Arjuna's dejection was a case of finely disguised egoism. He was a hero until he came to the battlefield and became a coward. It was all about 'I and Mine'; "I will go to hell, I would rather beg, I will not fight my uncle, my Guru, my cousin, etc." 'I and mine' are two poison fangs; they have to be removed to make you harmless.
Krishna counselled Arjuna: "You are not killing, so don't be conceited, they are deathless; the death sentence on their bodies has already been pronounced and you are merely executing God's will!"
Krishna made Arjuna aware of himself and removed his delusions. Arjuna realized that he was but an instrument in the hands of the Lord.
You too must learn from that lesson, for otherwise, there will be no end to your misery. Always pray Thamaso maa jyothirgamaya - Lead me from darkness to light. Egoism is darkness (thamas); Surrender (Sharanagathi) is light.
Baba (thought for the day)
I remember that he explained that Arjuna was feeling bad, because of his noble feelings, nobody likes to fight against family and friends and teachers... Yogis are our friends, parents and teacher are on the level of God, nobody would just do his duty if it means to kill them... without second thoughts.
But it is about hidden ego and wrong identification. We have to get aware of the wrong identification, the hidden ego, because it is hidden.
We cannot get aware of it if we don't question it and in the Bhagavad Gita the hidden ego comes up.
What Krishna tells him in his teaching is that he is not the doer, that he cannot control that war, it is not Arjuna's mistake, but the others, they began with the war and he has to fight to not be seen as coward.
(If we meet someone who kills and tells us that he had to and that God told him that they were sentenced to death by him, and that he doesn't kill, we will end up in a mental institution and prison and be criminals.)
We can therefore not take that literally, but we have to translate it, we have to understand it right.
You too must learn from that lesson, for otherwise, there will be no end to your misery. Always pray Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya - Lead me from darkness to light. Egoism is darkness (tamas); Surrender (Sharanagathi) is light.
Probably we don't know the Bhagavad Gita good enough to understand it and we don't know the teaching and the background of Dharma good enough to be sure that we understand it right. We have to do our duty.
And we have to learn from that lesson, because otherwise there is no end to our misery...
What does he tell us by that?
We are instruments in the hands of the Lord, don't expect a result, if it is good or bad, it is him the doer.
If we don't understand it right, there is no light, but darkness.
There are all different shades of understanding, we might think we understand it, but we don't and therefore, it results in Tamas, ignorance.
What can we do about it if we don't understand it? We cannot understand it, because it is He, not I. Surrender means, 'we' are He and who is 'we'? Who is 'we' in the case of Arjuna? He cannot think it is his family as 'we', because he has to fight against his own family. 'We' is in that case Krishna and Arjuna and his closed family, the Pandavas. Baba said during Krishna's time the demons lived in the same family and today in the same body.
Surrender is light and egoism is darkness. Therefore, we surrender, but still there is that need for discrimination first.
It is still not that easy, because Tamas is upside down, it will make us believe that we surrender and it is ego anyhow and self-deception.
It needs right understanding and discrimination to know the difference. Discrimination is the first step. The second is to integrate it in our own life and the third it to go on no matter what obstacles we will meet on the way.
How do we get the right discrimination?
That was just the problem with Arjuna, he had to fight his own family and he didn't want to fight them, because he knew them.
It is about discrimination, afterwards, he was able to fight.
And that is the teaching, first discrimination. Lead us from darkness to light.
Second step it has to be realized in our own life. Usually I take examples of my own life to integrate it and third step is to go on no matter what obstacles are there. That is Tapas, spiritual work.
In my life before I knew Baba I was into TM and it was the opposite, no problem, just meditate, the problem was, it was not real. Afterwards, because of the feeling 'it cannot be understood' there seemed first lots of problems, but finally we find a hidden ego game.
My family are no yogis, they have just been very normal people focused on the mind. But something felt wrong, because there was no support, no understanding. That we were let down by them I realized only because Baba said so in my dream. As he tells me that in the dream and that is a wake-up call, therefore, I have to think about it and in writing it down I get closer to it.
Behind I begin to recognize my mother, as she had been and how she really was.
There was a time I felt not understood, afterwards I realized it was not possible, but still I never had that insight about her as I get it in following the inner view. An inner view is not just understood, it is a light, it is there to wake us and we don't get awake if we ignore it, we have to do something about it to understand it, that is the third step, going on no matter what obstacles are present. Seen in that light there is light and shadow and we have to see both.
Lead us from darkness to light.
After Baba said in my case that I was let down, I begin to see it in that light and recognize why attachment, why pride and how it was experienced and by that we see our life in a different light, it is about light.
It is the feeling that it is the same like in the Bhagavad Gita, only we don't have that close family as Arjuna did. When Baba left the body, we went down a well and there was hardly any water left, it shows that he would leave the body and we went up the well in the dream again and he dropped the body on the way and it fell into dust. We still went up and on the top of the well was Krishna and his brother, I guess that was Arjuna. If we want to understand that teaching we have to see it in our own life to understand the lesson. If the Bhagavad Gita is just a book for us, it is too theoretical and far away to be a lesson.
To realize the truth is love.
It doesn't mean we don't like the family because we get aware of the mind, it is the opposite in realizing it, there is love in that realization, it has to do with truth and insight and reality. Behind is the divine will as light, overshadowed by clouds and a mind game. It leads us from darkness to light and makes us free.
Divine love realized not 'as feeling', but as reflection of the higher self, it is part of the light and it is in the nature of our being that we love the light and not darkness.
To understand the lesson we have to discriminate and integrate it in our own life and go on no matter what obstacles are present to be able to learn that lesson and without learning that lessen the misery will never end.
Therefore, we have to learn the lesson, we have to surrender to get free from misery and we have to use discrimination to know how to surrender. It is all about discrimination. As he tells us - surrender is light - ego is darkness.
Lead us from darkness to light! Discrimination first, after surrender and go on no matter what obstacles are coming up!
In the light of divinity we find an ocean of Light and it is an universe of Love. It is reflection, it is the cognized reality of our own higher self and the reaction of our feeling is - love only, love is all there is.
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