To recap what we had discussed in our last post: What is the Self?, the Self is a central-most intangible entity that is also indestructible, and that it resides in everything. It neither takes birth nor does it die. And being a central-most entity, it also governs the functions of whatever object it belongs to, living or non-living, big or small. In living beings, it is the inner-most gut feeling, that we know drives morality and the balance of the whole universe. So the Self, as we just figured out, is characterized around the concept of balance, and in this post, we will discuss why it has this? We will do so with the words of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.
Before we begin...
The content of this blog explaining the characteristics of the Self, is not rendered directly from what Krishna told Arjuna, and has some other personal touches to it. This is done to explain the same concepts spoken, but to a completely different denomination... us😒. We have however tried not to compromise on the actual substance, so that nothing is lost in translation. With this, let's proceed with the analysis of the Self.
Analyzing the Self
Starting with the Self being the central-most entity and having the characteristics of governance, as discussed, but again by some form of a decision tree as explained in the aforementioned previous post, brings about other like attributes of management and control with it. And if we elaborate on the latter, which is control, we get a new attribute called stability.
The Aspect of Stability
As far as control is concerned, its main goal is to ensure the stability of a system. A control that ensures instability makes no sense at all, because in reality you will find those that are either inherently stable, like any day-to-day object you see that doesn't explode, and those that are not, meaning that they have a potential to explode. And if we were to bring in the aspect of control to any of these systems, stable or unstable, it will only make sense to infuse the attribute of additional stability in them. Explosions aren't fun until and unless it's a firecracker 🎇.
And when we talk about stability, we inherently talk about balance.
The Centroid
Adding to this, we also know that for any object we pick up, its central-most point is called the centroid, where if we place any pointy object right below it, that object will stay balanced. This happens because there is an equal weight on all sides, and this also means that equal weightage or evenness is also an attribute of the central-most entity. Thus, evenness leads to balance.
Developing the Tree
Now, using what we have just developed, let's start creating our tree that characterizes the Self. A tree we know the Self is inherently made of. And we will go on improvising on this to get our holistic picture of the Self's characteristics. Each time rendering what Krishna explained to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. Below is our first sketch.
Now let's go on.
Expanding on Stability, we know that it is usually an aspect of time. Meaning that, it doesn't occur at once, but in stages. And when we talk about stages, we know it would involve some sort of memory. And memory, as we all know, is transparently linked to knowledge, which we already know is an attribute of the center. So let's go ahead and add this to our tree on the right.
Notice the additional element "Storage" in the diagram to the right. This was not discussed yet, but will come in handy later. Let's go further.
We know for a fact that the Self is intangible, as Krishna put out many times in the Bhagavad Gita. From intangibility we get, it's unborn and never dies - or it's indestructible.
Lets add this to the tree on the left.
In this new addition, we also linked Indestructible with Stability, because in some sense indestructibility and stability do complement each other. Stability ensures that the system doesn't explode: making it indestructible, and Indestructibility ensures that stability is maintained. In fact, Krishna actually hints on this in chapter 4, when he says:
karmaṇo hy api boddhavyaṃ boddhavyaṃ ca vikarmaṇaḥ | akarmaṇaś ca boddhavyaṃ gahanā karmaṇo gatiḥ ||
Lastly, we will add the attributed of being unattached which is an outcome of the evenness of the mind, which Krishna iterates to Arjuna over and over again. He does so because, it's only when he is staying unattached to whatever physical reality is presented before him, will he become indestructible and be able to bring stability to the situation. The stability being that he had to fight against the Kaurava army no matter who was in it.
Inferences on the Characteristics
Now that we have developed our characteristic tree (or web 🕸... because it looks like a web actually... and in the Vedas, both a web and tree are seen as somewhat similar... we will discuss this later), let's try to make certain inferences about it that will help us understand it better and be well inclined to Krishna's explanations.
Firstly, as we can see, there are a multitude of branches leading from the node: "Center" to the node: "Balance". Plus, what may have been an isolated branch: the "Intangible", actually found its way to the node: "Balance" through the queen of all branches: the "Indestructible" to "Stability". So we can definitively say that the Self, being the center, is wound around the concept of balance (at least with our rough sketch). And this idea is in fact indestructible.
Other things, we can infer:
1) Krishna had said time and again in the Bhagavad Gita that once you have renounced your actions to the Self, you have taken a significant step to becoming the Unborn intangible: meaning there's no birth after,
2) Control [of senses] leads to evenness (that is, seeing everything as equal) which leads to unattachment, and then to Stability wound in Knowledge of the Self, and then towards Balance. In other words, if you imbibe the managerial qualities of the Self, unbiasedness to anything, you will be able to take control of the situation correctly and do what actually is necessary.
3) The Self is also like a warehouse, where at the end of the creation cycle (the day heading towards night), everything falls back to it, and in the next creation cycle (the next day) all those unfinished stuff gets revisited. Plans for the next day are then done at the closing of the cycle (at night).
... and many more.
Conclusion - The Kurukshetra
Thus, we have seen how the Self is wound around the concept of balance, and why it was responsible for the battle of Kurukshetra that caused the death of many Kshatriyas. In fact Sage Vyasa himself named this whole episode as the "Mahabharata" in his writings, solely because of the Self's involvement in it. In his writings he says the Self played a major role in this by bringing its influence to whole affair, where it brought a multitude of webbed events, just like itself, all of which lead to the destruction of the Kshatriyas in Kurukshetra.
So why did it do it? Well, we know that the Kshatriyas back then were mainly kings and princes, and many of who we know were extremely spoiled by the several kinds of luxuries they availed. And this, along with, what we also believe they had was, other supernatural capabilities, which in turn might have led the Self at the topmost level to cause the event. So frankly after knowing this, it seems that we really don't have to worry about an AI 🤖 causing an apocalyptic event. The Self itself will do it.
But then, how and why did Kshatriyas become this powerful, and be so spoiled at the same time that the Self had to cause this major event. To put in other words, why did the Mahabharata even take place at all. If the Self governs everything, then it should have not let such a set of events to have occurred in the first place. I mean, considering the many possibilities that can come out to stage, say, a peaceful, happy-go-lucky 😸 set of events instead, isn't quite far-fetched actually.
To answer this, we will have to understand the structure of the Self, now that we have a neat idea of its characteristics. We will discuss more on this in our next post.
Very interesting perspective