The Bhagavad Gita – Lessons in Life from the Battlefield

The Bhagavad Gita – Lessons in Life from the Battlefield

[00:45] Song of God

Jai Guru Deva. Thank you for listening to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knoles, and today I’d like to spend some time talking to you about an ancient text that has been extant in India for, it’s rumored, 5,000 years, although It’s hard for us to really verify and validate the historicity of that, but in the popular mind of 1.3 billion Indians, the Bhagavad Gita, B-H-A-G-A-V-A-D, Bhagavad.

Bhagavad means Supreme Being or God, and Gita, G-I-T-A, Bhagavad Gita. Bhagavad Gita, song. Gita means a song. So the song of the supreme personified intelligence of the universe. And this particular way of describing this text has to do with it having been sung by a character by the name of Krishna.

Krishna, one of the most popular names that comes out of India, but to give this particular character some distinction we call him, in the Sanskrit language, Bhagavan Krishna. Bhagavan means Lord Krishna. Lord Krishna. So Lord Krishna.

Lord Krishna is expressive of the totality consciousness of universal awareness, that means aware of the totality of the unmanifest Unified Field, while simultaneously also being aware of the play and display of the manifest Unified Field. So totality of manifest and unmanifest all together in one consciousness.

Krishna, the word Krishna in Sanskrit means super blue. By super we don’t mean, you know, the way that we’ve watered down the word super in our English language. Super properly means beyond. That is to say a level of blueness that is beyond indigo, the darkest kind of blue.

And the reason why Krishna is given that name is because during the practice of Vedic Meditation as the mind settles into ever subtler layers of the thinking process going to the subtlest layer and then transcending this, moving into The Absolute, unmanifest consciousness. This is a common experience during the practice of Vedic Meditation.

Sometimes, one might have a visual experience of the approach to The Absolute, where one experiences the surface of The Absolute, as one is moving into it, as this indigo blue color. And so the name for that in Sanskrit is the word Krishna.

Krishna, K-R-I-S-H-N-A. Krishna. Krishna. Bhagavan Krishna is the name given in our consciousness play to the master who was the embodiment of that totality. Bhagavad Gita.

[04:46] The Mahabharata

Bhagavad Gita turns out to be the central chapters of an enormous epic. This epic is called the Mahabharata. Maha means great in Sanskrit. Bharata is the proper name for the country of India.

The colonial name for Bharata is the name India. The word India was an invention of the English during the time of British colonial rule of India which persisted from about 1757 up until around 1947 when India gained its independence. Prior to that, India was referred to as Bharat Varsha, Bharat Varsha, before the British renamed it India.

So Mahabharata, Great India. And Mahabharata, this wonderful, enormous epic. If you were to look at all 12 volumes of the Mahabharata, I’m looking at it on my bookcase right now. It’s about 18 inches from left to right of solid books, book bindings. Each of these books, somewhere between 400 and 600 pages. A long, long epic.

It has been shortened and abbreviated, abridged if you like, by a contemporary of mine, Ramesh Menon. Ramesh Menon, M-E-N-O-N, has done an abridged version of the Mahabharata in two volumes, each of which is somewhere on the order of six to eight hundred pages. And the central chapters of this book, Mahabharata, the Great India are the Bhagavad Gita which we’re going to examine in a moment.

It’s important to have all this backstory because I want my listeners to be rather expert when, in describing these texts and whatnot, if somebody raises it in question, “Do you know anything about the Bhagavad Gita?” You can say, “Yes, the central chapters of the Mahabharata.” So I’m taking a professorial approach with you, my listeners.

[07:21] Veda Vyasa

So then, Bhagavad Gita, the Song of God, under what circumstances did the Song of God occur? And so we have to come back to the consciousness play. The consciousness play was the product of a spoken, legendary retelling of certain events that occurred in Great India in Mahabharata some 5,000 years ago, spoken by the sage of enlightened vision, Veda Vyasa.

Veda, V-E-D-A. Veda, like the Vedic worldview. Veda. Vyasa, V-Y-A-S-A. Vyasa as he’s more commonly known in short form, Vyasa, is the author of some three quarters of all of Vedic literature. The Mahabharata, 18 other documents called Puranas, the Srimad Bhagavatam Mahapurana, another historic document, another consciousness play describing the play and display of creative intelligence at the subtlest level of consciousness.

Vyasa also is renowned as the author of the concept of Vedanta. Vedanta, V-E-D-A-N-T-A. Veda, anta. Veda is Veda. The Totality truth, Veda. Everything that needs to be understood about the total truth of everything, Veda.

And anta. Anta in Sanskrit means the end, as in conclusion. The final conclusion of the Veda, the Vedanta, was described by Vyasa in a document known as the Sutras of Brahman. Sutras are aphorisms of Brahman. Brahman is Totality consciousness. The sutras, the aphorisms of Totality consciousness. Brahma Sutras.

And this is the document that describes in detail how we arrive at the conclusion that although there appear to be many things, many forms, many phenomena and time sequences, in fact, these are all simply the play and display of the one indivisible, whole consciousness field. If you like, the undulating waves that are seen on the surface of the body of oceanic consciousness. So, ocean is one, but it plays and displays itself as many. Many waves.

[10:27] The Kurus

So let’s get back to Bhagavad Gita, Song of God.

In our consciousness play, there are two families, the Kaurava and the K-A-U-R-A-V-A, Kaurava, where we get our English word, the etymology of our English word coward comes from Kaurava. And the Kaurava and the Pandava, P-A-N-D-A-V-A, the Kaurava and Pandava, these are two separate sets of cousins of one family. The one family.

And this one family is known as the Kurus. K-U-R-U, Kuru. The Kurus had two large branches of the one family, the Kaurava and the Pandava. And the Pandava are cast, in our consciousness play of Bhagavad Gita, they are cast as the good guys, the ones who know how to live life in accordance with natural laws. The ones whose lives are the epitome of natural law.

Five brothers. These five brothers in this particular story headed up by the third to be born of them, in the birth order, Arjuna. Arjuna is considered in the Bhagavad Gita to be half human and half Deva. A human mother and a father who was the expression of natural law known as Indra.

Indra was the father of Arjuna, and Kunti was the mother of Arjuna, and that mother bore four other sons besides Arjuna. The Kaurava, Kaurava are the members of the family who are shortsighted. They don’t have the longevity of vision that the Pandava have and therefore they are happy to, in order for them to have self aggrandizement and for them to have what they want, without much regard for the long-term effects of getting what they want, where the means are justified by the ends.

That is to say that you want a particular experience and the getting of it may violate laws of Nature and cut right across the interests of others, but you don’t care because you want to get the experience that you want to get and to have it and the concept of sustainability is not present. So that would be an overall description of the behavior of this mob of cousins, known as the Kaurava, who, through one deceitful act after another had usurped the right to rule the kingdom of India.

[14:02] A Battlefield at Kurukshetra

India in those days was a kingdom with a high king and many vassal kings, kings and queens mind you, who were vassal to the high king of the country. And one of the members of the Kaurava had usurped the position of being high king, and this really was an unsustainable position which was viewed as unsustainable by the Pandava and many, many members of Indian society of the time, 5,000 years ago.

And so what happened, long story short, was when diplomatic relations broke down and there was no other possibility except war, then there was a gathering on a battlefield known as Kurukshetra. Kurukshetra lies about 80 miles to the northwest of the modern city of New Delhi in India.

And a great gathering of armies occurred. On the one hand the army of the Kaurava, which, interestingly, because it’s a division of one family, had in this army many members, uncles and archery teachers and martial arts instructors and so on, who had instructed and had been involved in the upbringing of the youth of the Kaurava and the youth of the Pandava so that the Pandava brothers, Arjuna and his four brothers and many members of their retinue, gathering on the battlefield, were looking across the no-man’s land, which is about one mile in width, the no-man’s land.

On one side, millions of members of an army of the Kaurava were assembled. The cousins of the Pandava and all of their cohorts, and on the other side of the no-man’s land with a mile in between them, the Pandava and their army also consisting of millions, slightly fewer millions, but millions nonetheless, single-digit millions. Kaurava, Pandava, gathered on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, ready to fight and eager to fight.

[16:46] A Deal with Krishna

The character Krishna, Lord Krishna, our embodiment of Totality consciousness. Krishna happens to be a second cousin of both sides of the fight.. At the beginning of the battle, Krishna goes to the generals of each side, Arjuna on one side and his cousin Duryodhana, the head of the Kaurava, and he says to his two cousins, “One of you may have my army, my army of 10,000 archers who are extremely well trained and they’ll do anything I tell them, including, if I tell them, to do battle with me, they’re so loyal to me, they’ll do whatever I ask.

“One of you can have my army. I personally won’t fight because I’m a cousin to each of the two of you. The other of you can have me, but not as a combatant. It’s not fair because I possess extraordinary human capabilities that would make it impossible for you to defeat me. I could single handedly take on one entire army and defeat it.

“And so I pledge here and now not to fight, however, I will personally go with whomever of you chooses me, as opposed to choosing my army, and I will be your charioteer. And so I will drive your war chariot for one of you, one of you two generals, and the other of you may have my army. And so who would like what?”

And the Kaurava master, general, Duryodhana, immediately says, “I’ll take the army.” And of course, that was the expedient choice, and Arjuna was very satisfied with this answer, the general of the Pandava, and he says, “I’ll take you, Krishna, as my charioteer,” and in parentheses, we can also think, my advisor. So, Arjuna had, as his advisor, Krishna.

[19:05] Arjuna – The Invincible Archer

And the scene is set. The two armies opposite each other with a broad no-man’s land between them, a few loose arrows already beginning to fly, and the war conches—a conch is a seashell that, if opened at one end, can be blown as a horn—the conches are winded.

Those of you who know more ancient English language, when you blow on a conch, you don’t blow the conch, you wind the conch. And why do we call it winding? It’s not the word wind, which is spelled exactly the same way. W-I-N-D. It is winding, because when the air is released into a conch, the conch shell has spiral flutings in it, and the breath that comes out of you goes round in a spiral and this is referred to as winding.

The conches had been wound, indicating the beginning of the war. Arjuna says to his charioteer, Lord Krishna, “Please take me out into the battle into the middle of the no-man’s land and ride up and down so I can gaze at the opposite side and remind myself of whom it is I wish to fight.”

And he has in his hand his mighty bow. Arjuna is considered to be, in that era, an invincible archery warrior. Someone who has the capacity in our consciousness play to single-handedly and successfully engage 10,000 members of an opposite army, just him alone. Arjuna, a mighty archer, a maharathi. Maharathi means an invincible archer.

[21:09] I Won’t Fight!

And out they go in the chariot into the no-man’s land and they’re rolling up and down with horses pulling the chariot and Krishna managing the horses and, as Arjuna gazes over at the other side, what does he see? Yes, his enemy, but because he’s a man of compassionate heart, Arjuna also sees cousins.

Arjuna also sees, to his astonishment, his own martial arts teacher. He sees his own archery teacher. He sees, on the other side, the potential for, If he engages this army, thousands upon thousands of deaths, the crying mothers, the sadness, all of the misery and depredations of the killing fields of wartime, and he asks Krishna to stop the chariot, and he looks at Krishna and he says, “I can’t do it.”

And he takes his mighty bow off of his shoulder where it was sitting, his mighty bow Gandiva, and he casts his bow onto the grass and says, “I won’t fight!” And he sits down despondent. And this is the commencement. of the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of God.

It was in our consciousness play, cited that Krishna did not ever speak just in a normal voice. Krishna, whenever he elocuted, whenever he spoke, he spoke in a sing-song voice. And he smilingly spoke and asked Arjuna, what was the obstacle to him fighting? And he reminds Arjuna that there’s a greater conundrum, that although it is admirable that Arjuna decides to be a pacifist in the moment, out in the middle of a no-man’s land in a battlefield with millions on each side, ready and eager to fight, that the war is going to go ahead anyway, even if Arjuna refuses personally to fight.

Arjuna says something akin to, “It’d be better for them to just come and take me and take my bow and break it and destroy me. Rather than me slaying one member of my family, my cousins, who are just living according to their state of consciousness.”

[24:03] The Despondency of Arjuna

Krishna says, “There’s something bigger than this involved here. If you don’t bring an end, if you don’t destroy their destructive power,” says Krishna, “then your cousins will debauch the entire Vedic civilization of India and it will be an end, not only of the civilization, but all of the knowledge that could go forward to future generations after generations, the karma of this action, that they’re going undoubtedly to take, this karma will not go to them alone, because they’re just acting according to their own restrictions of their consciousness state, as you’ve pointed out.

“The karma, Arjuna, will belong to you because you have the capacity to bring an end to them creating this debauchery of the civilization and the knowledge base. You alone have the ability to stop it. And if you choose not to, and they go ahead and debauch the kingdom, the karma, the fruits of this action, or non action in this case, will be laid at your door.”

Arjuna is even more confused now. A great conflict arises in his mind between the idea of his compassion for his wrongdoing cousins and for what is going to become of the whole civilization involving him personally making a decision that’s going to affect the interests of millions. Arjuna takes all of this into account and begins the process of what’s referred to as the despondency of Arjuna.

[26:07] Learning to Meditate on the Battlefield

In our story of Bhagavad Gita eventually, Krishna, after advising Arjuna on multiple occasions to fight and to engage the enemy to the best of his ability, Arjuna asks him, “How can I give myself the degree of non-attachment to be able to do this?”

Krishna answers, “You’ll have to become one with the Totality consciousness. You’ll have to stop being merely an individual and allow the Totality consciousness to operate through your individuality, because the balancing of the world of Nature here is relying upon you. If it’s only your individuality carrying it out, then everyone is doomed. But, if you can unite your individuality, with Universal consciousness, then your individuality will be carrying out an act in behalf of Totality, disallowing your cousins to make even more bad karma for themselves.

“And so now it’s time for you to learn how to step beyond thinking. It’s time for you to learn how to go beyond thought, and I’m going to teach you then, the practice of Nishkam Karma Yoga.” Nishkam Karma Yoga means the unity of individual mind with universal mind brought about through Nishkam Karma, hardly doing anything. Hardly doing anything. Doing almost nothing. Just with the faintest impulse of intention. 

And Krishna commences the process, right there and then, in a battlefield with roaring armies of millions on each side of the no-man’s land, commences the process of teaching Arjuna how to practice Vedic Meditation, and then begins a process of answering, after the meditation instruction, answering all of Arjuna’s remaining questions.

Bhagavad Gita, Song of Lord Krishna, Song of the embodiment of Totality consciousness, the Blue One. So this is the Song of God, the Consciousness Play, written by, authored by the sage of enlightened vision, Vyasa, set on a battlefield, 5,000 years ago in Kurukshetra, 80 miles northwest of New Delhi.

And one of the pivotal teachings of Vedic Meditation in the historic panoply of knowledge of ancient India, one of the pivotal teachings of Vedic Meditation, an environment in which no one would ever conceive of it being ideal to learn to meditate. You’re going to learn to meditate sitting on a chariot, a war chariot. out in the middle of a no-man’s land with two armies just prior to a precipitous war where thousands are going to die and right there and then you’re going to learn to meditate and practice it effectively, the greatest challenge.

[29:44] Transcend the Problem

So any of you who thought to yourselves, “Oh I’ve got a really busy life, you know, I’ve got kids I’ve got to take to school, and I’ve got a job I’ve got to do, and I’ve got meals to prepare, and I have stuff to do, and you know, I’ve worries and anxieties, and I don’t have time to meditate,” we can all remember the conditions under which Arjuna learned to meditate. Right at the commencement of one of the greatest, by greatest I mean most, difficult wars in recorded history, the Mahabharata War.

Mahabharata War is an historic event. There is debate about exactly when it occurred, but in the Guinness Book of Records it is listed as one of the largest gatherings of human beings in one place ever in recorded history. The gathering of millions on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, in aid of fighting.

But what came out of it was a teaching that went down generation after generation in the form of the words of Krishna teaching Arjuna Nishkam Karma Yoga, which is the Sanskrit way of saying Vedic Meditation, teaching him how to step beyond thought and what all the consequences of knowing how to step beyond thought.

Instead of trying to think your way out of problems, you transcend the problem and experience the underlying field of unboundedness, the consciousness state in which the concept of problem doesn’t exist.

[31:28] What Makes a War Story so Pivotal?

Very often I’m asked, why is it that Bhagavad Gita, which appears at first blush to simply be a war story, such a pivotal document in text, considered by billions of people, and I say billions literally, to be one of the seminal documents of spirituality. Why is it that Bhagavad Gita, set on a battlefield has become such a pivotal and seminal document?

I think that one of the most interesting ways of looking at this is the history of humanity is the history of war. Sadly, that has been the history of humanity. Since the dawn of history, what we have is a history of human beings having a look at what other human beings have, and wanting what those human beings have, not wanting those to have it, and wanting to take it.

And then the other human beings, seeing that coming, deciding, with varying degrees of success, to defend what it is that they have, and to defend their continued curation of whatever they have, it might be land, it might be resources, it might be anything, and to, ward off, and probably, as has happened so many thousands of times, do battle with whomever it is who considers them not to be worthy of having what they have.

This is the history of humanity and this history of humanity, which has gone on repeatedly century after century after century after century, the futility of attempting to gain and to be a culture that arises into a state of contentedness and fearlessness, by virtue of, either the defending of a certain landmass or a cultural base or resources, or the taking of those from others. The futility of all of this because what we’ve learned is that whether you maintain or whether you take, you’re still an unfulfilled society.

What we’ve seen in all of this is generation after generation and after generation of societies that are utterly unfulfilled. Whether they have had varying degrees of success at maintaining what they have or they have had varying degrees of success of taking it from other people, nobody is fulfilled. No society is fulfilled.

And so the methodology of warfare, which characterizes the behavior of human beings since time immemorial, appears to be the fruitless campaign, the futility campaign. And it causes us to contemplate, “What is it that this is all actually about? It’s natural for everyone to want to live in fulfillment, to live a life of fulfillment, but if I can’t have fulfillment, as I’ve seen generation after generation, either by attempting to maintain and defending, or by taking, neither of these appears to yield any fulfillment at all. If I can’t have fulfillment through that, where do I find it?”

[35:30] Fulfillment is a Consciousness State

Pivotal question and pivotal answer; fulfillment is not a bunch of things that you have possession or control over. Fulfillment cannot be ever experienced by acquisition of things. Fulfillment is a consciousness state.

And so in the pivotal story of yet another war, nothing all that unusual about the war part of the story of Bhagavad Gita, war is basically all that’s been happening. We might say, “Oh, there was a period of peace. It was 15 years in between World War One and World War Two. What about that?” Well, that was just preparation for the next war. Whatever it is we call peace is actually preparation for the next war.

And so world peace has never been experienced by humanity, and this drives us into a fundamental question: where do we find peace? We can’t find peace in acquisition. We can only find peace by allowing our individuality to experience its oneness, which is a layer deep inside of every human. To experience its oneness with Totality consciousness.

Someone who has the skill of being able to experience oneness of individuality with Totality consciousness, someone who possesses that skill is the only person who is going to live a life of fulfillment. Fulfillment is not based on defending existing acquisitions. or acquiring more, and this is palpably the case.

[37:26] The Ultimate Spiritual Experience

And so to set a spiritual teaching in the midst of a war is a very, very clever concept. Because, you know, if we were to set the spiritual teaching, someone goes off into the Shangri La, and there in the Shangri La, in the ideal environment, with perfect organic veggies, and perfect organic massages, and lovely, graceful music being played in the background, and happy people dancing all around.

And in that environment the master came to you and said, “Isn’t it lovely, this whole environment? The lovely, lovely, impossible environment,” which by the way doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, “and here you’re going to learn to meditate.”

It creates this artificial depiction that everybody has. You know, “in order for me successfully to learn how to experience deep inner fulfillment, I have to create an environment first. If I can’t create the environment, the ideal environment, how am I ever going to experience anything spiritual?”

Bhagavad Gita basically says, “Let’s do this right in the middle of a war. We’ll show you how to get into the ultimate spiritual experience. Let’s do it right in the middle of a war. Don’t try to create an ideal environment. In the midst of an absolute war. You can learn how to transcend.”

And so it is pointed, it’s pointed and it is poignant, a poignant depiction of spirituality gained in the midst of the most chaotic imaginable setting. 

And so then, there we have it. Bhagavad Gita.

[39:13] A Study Course with Thom

 Now, it is interesting that in September, along with Jamey Hood, who is by now the famous Initiator of Vedic Meditation. You know an Initiator means someone who can initiate others into the techniques of Vedic Meditation. So someone who is a master teacher.

Jamey Hood, who’s an Initiator, a master teacher of Vedic Meditation, and I will hold a three-day course to which you’ll have access in both live format, which will be the best because you’ll have live question-and-answer opportunities, but eventually it’ll be available in recorded format, on the Bhagavad Gita.

What we’re doing in September of this year, 2024, Jamey and I, we’re going to sit and have a conversation about Bhagavad Gita.

Jamey will ask me pointed questions. I’ll give the answers and we’ll engage in a conversation over Bhagavad Gita, which will turn it into a verse-by-verse examination. The first three days of this we’re going to conduct on the first six chapters— there are 18 chapters of Bhagavad Gita— we’re going to do a translation and commentary on the first six chapters of Bhagavad Gita in this three-day format.

And then at a later date, we’ll do the second six chapters of Bhagavad Gita, and then at a later date again, Jamey and I will have another three days on the final six chapters of Bhagavad Gita, covering in total the entire 18 chapters of Bhagavad Gita.

Bhagavad Gita again a reminder being the central chapters of the larger epic Mahabharata, all of which was a product of the mind, the Unity Consciousness mind of Veda Vyasa, the master of enlightened vision. Bhagavad Gita.

Jai Guru Deva.