Bhagavagd Gita - Session 34- Track 3413

All lower forms have to be destroyed. If the Reality is Brahma, if He is Vishnu, He is also Rudra. If He is the Creator and the Preserver, He is also the Destroyer and actually no creation comes out unless there is destruction earlier. Out of destruction creation arises, and even the destruction, even Rudra is actually Shiva, He Himself is the benign Lord. If He destroys, He destroys because He wants to create something better. What He has created is so far, ‘so far so good’. From the higher point of view it seems to be evil, therefore because He wants to move forward towards the ideal, therefore the evil is to be destroyed.

Dhritarashtra and Bhima and Bhishma and Karna and Drona and others, however great and mighty they may be, but at present they are stopping the evolution, they are sustaining a kingdom which is full of evil and injustice and oppression. A new kingdom with nobler motives has to be established, therefore this has to be destroyed and if the Lord is there, He destroys Himself, therefore it is His will. Because it is His will, He can now tell Arjuna: “you do it, even without you it will be done, but you attain to merit, become My instrument and therefore you will learn the Yoga of doing the will of the Divine.”

This is in sum and substance the fundamental teaching and the solution of the problem of Arjuna. Arjuna was thinking: “I am the doer, these are my people, I have to protect them at any cost.” And Arjuna describes what will be the cost if there are all killed : the whole society will be ruined; the women will go astray, kulakṣayaḥ kuladharmanaśaḥ (I, 39-41) all that was known, but the Lord wishes it, He has willed it because He wants to create completely new world. Therefore this world has to go. This is the will of the Lord, and therefore now Sri Krishna says: “you join your will with this will”: this is the solution of the problem.

Now, I shall read out to you two pages (three pages actually), where Sri Aurobindo explains this entire problem and the solution that you find in this chapter:

“The problem raised by the Gita and the solution it gives demand this character of the vision of the World- Spirit. It is the problem of a great struggle, ruin and massacre which has been brought about by the all-guiding Will and in which the eternal Avatar himself has descended as the charioteer of the protagonist in the battle. The seer of the vision is himself the protagonist, the representative of the battling soul of man who has to strike down tyrant and oppressive powers that stand in the path of his evolution and to establish and enjoy the kingdom of a higher right and nobler law of being. Perplexed by the terrible aspect of the catastrophe in which kindred smite at kindred, whole nations are to perish and society itself seems doomed to sink down in a pit of confusion and anarchy, he has shrunk back, refused the task of destiny and demanded of his divine Friend and Guide why he is appointed to so dreadful a work, kim karmaṇi ghore mām niyojayasi. He has been shown then how individually to rise above the apparent character of whatever work he may do, to see that Nature the executive force is the doer of the work, his natural being the instrument, God the master of Nature and of works to whom he must offer them without desire or egoistic choice as a sacrifice.”

(This is the first lesson: ‘to do the work without desire for the fruits of action’.)

“He has been shown too that the Divine who is above all these things and untouched by them, yet manifests himself in man and Nature and their action and that all is a movement in the cycles of this divine manifestation.”

(The Divine is himself the doer of all things is the second vision.)

“But now…” the third.

“But now when he is put face to face with the embodiment of this truth, he sees in it magnified by the image of the divine greatness this aspect of terror and destruction and is appalled and can hardly bear it. For why should it be thus that the All-spirit manifests himself in Nature? What is the significance of this creating and devouring flame that is mortal existence, this world-wide struggle, these constant disastrous revolutions, this labour and anguish and travail and perishing of creatures? He puts the ancient question and breathes the eternal prayer, “Declare to me who art thou that comest to us in this form of fierceness. I would know who art thou who wast from the beginning, for I know not the will of thy workings. Turn thy heart to grace.”