom never feel miserable and never moan over things that are or for things that are no more. They understand that the outer world of objects is essentially finite and,

therefore,things in it must perish and be born again. Continuity of change is the nature of finitude and it is this change that we understand as death. To lament over change amounts to not understanding the nature of finitude. Continuity of the soul is emphatically brought in the Gita. Lord Krishna declares unequivocally that the embodies soul in everyone is set on a great journey in which it comes to identify itself with varied forms temporarily to gain fixed specimens of experience. He says neither Himself nor Arjuna nor the great kings and warriors who have assembled in both the armies have not come from nowhere and at their death and on their death do not become mere non-existant nothingness. The Spirit remaining the same, it gets itself seemingly conditioned by different body-equipments and comes to live through its self-ordained environments. Herein lies the conclusion of the Hindu philosophy

that gave the most satisfactory theory of Reincarnation. In India we have heard amazing stories of people remembering their earlier birth, the place where they lived, names pf parents and other relatives etc. etc. The Lord`s declaration that that none including Himself, Arjuna and the great Kings,even after their death on the battlefield,'shall cease to exist in future" is worth meditating upon.

G.Balasubramanian