Bhagavadgita -Radhakrishnan 22

The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan

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INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
5. Krsna, the teacher


The teacher slowly guides his pupil to attain the status which he has, mama saidharmyam. The pupil, Arjuna, is the type of the struggling soul who has not yet received the saving truth. He is fighting with the forces of darkness, falsehood, limitation, and mortality which bar the way to the higher world. When his whole being is bewildered, when he does not know the valid law of action, he takes refuge in his higher self, typified as Krsna, the world teacher, jagadguru[1] and appeals for the grace of enlightenment. "I am thy disciple. Illumine my consciousness. Remove what is dark in me. Give me that which I have lost, a clear rule of action " The rider in the chariot of the body is Arjuna but the charioteer is Krsna, and me has to guide the journey. Every individual is a pupil, an aspirant for perfection, a seeker of God and if he seeks earnestly, with faith, God the goal becomes God the guide.

It is of little moment, so far as the validity of the teaching is concerned, whether the author is a figure of history or the very god descended into man, for the realities of spirit are the same pow as they were thousands of years ago and differences of race and nationality do not affect them. The essential thing is truth or significance; and the historical fact is nothing more than the image of it.[2]



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References and Context

  1. ↑ Cp. ajnanatimirandhasya jnananjana. alakayacaksur unmihtam yena tasmai .srigurave nantah.I bow to the divine teacher, who opens the eyes of one blinded by the disease of ignorance by means of the principle (collyrium) of knowledge.
  2. ↑ Cp. Spinoza : "It is not in the least needful for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh; but concerning that so-called eternal Son of God (de aeterno illo Dei filio), that is, God's eternal wisdom, which is manifested in all things, and chiefly in the mind of man, and most particularly in Christ Jesus, the case is far other-wise. For without this no man can arrive at a state of blessedness, inasmuch as nothing else can teach him what is true or false, what is good or evil." Thus Spinoza distinguishes between the historical Jesus and the ideal Christ. The divinity of Christ is a dogma that has grown in the Christian conscience. Christological doctrine is the theological explanation of the historic fact. Loisy observes: "The Resurrection of Jesus was not the last step of His terrestrial career, the last act of His ministry amongst men, but the first article of the faith of the Apostles and the spiritual foundation of Christianity." Maude Petre, Loisy (1944), pp. 65-66.