Gita for Youth - Yoga of Universal Form (Viswaroopa Darsan Yoga) - Cause of Destruction

Universal Form and Universal Destruction

Arjuna asked, “Kindly tell me who You are. I bow to You, oh Lord, have mercy. I wish to know You in its entirety. I do not know Your nature.”

The devotee has finally seen the terrible form, the form which is seen by only a privileged few and understood by fewer. Duryadhana had seen this form before the start of the war when he tried to imprison Krishna. However, he was not a devotee and he merely thought it to be some kind of illusion created by a mortal named Krishna who had come as a representative of Pandavas, his arch enemies. But with Arjuna it is different. He is friend, disciple and devotee, all molded into one. He believes the form he sees to be that of the Universal Lord. He sees with his own eyes that the entire world rests in Krishna. Wrong, He infact is the entire world and much more. He creates, He preserves and He destroys. In Him rests all beings, from lowest and crudest animal forms to the highest divinities like Brahma. That terrible form does not have any beginning or end. It has covered all directions. It has so many limbs, bodies and faces. It is He who has become this Universe and Himself remains in it, like a spider who has brought forward the web and rests in it. In Him Arjuna sees the results of the bloody war that he is going to fight and the fate of the mankind. Verily, that terrifying form is destruction personified. His great power scorches the Universe. His terrible teeth know no mercy. Who is He? He does not gel well with a devotee’s concept of an all merciful Lord.

Sri Krishna answers, “I am that all devouring eternal Time. I am engaged in annihilation. Even if you do not fight, nobody will survive (this war). All the warriors will be destroyed. Therefore, arise, win your fame and victory, enjoy the fruits of that victory in the form of a great and prosperous kingdom (enjoy while it lasts). All these are already killed by Me and Me alone. Oh Savyasacin, you merely become My instrument. Bhisma, Drona, Jayadhratha, Karna and others (whom you are going to fight), have already been slaughtered by Me. Fight the battle and win over them, do not be weak.”

Time has chosen this great battle of Kurukshetra to claim a host of victims. The great powers which had made the world tremble by their arrogance, violent acts, hatreds, enmities, blood feuds, lust and greed, corruption and thirst for more power, are to be destroyed. Whenever virtue subsides and vices reign supreme, the Time wields its sword and a great phenomenon appears on the world stage, one who becomes the harbinger of a new ideal and brings forth a new message of hope, one who brings in His wake large scale annihilation to establish dharma, to protect the devotees. That force drove the last nail in the coffin for Brahmin orthodoxy when sacrificial rites and wanton killings were all that were left of Vedic religion. Buddhism consisting of four noble truths and eightfold paths and the peace and bliss of Tripitaka swept North India and most of Asia. That force destroyed the Romans and drove the Jews to isolation for thousands of years when the son of man was crucified. That force drove Buddhists away from India and reestablished the great and pure ideology of Sanatana Dharma on the basis of Puranas on the one hand and Advaita Vedanta on the other and set up the monastic order, when what had remained of Buddhism was meaningless barbaric rituals and customs borrowed from the tribals and the alien races beyond the Himalayas. That force stopped the great Muslims in their bid to convert the whole of India into Islam, by unleashing the power of Bhakti or devotion on the masses, by embracing the lowly and outcastes into its loving fold, and brought down the mighty Islamic empire and its associated orthodoxy to its knees. That same force battled a far more formidable enemy consisting of a rejuvenated Europe, its scholars and intellectuals, its scientific dogmas, its Christian Missionaries and its absolute ridicule of anything Oriental, and presented magnanimously the grandest universal idealism of Vedanta and universal harmony to an astounded world, in its wake leaving behind two world wars and a shattered European imperialism. It reached the pinnacle of glory in living through five thousand years of India's spiritual life in just a few years and reestablished the grandest ideals of renunciation and love .

That same force is now working in Kurukshetra, slowly and silently. The fates of the warriors are sealed. Whether Arjuna battles or not, it does not matter to that force. It has chosen the end result; it merely searches for an instrument to accomplish the same. If Arjuna dithers on account of his weakness, it will look for another agent. Therefore it is upto Arjuna to become that agent and earn fame and righteous victory for himself and for his brothers who have been wronged by inimical forces. Blood relations, non violence, compassion etc. have no place here because destruction is a natural law. The accumulated fruits of actions of these warriors will bring their own destruction by Time, Arjuna is not the cause of this destruction and therefore he does not have to bear the consequences.

An explanation here: There are many objections to Bhagavat Gita from the scholars on account of this message of asking to fight a battle in which many will be destroyed. To some, it glorifies violence over mercy etc. and is therefore abhorrent. To others, it does not preach love and compassion, and is therefore devoid of a great spiritual message. Still others find Arjuna’s initial stand to be superior to Sri Krishna’s message, i.e. under such a condition it’s better to relinquish the claims to the throne than to fight as fighting means intention to kill which is not religion.

In the first place, Arjuna’s initial position is not that of compassion or kindness but of pity and weakness. He decided not to fight not on account of a love for humanity as a Buddha would have probably done, but out of fear of the consequences of fighting. If fighting evil is unwarranted, then many more innocent people would be killed in the hands of demoniac forces. This has been repeatedly proved in history, the most recent example being that of the Second World War and the extermination of the innocent Jews. Many innocent persons could have been saved if somebody could have conquered and killed Timur. The path of dharma, as claimed in Gita, is indeed perilous. But it is suffice to say that dharma is what vahujana hitaya - i.e. what is good to a majority. If for protecting innocents and destroying evil forces a war has to be fought, even a Buddha would have supported that war wholeheartedly.

That is why ancient Indians demarcated between a Dharma Yuddha – battle for the sake of virtue and Adharma Yudhya – battle for pride and supremacy. This battle which is being fought by Arjuna is for the sake of establishment of virtue, for avenging injustice and wrong doings. Unless this is fought, it would set a very wrong precedence in the history. It is the duty of the Kshatriyas to punish misdeeds. If misdeeds go unpunished it will lead to a complete collapse of law and order and crime will flourish.

Secondly, everyone should follow their own duty; otherwise there will be social chaos. If kshatriyas do not fight how will good people be protected? It is the duty of the king to fight against invading enemies in order to protect his subjects. So violence is necessary. Only a Sannyasin, one who has renounced everything, will not have any duty. Others are duty bound. 

Thirdly, destruction and death are natural consequences of life. If one is born, one has to die. War is just a cause of destruction. The all destroying time does not exempt anybody. When destruction is inevitable what is there to grieve esp. when one is fighting for a just cause? Only cowards would step back from fighting for a just cause. Looking from the aspect of Gita, if we are Atman – the immortal, eternal, unborn, undecaying, and not merely bodies with which we identify ourselves, there is no killing, nor is anybody getting killed. Only the bodies are getting destroyed, the Atman cannot be destroyed.

Fourthly, any work done in a detached spirit, i.e. unselfish manner, does not bind anybody. This means that if one works with the true knowledge that one is not the doer but merely an instrument, one is not chained by the consequence of the action. Detachment is the cause of liberation; attachment is the cause of bondage. Therefore if the war is fought in a detached spirit, it is merely a surrender to the divine will. If the divine will is destruction, so be it. New order cannot be created unless the old order is destroyed and therefore history has repeatedly shown that great destruction and carnage often resulted in great blessings for the future mankind. The outcome of the Kalinga war was the death of a hundred thousand but the birth of a great emperor Ashoka who put Buddhism on a firm footing around the world. Unless weeds are uprooted one cannot plant green foliage in their place. The divine will can also be realized through a total surrender, if detachment is not possible.

But then anybody can kill anybody else and justify the killing. Fundamentalists can call others evil and destroy them. What is the way to differentiate between one who is a true follower of Gita and one who is a hypocrite? The answer is simple. Those who are killing others by citing Gita, just go and try to kill them or their near and dear ones. All their pretenses will fall. They will be mortally afraid and will try to protect themselves and their family from being destroyed. Fundamentalists are cowards as they kill innocent men. They try to escape the consequences and a few greater cowards among them commit suicide in order to reap a great reward in heaven by killing infidels. A true follower of Gita will be equally unperturbed when he himself or his near and dear ones are getting destroyed and will not have any desire like reaping the fruits in an afterlife. When Yadavas were killing themselves mercilessly in a civil war, Sri Krishna was  a mute spectator. Nor was he ever disturbed when his own nephew Abhimanyu was killed in Mahabharata war.