Page 8 - All India Magazine Oct-2019

Fitness to receive the Gita
Arjuna, the friend of Krishna, is the principal actor in the
Mahabharata; in the Gita the teaching about the yoga of works is
the primary teaching. Knowledge, devotion and works, these three
paths are not mutually contradictory. In the path of works, to do
works founded on knowledge and in the power given by devotion,
to act for the purpose of God, at His bidding and in union with Him,
this is the teaching of the Gita. Those who are frightened by the
sorrows of the world, tormented by the distaste for life, vairDgya,
those who have lost interest in this play of God, are desirous of
hiding themselves in the lap of Infinity and leave this play, theirs
is a different path. No such feeling or desire was there in Arjuna,
the mighty warrior and the bravest of heroic men. Sri Krishna has
not revealed this supreme secret to a quiet ascetic or wise philoso-
pher, has not elected any Brahmin vowed to non-violence as the
recipient of this teaching; a Kshatriya warrior of tremendous might
and prowess was considered to be the fit receptacle for obtaining
this incomparable knowledge. He alone is capable of entry into the
deepest secrets of this teaching who can remain undisturbed by
victories or defeats in the battle of life. This Self is not to be won
by one who lacks in strength: nDyam-DtmD balahnnena labhyaU. He
alone who cherishes an aspiration to find God in preference to a
desire for liberation, mumukIutva, can have a taste of the proximity
of God, realise himself as eternally free in his true nature, and will be
capable of rejecting the desire for liberation as being the last resort
of the Ignorance. He alone is capable of passing beyond the modes
of Nature, gunDtnta, who after rejecting the tamasic and rajasic forms
of egoism is unwilling to remain bound even by an egoism of the
sattwic type. Arjuna has fulfilled his rajasic propensities by following
the law of the Kshatriya, and has, at the same time, given the power
of rajas a turn towards sattva, by accepting the sattwic ideal. Such a
person is an excellent receptacle for the Gita's teaching…. CWSA 9:99

8 All India Magazine, Oct. 2019