Sastras state that the entire universe is sustained by dharma and righteousness. The path of dharma is ordained for all and there is no short cut when it comes to upholding it. This is reflected in the way of life of the people. In the Gita, Krishna explains that every soul becomes realised only by leading a life of discipline and virtue and in that course has to fight a constant battle in his mind against inherent evil tendencies and vices, pointed out Sri R. Krishnamurthy Sastrigal in a discourse.
In fact, the purana stories symbolise this fight that is happening at the individual level through the conflicts between the celestial beings and the asuras at the cosmic level. In each jivatma evil tendencies arise to overpower the good ones. The fact that the asuras are more in number and stronger than the devas only indicates the way evil tendencies and bad thoughts arise easily and more often in each jivatma to overpower the individual effort to good and righteous behaviour. Krishna explains this in chapter 16, when He speaks of the Deivi and Asuri sampath, the divine and the demoniac tendencies in people.
In chapter 13, the Lord speaks of 20 qualities that every individual has to cultivate to make his life on earth meaningful for him and the self. There is no totally virtuous or vicious being since the entire Prakriti is constituted of the three gunas — satva, rajas and tamas — that are intertwined with one another. In chapter 18, once again the good and bad qualities are highlighted. These are important to every spiritual aspirant as they facilitate the knowledge of the self. All the other qualities are hindrances to self knowledge and come under the category of ignorance. Each individual has to work his punya and papa and try to evaluate his inner worth and understand the self’s role and association with the sarira.
