The Spirit Of Spirituality: The Strategy of the Negative Forces

Saturday, August 8, 2015

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