The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan
CHAPTER 11
The Lord's Transfiguration
The numinous idea of the predestinating and solely acting God which induces in us the feeling of the utter dependence on God, the "wholly other" standing over against us in absolute anti-thesis, is here expressed. The intense intuition of the power of God comes out here and in job and in Paul: "Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, why hasty thou made me thus?" We need not look upon the whole cosmic process as nothing more than the unfolding of a predetermined plan, the unveiling of a ready-made scenario. The writer here is not so much denying the unforeseeableness of human acts as affirming the meaning of eternity in which all the moments of the whole of time, past, present and future, are present to the Divine Spirit. The radical novelty of each moment of evolution in time is not inconsistent with Divine Eternity. The ideas of God are worked out through human instrumentality. If we are wise, we so act that we are instruments in His hands. We allow Him to absorb our soul and leave no trace of the ego. We must receive His command and do His will with the cry "In thy will is our peace" ; "Father, into Thy hands I commend my Spirit.[1] Arjuna should feel, "Nothing exists save Thy will. Thou alone art the doer and I am only the instrument." The dread horror of the war repels him. Judged by human standards, it is quite incomprehensible but when the curtain is lifted, so as to reveal the purpose of the Almighty, he acquiesces in it. What he himself desired, what he might hope to gain in this world or the next do not count any more. Behind this world of space-time, interpenetrating it, is the creative purpose of God. We must understand that supreme design and be content to serve it. Every act is a symbol of something far beyond itself. 34. dronam ca bhismam ca jayadratham ca |
References and Context
- ↑ Luke xxiii, 46.