Gita 18.59 Ego means to think that we know better than God

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna this is Krishna speaking the Bhagavad Gita 18.59 and he is telling Arjuna the results of acting in defiance of transcendence in defiance of Krishna’s instruction if one takes shelter of one’s ego instead of taking shelter of Krishna and he says I will not fight Krishna has repeatedly urged Arjuna to fight he has given multiple forms of reasoning to persuade him to fight but if Arjuna says I will not fight mithya means false, illusion vyavasaya is determination your determination will be misdirected material nature will engage you it’s interesting now the soul is transcendental but the soul presently is under material nature and being under material nature the soul goes through various situations not knowing that it is being dragged here there and everywhere we are dragged by the urge to eat, by the urge to sleep by the urge to do various things and as we keep moving around doing these various things what we observe is that our conditionings keep going along with us and they keep getting stronger so ego is to think that we are free when we are actually bound when we have so many desires which drag us here there and everywhere Krishna says in 16.12 that we are bound by hundreds of desires some people are physically bound some people are bound psychologically in a way that is visible that is understandable say in the case of people who are addicted but we all are bound in our own ways so we are all bound because we have a particular bodily machine and that functions in particular ways so ego is to think when we are free when we are actually bound and thus to keep acting in bondage and making our situation worse so prakriti sthom niyokshasi it means that everyone of us has material nature as our surrounding us as our body mind machine now the forces that rise from the body mind machine we can’t entirely resist them but we can’t completely yield to them either Krishna has said that we have a psychophysical nature which we can’t reject we have to act according to our psychophysical nature and yet Krishna has also said that that we have to regulate the force of lust so we have to regulate the forces of lust, anger, greed when they drag us here, there and everywhere so when we understand that there are these two distinct kinds of forces the force which we call as which we could call as instincts or inclination or swabhava that cannot be abandoned whereas the force you can call as vasana or impulsive they have to be resisted we have to give them up so to the extent we work systematically for the growth of our higher nature the growth of our understanding of our higher nature by the practice of bhakti to that extent we will grow in our life so Krishna is the zenith of spiritual reality and he is suppose we are in stormy ocean and somebody is ready to lift us out of that ocean if we refuse to catch the rope that they are sending down then we will be swept away by the waves now we might feel that the ground, the water here is stormy but the water there is better but water in the ocean there is no guarantee that it will be peaceful ever it will be peaceful for sometime but nothing will be permanently peaceful so Arjuna is feeling that that the duty of a Kshatriya is troublesome so better that he just give up the kingdom renounce and take up the role of a Brahmana but Krishna has told him no you act in consciousness of me and I am telling you that the best thing for you is work in guidance, work in the mood of mood of being conscious of me, work with my guidance and I will take you over all obstacles even if these obstacles which you are facing fighting against your relatives, fearing that you will get karmic reactions if you kill them, all these I will take care of these reactions Krishna will give a more explicit assurance in 18.66 aham tvam sarva-papebhyo mokshe shyami mahasuchah but he has already given the assurance in a more implicit way machittah sarva-durgani mat-prasadah tarisisi by my mercy you will cross over all obstacles so having said that now if despite his having said that Arjuna thinks that I will act out of ego I will act thinking I know what is best for my son then Krishna says you will be lost so you have a material nature and that material nature will force you to act in particular ways so Kshatriya commands where as Brahmana begs for alms, Kshatriya commands and orders and takes taxes so if you take the role of a mendicant Arjuna has done that earlier briefly when they were in Aghyatmas in the forest but he cannot do it permanently actually not in Aghyatmas the first time when they were in the forest they acted as Brahmanas briefly but after they had been exiled after they had been tried to be burned alive but Krishna says Arjuna you cannot do it in a sustainable way if somebody refuses to give charity your hand will go to your sword and you will attack them how dare you refuse me and at that time you fight that will be adharmic because you have given up the dharma of a Kshatriya so act as a Kshatriya fight even if it is unpleasant and I will protect you but if you act out of ego thinking you know better that the force of material nature will make you act in ways that will be counterproductive for you and that will be destructive for you