Preparing for the Miraculous

72 eleven talksArjuna, one of the five Pandavas, is the foremost kshatriyaor knight of his time. His charioteer is his friend andmentor Krishna, king of the Vrishnis and in fact the avatarSri Krishna. In the internecine quarrel within the Kuru clan,to which the Pandavas as well as the Kauravas belong, mostkingdoms of the subcontinent have chosen sides and theday of the great confrontation, the battle in Kuruk shetra, thefield of the Kurus, has dawned. Of this great slaughter Arjunais to be the chief instrument. Among the principal enemiesare close relatives, former friends and even his formergurus. Many of them he will have to kill. Arjuna “finds suddenlythat he has been led to become the protagonist of aterrific and unparalleled slaughter, a monstrous civil warinvolving all the cultured Aryan nations which must leadto the complete destruction of the flower of their manhoodand threatens their ordered civilization with chaos and collapse.”1Overwhelmed by the tragic purport of the moment,Arjuna asks Sri Krishna to drive his chariot into the spacebetween the two battle-ready armies, “for he wishes tolook upon all these kings of men who have come here tochampion against him the cause of unrighteousness andestablish as a rule of life the disregard of law, justice andtruth which they would replace by the rule of a selfish andarrogant egoism.” 2 Being well aware of the importanceand the righteousness of his cause, he is yet suddenly overwhelmedby dejection. “O Krishna, I behold these kinsmenand friends arrayed in hostile armies, and my limbs sinkbeneath me and my face grows dry, and there are shudderingsin my body, and my hair stands on end. Gandiva [hisbow] falls from my hand and my very skin is on fire. Yea, Icannot stand and my brain whirls ...” (Gita I, 28-32) Arjuna1 Sri Aurobindo: Essays on the Gita, p. 23.2 Id., p. 54.