OF ALL THE DECEPTIVE GAMES I AM THE DICE-PLAY — The Geeta contains the discourses given to Arjuna, (the royal warrior, a Prince of that time) by Krishna, in a great missionary spirit, to help the Prince to re-discover the vitality of his own religion — Hinduism. The attempt of the Geeta is, therefore, to re-orient the Hindus about Hinduism. A missionary cannot bring about this re-orientation successfully, unless the spirit of our scriptures is explained to the common folk in their own language. To Arjuna, the example given here is the most striking. For, his entire life had been a series of tragedies which he had to suffer because of his elder brother’s irresistible weakness to play the dice. No other example would have delivered the goods to Arjuna as efficiently as this one.
To modern students, this may not strike as very effective since dice is not a game very popular with us just now. But the substitutes are very easily recognised.
SPLENDOUR IN THE SPLENDID AM I — At the same time, a seeker, who is ready to make use of this portion for meditation as it should be, will easily understand that the Shastra has said almost nothing. The splendour in a splendid object has not the qualities of the object from which the shine comes out. The splendour, in itself, has no qualities even — it is merely AN EXPERIENCE. To facilitate that “experience,” the mind borrows the light to illumine the magnitude and the glory of the object, but the splendour itself has nothing to do with the ingredients or constituents that together give rise to the experience of the splendour in our bosom. In short, as Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa once said, “Truth, no doubt, is Light, but it is ‘light’ without its properties.”
I AM VICTORY; I AM EFFORT, I AM THE GOODNESS IN THE GOOD — As explained above, here also it is these qualities, nay, the “experiences” lived in the presence of these qualities, that gives us an occasion to live the Self. These qualities connote a certain mental condition created by the very special type of its thought-vibrations. When these are sustained for a long period, the bosom becomes quiet and still. The reflected glory of Awareness becomes, in such a bosom, almost as glorious as the Reality and, therefore, as we said earlier, here too, by employing a transferred-epithet, THE VERY QUALITIES ARE DECLARED AS THE SELF.
We should not forget that these FIFTY-FOUR items of analogy, given in this chapter to indicate “THE ONE IN THE MANY” are all meant to be as many items of contemplation, to be meditated upon by all sincere seekers. This is not an OBJECTIVE narration and, as such, no true student of the Geeta can ever expect his education to be complete unless he understands the true meaning of these stanzas in his SUBJECTIVE experience.
STILL IF YOU NEED ELABORATION, ARJUNA, YOU MAY HAVE SOME MORE. LISTEN:
