22. The Arjuna Disease

Let us a take look at the scene of the Kurukshetra battle field, just before the commencement of the war. The armies on either side are ready to fight on receiving the go signal. It is at this juncture that Arjuna becomes philosophical, or does he?

He laments to Krishna about the futility of fighting a war and killing his own kith and kin. A magnanimous thought, no doubt, if only it were sincere!

Let us take a closer look at the battle field. The Kaurava side has a larger army comprising 11 Akshouhinis as against 7 Akshouhinis of the Pandava Army. And arrayed against the Pandavas are such invincible warriors like Bhishma, Drona and Kripa!

Arjuna is naturally worried about winning the war against such odds. This is not my conjecture. Here is what he says as quoted in the the Gita:

“Seeing these my kinsmen, O Krishna, arrayed, eager to fight, my limbs fail me and my mouth is parched, my body quivers and my hair stands on end.”

Obviously, these are symptoms of panic. But Arjuna tries to rationalize his fears by projecting them as feelings of remorse. But his words betray his real feelings. He goes on to say, “I see bad omens, O Krishna and I see no good in killing my own kinsmen in battle.” Again he takes shelter under superstitions and sentiments.

What has happened to him? Confronted and confounded by the enormity of the situation and the magnitude of the task before him, Arjuna is bewildered by the prospect of defeat. He is overwhelmed by emotions. His personality of a valiant hero breaks down and gets transformed into that of a child in panic. But, not being a child and hence unable to cry, he looks for escape routes.

Swami Chinmayananda calls this state of mind Arjuna Disease. This is not a pathological disease but a psychological one. Though named after Arjuna, every one of us may be affected by this disease at some stage of our life.

Recall the situations in which you have retreated when you should have acted. And you would have had a perfect reason for doing so. The human mind is an excellent instrument. It can rationalize and create reasons to suit our whims.

Many a manager puts up with indiscipline, inefficiency and other such deficiencies on the part of the people working under him. He would often rationalize his inaction by deluding himself that he has been putting up with such malaise in the interest of maintaining good relationship with his people. The truth could be that he lacks the courage to face the consequences that would arise if he were to act.

It was Krishna who diagnosed the disease Arjuna had had. But if Krishna had told Arjuna about his disease, Arjuna would not have accepted his diagnosis. So, Krishna moved Arjuna towards the solution by enlightening him and cured him by making him aware of the truth about life and how to live it.

As mentioned earlier, all of us are liable to be overtaken by this disease sometime or the other. So, how can we get cured of this?

Diagnosis of this disease by itself will be a major step towards getting cured of this disease. And only you can diagnose it. In any case, you are not going to accept the diagnosis of another person. Diagnosing this disease is going to be difficult most of the time. Though the symptoms will be there to be clearly seen by us, one has to be honest to oneself to recognize the symptoms for what they are.

Once we are honest enough to accept that we are under the grip of the Arjuna disease, the cure will be easy.

We should think in terms of what we should do in a given situation. That kind of thinking will loosen the grip of this disease and facilitate fast cure by putting us in the right frame of mind. Once we are in the right frame of mind, we will know what the right thing to do is and we can set out to do it.