2:1: Sanjaya said: Madhusudana [Krsna] spoke these words unto [Arjuna] who was overcome with compassion and whose distressed eyes were filled with tears of lamentation:
As chapter two begins Arjuna has stated his case and places himself in the hands of the Great Counselor, Sri Krsna. Here is where the Nectar of the Srimad Bhagavad Gita begins.
2:2: The Blessed One said: O Arjuna, from whence does this despondency come upon you now that peril has come? It is disgraceful and unbecoming of an Aryan. If it continues you will certainly be debarred from the upper planetary systems such as Svargaloka.
As I touched on in chapter one, we need to bear in mind that the Gita is a very ancient text. Many of the standards set in place by the global Bharata culture have been corrupted over the ages. While we can still see the remains of these truths and ancient systems we do well to bear in mind that much has been lost during the devolution of the past nearly 6000 years. This is the case with the term Aryan. The text states that Arjuna's material-based consciousness was "anarya" (un-arya) or unbecoming of an Aryan. In the Vedic context Aryans are those who cultivate a civilized and spiritual consciousness. The term originally had nothing to do with race or ethnicity.
I mentioned the degradation of the Varnashram System in the previous chapter. In that context the word Aryan became synonymous with the lighter skinned Brahmanas. Members of the Brahman varna or caste were the intelligentsia, priests, scholars and teachers of Vedic society. It was their heightened spiritual consciousness and awareness as "arya" that qualified them as members of this varna. Sri Krsna therefore chastises Arjuna for acting "anarya" or unbecoming of a spiritually cultured person because his perceptions were made on the material appearances of his situation rather than on the transcendent realities coming into play.
As the Varnashram Dharma gradually took on racial overtones the upper classes, which progressively became the lighter skinned people, also usurped the term arya for themselves and the Indo-European languages, including German and English, reflect this altered meaning to the point that people like Adolph Hitler eventually sought to create an Aryan ruling class of light skinned blue eyed Elite to rule the earth. Something a true Aryan would never support.
No comments:
Post a Comment