Our global situation today is fraught with turbulence unseen by a generation since WW2. Nothing is certain and we are all in emergency mode. Still we carry on under the new dispensation but the general direction is downward. Life could be hanging on a thread. Therefore even more the time to focus on the end game and our transcendence. Not so much how do we leave our bodies at the moment of death, but how do we live in our bodies to their best capability in the spiritual journey of consciousness in the here and now.
A classic answer to the existential questions in life like, “What to do?” can be found in the old texts from millennia ago because the same questions have to be asked by all rational people in there own time for as long as humanity exists. So it’s the same question and the answer is also the same, which is what is meant by absolute truth, as opposed to relative truths. One classic text is Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna also asks the most existential questions at his most crucial hour, the day that he had to go to war for the survival of his world.
Our world looks like a battlefield today too, and it always will be in a sense for the fallen conditioned soul here in the material world. So we soldier on, like Arjuna. And when he asked Krishna what to do, Krishna told him – karma. Chapter three of Bhagavad Gita, called Karma Yoga, is where Arjuna has presented his anxiety about having to engage with the world, and wanting to retreat to the forest to meditate in stillness. Now, sitting for hours in stillness has its place, but it is not our best use of our rare and short valuable human form of life.
Krishna says in chapter 3:8
niyataṁ kuru karma tvaṁ
karma jyāyo hy akarmaṇaḥ
śarīra-yātrāpi ca te
na prasiddhyed akarmaṇaḥ
niyatam—prescribed; kuru—do; karma—duties; tvam—you; karma—work; jyāyaḥ—better; hi—than; akarmaṇaḥ—without work; śarīra—bodily; yātrā—maintenance; api—even; ca—also; te—your; na—never; prasiddhyet—effected; akarmaṇaḥ—without work.
“Perform your prescribed duty, for action is better than inaction. A man cannot even maintain his physical body without work.”
(Translation by Swami A.C Bhaktivedanta)
In other words, as he said in the previous verses, it’s not by doing nothing that you will gain transcendence. Every single person is driven to be active, as every one is driven by an active spirit soul or consciousness. Consciousness is active. We are by nature active.
Krishna told Arjuna not to try to go the renounced path of heading to the forest for meditation. He told him to do what he was born to do, and in this case it was defend his freedom and liberty and very kingdom from being overrun by an evil usurper to the control of the reigns of destiny and the levers of power. It happens still today, that we are watching our world being grappled over by powers known and unknown on the world stage as we sit in a kind of limbo under lockdown for over 100 days now.
Reality is for us what it was for Arjuna. It is a battlefield. So the answer to us is the same as it was to Arjuna, it is – act. Work, do your thing. Get up and become intensely convinced of what you wish to accomplish because every ounce of energy invested will be as an offering of service to the higher good of consciousness and all involved. We can talk about how to label consciousness another time, but here the point is that our mission today is to get up from a life of meditational retreat and self-isolation and to engage in pushing back at the gradual invasion of our attempt at attaining the absolute truth, theoretically as well as in realization. Without a theoretical model, how will we know what to aspire for?
To conclude, I call upon us all to seize the moment and see its value, see the value of your time as it ebbs away by the minute. See the value of your education if you are English speaking, computer literate and have access to the right educational knowledge. And then act. Make the right use of these skills to make a change in the world, first in your own mind and then in as many as you can through all the channels you can, to affect positively the world around you. Begin by changing the inner perspective of reality and then also act to make concerted efforts to uplift the consciousness of your world. Fight your fight on your personal front. I am fighting mine here on the written front, and the spoken word too of course. It is with my words that I plant bombs of information for all to share so that they may be uplifted. Whatever your reach, claim that the truth be told, relative and absolute, for truth, is the very last of the four legs of dharma or civilized humanity being eroded more than ever today, according to the current historic era as mentioned in the Vedas. Seek the truth, it is eternal and ever present and ever fresh. It explains everything.
Veda Ref: https://prabhupadabooks.com/
(image pixabay)