The Bhagavad Gita And Me
What is real for you is not real for me. What is real for me today is not what was real for me yesterday and is not what will seem real to me tomorrow. I live in an illusion that is of my own making, but not entirely of my own making, because the illusions of others continually impinge on my own. Like a minor character in a play, i have few lines, and if i do not say them correctly, i will be replaced by someone who does. Like Leone in Pirandello's "The Rules of the Game," being able to see the illusion as an illusion may not prevent it from driving me mad. The line between nihilism and mysticism is thin, and indeed they may be indistiniquishable apart from the motivation of the person attempting to make the distinction. Nevertheless, mystics have a pretty clear and communicable understanding that cannot be understood. and that we know how we should behave toward one another. Gender, ethnic, class, status, and power differences can badly distort and confuse that understanding. but the understanding is still there in the codes of all viable communities.
Insofar as they made distinctions in their patterns of life, first peoples had both religious ideas and ethical codes. and the two realms had no particular connection to each other. Religion is one thing (sacred), morality is something else (practicality). Small group size, thinking of the group as :"family," lack of occasions for expression of gender, power and wealth differences combine to make such groups egaliarian, peaceful, and kind. Some might say, well, they were forced by circumstances to live in such a world.
Just as i am forced to live in this one.
Or am i?
Perhaps the eight-fold path and the sermon on the mount do not constitute part of the illusion, but our escape from it?
In the Bhagavad Gita we are treated to a highly ethical view of conduct and highly mystical view of the Sacred. The former presumably flows out of the latter. But it (the ethical code) includes innate differences between the potentially enlightened and others and the "Song of God" endorses the caste system and is placed in the context of a bloody battle. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic scriptures attract/repel me in the same manner.
Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be - like the reality of yesterday - an illusion tomorrow.
Luigi Pirandello.
Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for... - Luigi Pirandello at BrainyQuote