by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 26
Feb. 2003

THE THREE OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

All our spiritual scriptures, from The Vedas to The Upanishads, and especially The sayings of Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, lay stress on that single underlying purpose for the mankind as well as all other creations of The Lord. This purpose is to raise the 'being' from its present state, to a higher 'being', to push him continuously towards that ultimate pinnacle of spiritual evolution - the Bramhatva or the state of total knowledge consciousness and the ensuing bliss.

But the task is arduous, painstaking and not quickly achieved. It is akin to a child beginning from the alphabets becoming one day a great man of knowledge.

The knowledge is there in the books. But it is entirely another thing to make this knowledge work for our spiritual evolution. It is in the context of this later aspect that the role of a teacher is vital.

What do the great saints, our Munis, Rishis, Acaryas, Swamis and the Gyanis do? They are all engaged in making the knowledge contained in our scriptures reduced to comprehensible, practical and adoptable practices.

Does anyone speaks a new truth? If one indulges in the thought that such and such saint, such and such incarnation or prophet or a Guru gave to the world a new truth, it will be a fallacious understanding of the truth itself.

Since the first realisation by the human consciousness of The ultimate Truth, The Bramhan, the ultimate source, the ultimate destination and the ultimate bliss, all other utterances, all the writings in every true religion, all the proclamations made by the incarnations, are only reaffirmation of this truth in as understandable versions as each one's attempt.

Learned people know this when they say Satyamekam Viprah vahudha vadanti. The one truth is expressed in many ways by the knowers. They themselves do not squabble over this, although their ignorant followers may go to war in the name of their gurus.

A true saint would think his service to the Lord done if his words help even a single created being to rise above the mire of untruth and look up for that divine grace that will lift him to a higher level. It is as simple as that. If one candle is lighted, a thousand candles will glow eventually. For that is the way of The Lord.

When Lord Krishna expounded the Bhagavad Gita he had only one Arjuna to listen to Him. Did The Lord in His Avatar form said anything new or different from the truth which was unknown before? Not indeed. It is the same truth that has descended from the Ultimate source right along with the creation. All that The Lord did is to painstakingly explain to Arjuna, in the manner he will understand, and the ways in which he can use them in the activities he is engaged in.

That is what a true Guru simply does. Simplifying the truth, making it applicable to the activity that the disciple is ordained to be in, and making him willingly follow the path of spiritual evolution is the Guru's job.

Imagine the situation if after all that eighteen chapters of description Arjuna would have remained as ignorant and as adamant as before. Many of us even after studying the scriptures over a lifetime still remain ignorant. The Lord was even prepared for that. As it would occur to any teacher, teaching to an ignorant child, The Lord asks hopefully to His child after completing his entire discourse:

Kaccit etat srutam partha tvayaaekaagrena cetasaa
Kaccit ajnaanasammohah pranastah te Dhannjaya

Have you been attentive to what I have said? Is your ignorance and delusion cleared?

And the wise Arjuna, wiser with the knowledge that he has received, declares:

Nastah mohah smriti labdhaa tvat prasaadaat mayaa Acyuta

Sthitah asmi gatasandehah karisye vacanam tava.

He says, by your grace my delusion is gone, I have got back my memory, I have no doubts of mind now and here I am ready to do your bidding.

Normally, in the Bhagavad Gita we seek and find all the knowledge from the slokas attributed to the Lord and rightly so. However this little gem of a piece coming from Arjuna, gives so much to think and learn from. Arjuna -even though a highly disciplined and knowledgable individual- is no saint himself. He is the one with whom we all try to identify ourselves. The problems he faced are similar to many of our own problems in life. And the transformation of Arjuna from a confused soul to a clear headed individual is something we all wish to become.

Therefore, his own analysis of himself at the end of The Lord's exhaustive explanations of the truth of Yoga is worth pondering about.

The sloka says here of three obstacles that Arjuna declares to have now overcome. Moha, Smrtibhramsa and Sandeha. These three were the ones which stood between his confusion and initial reluctance to get on with his task and the final surrendering to the ways of the Divine. Let us look at them one by one to help us look at our own predicaments.

Moha or delusion, is like a disease, chronic and unwilling to cure away, which weakens our minds. Delusion means remaining in a sort of spell, in this case, a spell of ignorance, a spell that does not allow us to think and behave rationally.

Moha is the direct derivative of our excessive identification with and attachment to the physical world around us. Perceiving the world and its characteristics through the limited range of our sensory organs and the mind, we love so much to stay cocoon bound that we refuse to believe that there could be anything better than our worldly existence. It is like that frog in the well that refuses to admit that if it jumps out of the well there could be a great wide world waiting for it.

This grip of Moha is lifted only by courage and understanding. Understanding that whatever our senses receive as pleasure turns to pain in the next moment. Whenever we crave for happiness it never -repeat never- comes to us without unhappiness on its tail.

Since the beginning of this creation, none whom so ever has ever found happiness in this world. The world has never made anyone truly happy. Its purpose is not to make us rest in happiness but to teach us the way to perfect happiness. This is a profound truth which people are simply afraid to admit. Those who proclaim to have led a happy and satisfying life, are those who have been always afraid to look above the rim of the well.

Why do we do such a thing? Why are we content to live with our stupidity?

The answer lies in our fear within for anything that is uncertain and unknown. Any thing that we are not yet sure of (because we never tried to explore beyond the boundaries of our senses) we are afraid. Only a few, venture to go beyond but the rest of us carry on with our miserable existence out of sheer fear of the uncertainity.