How was spiritual knowledge lost at the time of the Gita when so many great sages like Vyasa and Narada were present?

Podcast:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
was the knowledge of knowledge of spirituality, of yoga that was supposed to be passed in parampara lost at the time when the Gita was spoken because Yasya Narada Markandeya, so many saintly personalities were still present answer yes, in the context of the Bhagavad Gita there are two different things as far as the presence of saintly personalities there were many at the same time what Krishna is talking about is something more specific he is mentioning the Rajarshi parampara the saintly kings the kings who were both financiers and outer rulers, Raja and Rishi so evam parampara see the list that he mentions is Yavasvan Manu and Ikshvaku so that kind of kings who embodied transcendental knowledge in their life and in their administration, that was what was lost so Dhritarashtra was certainly not that kind of king and prior to that also if we consider a few other kings many of them were in some ways good kings Shantanu was not known especially as an enlightened person nor was Vichitravirya or Chitrangada Bhishma was fairly enlightened but then he was never the king and if you look at the other kings at that time also that so many of them sided with the Kauravas eventually when the war happened indicates that a significant number of them were if not outright demoniac then at least under demoniac influence so in that sense the knowledge of this wisdom of how to function in the world in a way that is both socially constructive and spiritually evolutionary that was lost having said that we can also look at social circumstances and to some extent there was disorder so in one sense and what Krishna says a little later that yada yada hi dharmasya glaneer bhavati bharata abhyutthana dharmasya so that sakalene hamhata yoga nashtha parantapa and dharmasya glanee are quite related and what Krishna is saying is that if there is dharma glanee sometimes he may focus primarily on simply establishing dharma through we could say aggressive political intervention where Krishna fights or Krishna neutralizes the demons but often he gives knowledge also so in this particular case it was the lack of spirituality among the heads of state and the consequent support of a king who was not just irreligious but even who was not just non-virtuous but anti-virtuous those are the circumstances which led to Krishna needing to speak the Bhagavad Gita and does revive or restore the ancient knowledge thank you Krishna