The Strategy of the Negative Forces

aparyaaptam tadasmaakam balam bheeshmaabhirikshitam |

paryaaptam tvidameteshaam balam bheemaabhirikshitam ||

Our forces (negative) protected by Bhishma (pseudo self) are unlimited (but may be insufficient); whereas their army (positive forces), defended by Bhima (Life force control), is limited (but quite adequate).

ayanesu ca sarvesu yatha-bhagam avasthitah

bhismam evabhiraksantu bhavantah sarva eva hi

All of you, properly stationed in your places in the divisions of the army, do protect Bhishma  (Ego  or pseudo self) 

Commentary

To recap our discussion so far, the Mahabharatha war is about to begin and the forces of good(Pandavas) and the forces of bad(Kauravas) are ready for battle. Within the realm of our own mind, in our daily existence, positive forces and negative forces are always battling and the chief driver of the negative forces is Desire. Though the positive forces seem limited, they are powerful. Now here, Duryodhana is asking his army and especially Drona, a superb archer to protect Bhishma. 

Let us look at this request of Duryodhana to protect and support Bhishma from two angles. One is from the normal historical and strategic perspective. Bhishma was always known across India as a great warrior and a very righteous person. When the great war was announced, various kings across the country had a difficult choice to make on which side to support. Most of them knew that Pandavas were right and had to be supported. But still seeing Bhishma, the righteous warrior amongst and leading the Kauravas, many of them decided to align with the Kauravas trusting that Bhishma was doing the right thing. Duryodhana knew that if Bhishma fell, many of these kings that had aligned with him would desert him. Hence there was a strategic reason in asking his commanders to ensure that Bhishma was supported and protected.

 Let us now turn to our internal battle where the strategy of the negative forces is to invoke past habits to protect ego. To understand the strategy of the negative forces, we have to understand the concept of the ego.  Now, what is this ego? Ego is not what we normally associate the word with. It is not used like the way we say, “He is an egoistic person”. Spiritually speaking, ego refers to that “individualness” or “existence” or “identity”. 

When does this world of objects become available to us? In deep sleep, we have no idea that this world exists, because I as an individual do not know I exist. This may take some time to understand. Do I know I exist in deep sleep? I only know that I existed, when I wake up. Only then I know that I existed in deep sleep. Taking it a step ahead, if I die when I am in deep sleep, what happens? Will I not know that I exist? Readers will immediately know that though the body does not exist, I continue to exist.

The first thought of my existence or individuality is what is called “ego” spiritually. In deep sleep, there was absolutely nothing. I as an entity did not exist because there was no thought or at least there was no awareness of thought. The first thought that any of us have after a deep sleep is” I am” or “I exist” and then all other thoughts flow from there. The “I” in deep sleep who was peaceful am now the troubled husband, father, boss whatever, because all other thoughts now arise from the “I am” thought. So, it is the ego which associated with the body, mind, intellect which is the cause of all the vicissitudes of our life.

Most often for us, we associate the ego with the body. We look at the mirror, try to look good, feel bad if someone calls us ugly or panic if we see a pimple of rash, all because we identify our self-worth with the body. Any time anything happens to the body, we are distressed. We say, we feel hot, cold, pain etc because we identified with the body and because the body is feeling something, we say we are feeling it.

We also associate the ego with our mind. The mind is an emoting entity. We see our beloved and say, I am happy, without realizing that it is the mind that is happy and I am associating myself with the vagaries of the mind. Similarly, if there is sadness in the mind, we associate ourselves with that feeling and say, we are sad.

Another typical association is of intellect to the ego. The intellect is the conceptualizing entity. Just because I am born a Brahmin, I conceptualize and associate the ego with the intellect and say I am a Brahmin. I also associate the ego with concepts like education and say I am a graduate or with a profession and say, I am an engineer.

Why is ego harmful? What am I really? In reality I am nothing but the pure Existence or Life Principle or Brahman or Atman or Soul. However its evil twin, the Ego has imprisoned my Soul.  The poor Soul, which really is the owner or king of my mind and intellect, is now banished and in its place, my mind and intellect are governed by the Ego. Whereas the Soul was all bliss and non-dual, the Ego has arrogated to itself a separate identity and sees itself as different from others and the world. Once there is differentiation and duality principle has come in, the Ego experiences all the vicissitudes of this changing illusory world. It experiences happiness and sadness, calm and disturbance, birth and death etc. 

In the context of the Mahabharatha, Bhishma represents "ego". As we saw above, if ego(Bhishma) is destroyed, then there are no desires(Duryodhana) at all. This implies that desires are defeated if ego dies through intellectual and righteous effort (Pandavas). That is the reason that desires to continue their sovereignty over us and win the battle , command the past habits to protect the ego.

In the context of the Mahabharatha  Drona represents past habits, which can be good or bad. But more often than not, bound as we are by our past actions and intense ignorance of Reality, our Drona becomes bad habits. How often has it not been that we promise to give up a desire and say finally that we failed because we are habituated. So whenever the intellect helps us make a resolution to give up desires, desires take the support of past habits to defeat the intellect's resolve.

Duryodhana represents Desire. In each of us it is the desire that propels us into doing various activities, good or bad which bind us into karma's laws. Hence the strategy of the negative forces is to ensure that the main proponent of desire is always protected. This is nothing but the Ego. When Duryodhana asks his army to protect Bhishma, symbolically it means that Desire is asking for the Ego to be protected.This desire for worldly things, when it sees the goodness and righteousness of an intense sadhak, becomes afraid and the first thing it does is go to seek support of past habits. 

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.


1. My Humble Understanding  Of Spirituality


My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

2. Attain Infinite Bliss

Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide

3. The Spirit Of Spirituality

The Spirit Of Spirituality

The Negative Forces In Our Mind

asmaakam tu vishishtaa ye taannibodh dvijottama |
naayakaa mama sainsyasya sangnyartham taanbraveemi te || 7 ||


O best of Brahmins, hear too about the principal generals on our side, who are especially qualified to lead. These I now recount unto you.


bhavaanibheeshmashcha karnashcha kripashcha samitinjayaha |
ashvaththaama vikarnashcha soumaduttistathaiva cha || 8 ||

There are personalities like yourself, Bheeshma, Karna, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Vikarn, and Bhurishrava, who are ever victorious in battle.

anye cha bahavaha shoora madarthe tyaktkajeevitaaha |
naanaashastrapraharanaaha sarve yuddhavishaaradaaha || 9 ||

Also, there are many other heroic warriors, who are prepared to lay down their lives for my sake. They are all skilled in the art of warfare, and equipped with various kinds of weapons.


Commentary

To recap, so far we have seen the rival forces on the battleground of Kurukshetra and as we have seen, it symbolizes a battle within our own mind between the positive forces and the negative forces. We have also seen in the earlier verse an enumeration of the positive forces and a brief description of some of them. Here I will try and bring out the negative forces impacting us in our daily lives.

When we talk of positive or negative forces, we simplicity assume that positive forces lead us in the right direction and negative forces lead us in the wrong direction.  I have heard the statement, “ I know what is right, but cannot bring myself to do it. I know what is wrong, but cannot bring myself to avoid it.” Before we proceed further we need to understand what is right and what is wrong from various perspectives.  

We as human beings are constantly being reminded that there is a path which leads to eternal happiness and that path is reached by giving up any binding desires to worldly objects and focusing on attaining that infinite Oneness. However, we are attracted by the shiny objects of the world and do not continue on the right path. This act of becoming astray from the right path is the only sinful act. Using this, let us try to rationalize why one should not do the wrong things mentioned above.

In summary, any act that I do, any thought that I entertain that negates the Oneness principle; when I see another individual as separate causing lust, anger etc. and thirst for objects of the world to bring me temporary happiness, I am indulging in the true sin or wrong act. I as a human being who had the unique intellect to realize the Oneness principle am doing the wrong thing by negating that principle and going on a wrong path.  

There are several negative forces within us that try to take us on the wrong path as defined above.  The negative forces include the following:

• Material passion 
• Lust 
• Rage 
• Delusion 
• Blind attachment 
• Blind aversion 
• Lack of verbal control  
• Greed
• Pride 
• Envy 
• Arrogance 
• Hypocrisy  

Let me talk briefly on some of the above forces:

Material passion

There was once a pious person who had given up everything in search for God and lived in a cave. He had just 2 pieces of loincloth to cover his dignity. Daily he used to wash one loincloth and wear the other. One fine day when he woke up, he was shocked to find a hole in his loincloth and realized that a rat had eaten up his loincloth. So the pious man went down to the town and begged the people to give him a loincloth. The people realizing that this would be a problem forever gave him a loincloth and also a cat to catch the rat.

The pious man came back happy and that day the cat caught couple of rats and he was
happy that his loincloth was safe. Soon enough, the cat got hungry and started making
noises. So, down he went to the town to get some milk for his cat. The people have him some milk and to ensure that he always had milk, gifted him a cow. So the pious man came back happy with a cat and a cow. The cow grazed around and gave milk, which he fed the cat, and the cat killed rats and he was happy that his loincloth was available. Soon he went down to get some grass for the cow. The people gave him some grass and also gave him a patch of grassland to manage. So daily, the pious man took the cow to graze. Soon the pious man realized he was not spending much time on meditation and told the people his problem. So the town people suggested he get married and have a wife who would take care of all the things so that he could focus on meditation! So he got married and........

Though apocryphal and seemingly silly, this man who wanted to give up everything and
focus on God, got distracted by his desire for a loin cloth and ended up having a whole
lot of objects one after another till he had fully forgotten his purpose in life. Does this not
happen to us always? We are on a particular purpose in life and are all fired up. Then
we tell ourselves, let me just acquire this thing and all will be fine. As seen above, that
single object will lead us unknowingly deeper and deeper into the quagmire of desire for
objects, till we totally get ensnared in it and forget our true purpose. The only purpose of human life is to realize the Truth that we are one with consciousness and take necessary steps to retrace the route back to it and unite with it.

Rage

Rage is an offshoot of material passion. Let us say, a child badly wants a doll and is pestering its parents to get it for her. The parent, for whatever reason is refusing the doll. The child implores for some time and then in a fit of anger starts shouting and throwing things around. What caused this rage? The desire for an object and the fact that the parent prevented the desire from being fulfilled. Does this happen only to a child?  A businessman is desiring lots of money and power and is willing to use corrupt ways to get what he wants. An upright officer stands in the way. What does the business man do? In a fit of rage, orders the upright officer to be eliminated. What caused the rage? A desire fr wealth. I am desperately looking for a bonus to buy my next BMW and am working hard to get a big order. I suddenly hear that a rival has got the order. What is the state of my mind? Will I smile and congratulate the rival or will I shower the choicest curses? So, we can see that in various situations, material passion be it physical objects, emotional objects or intellectual objects, causes severe rage if unfulfilled. When the mind is in such an agitated state, can it think of its true purpose in life?

Delusion leading to destruction

What If someone or something prevents us from getting our object of desire? It could be my boss who gives a bad review and a bad bonus preventing me from acquiring that brand new BMW or it could be that old man who is preventing me from marrying the girl of my dreams. Once I am prevented from getting the object I desire, my first reaction is anger towards the entity preventing me from getting the object.The anger gradually turns into bewilderment or agony or a hopelessly lost state of mind towards the person/entity which is between me and my object. As this continues, emotionally I am lost and forget myself, my manners, and my standards of behavior. In effect, I am cut off from the source which tells me the right thing to do and the wrong things to avoid. In the final stage, my intellect also leaves me and I am totally deluded and I may take a hasty action like shouting at the boss or hitting out at the man opposing my marrying his daughter. So a small thought towards an object became an attachment and finally a binding desire. On the downside, when we do not get the object, it leads to anger which manifests as helplessness/bewilderment which leads to delusion or a memory loss of good/bad and finally to destruction.

Readers are encouraged to reflect within themselves about the type of negative forces they are nourishing and the type of impact it has on them. 




As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.


1. My Humble Understanding  Of Spirituality


My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

2. Attain Infinite Bliss

Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide

3. The Spirit Of Spirituality

The Spirit Of Spirituality