About the Work
The Bhagavadgītā, as presented in this edition, is a work of scholarship and devotion in equal measure: an introductory essay, the Sanskrit text in Roman script, an English translation, and notes, prepared by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and published in Bombay by George Allen & Unwin (India) Private Limited. The volume is dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi. Its first British publication belongs to the middle of the twentieth century, with a second edition and further impressions following in the decades after, including an Indian reprint in the early 1970s. The book is thus not a new translation competing with the many good English renderings already in circulation, but an attempt to give the English reader what the Sanskrit reader has always needed: commentary. Radhakrishnan says plainly that those who read the Gītā in English need notes at least as much as those who read it in Sanskrit, and the classical commentaries show what the text meant to the commentators and their contemporaries. He has therefore supplied a general introduction and notes for the intelligent general reader—one who wishes to enlarge his spiritual environment rather than to settle the quarrels of specialists—while flagging, without adjudicating, the many points on which scholars differ.
“The Bhagavadgita is a valuable aid for the understanding of the supreme ends of life.”
The translation itself is offered with disarming modesty. Radhakrishnan concedes that no translation can bring out the dignity and grace of the original, whose melody and magic of phrase are difficult to recapture; the translator’s anxiety is to render the thought, though he cannot fully convey the spirit, evoke the mood in which the thought was born, or induce the ecstasy of the seer and the vision he beholds. For this reason the Sanskrit text is printed in Roman script alongside, so that those who know the language may rise to full comprehension by pondering the original, and those who do not may still gain a fairly correct idea of the poem’s spirit from Sir Edwin Arnold’s rendering, full of ease and grace and acceptable to all but the scrupulous about scholarly accuracy. Radhakrishnan records his indebtedness to Professor M. Hiriyanna, who read the typescript, and Professor Franklin Edgerton, who read the proofs; the second edition allowed him to correct misprints and profit from suggestions by Professor F. W. Thomas. A list of abbreviations—Gītā or B.G. for the Bhagavadgītā, I.P. for his own Indian Philosophy, MB. for the Mahābhārata, Ś. for Saṃkara, S.B. and S.B.G. for Saṃkara’s commentaries on the Brahma Sūtra and the Gītā, R. for Rāmānuja, and Up. for Upaniṣad—serves the notes throughout.
Context
The Preface sets the book against a world emerging from war. War and post-war periods, Radhakrishnan observes, emphasize the sciences and their practical applications, which are important both for conducting wars and for ensuring the comfort of citizens in peace. But to give largeness and wisdom to men’s outlook on life, stress must be laid on the humanities; the relation of the sciences to the humanities is roughly one of means to ends, and in the enthusiasm for means the ends must not be overlooked. Concepts of right and wrong do not belong to science, yet human action and happiness ultimately depend on ideas centring round these concepts. A balanced culture should bring the two great halves into harmony, and the Bhagavadgītā is a valuable aid for understanding the supreme ends of life.
Radhakrishnan’s deeper justification for a new edition rests on a theory of what a scripture is. Every scripture has two sides: one temporary and perishable, belonging to the ideas of the people of the period and country of its production; the other eternal and imperishable, applicable to all ages and countries. Intellectual expression and psychological idiom are products of time, while permanent truths can be lived and seen by a vision higher than the intellectual at all times. The vitality of a classic consists in its power to produce, from time to time, men who confirm and correct from their own experience the truths enunciated in it. Commentators speak from experience and express in a new form, relevant to their age, the ancient wisdom of scripture; all great doctrine, repeated over centuries, is coloured by the reflections of the age and bears the imprint of the individual who restates it. Our times are different; our habits of thought and mental background are not quite the same as those of the classical commentators. The chief problem facing us today is the reconciliation of mankind, and the Gītā is specially suited to this purpose because it attempts to reconcile varied and apparently antithetical forms of religious consciousness and emphasizes root conceptions of religion which are neither ancient nor modern but eternal, belonging to the very flesh of humanity past, present and future. History poses our problems; if we restate old principles in new ways, it is not because we will to do so but because we must. Such restatement of eternal truths in the accents of our time is the only way a great scripture can be of living value to mankind.
The commentary tradition itself is part of the context. Madhva (a.d. 1199–1276) wrote two works on the Gītā, the Gītābhāṣya and the Gītātātparya, deriving from it the tenets of dualistic (dvaita) philosophy; he contends it is self-contradictory to regard the soul as identical with the Supreme in one sense and different in another—the two must be eternally different, and any unity, partial or entire, is untenable. He interprets “that art thou” as meaning we must give up the distinction between mine and thine and hold everything subject to God’s control, and he contends that devotion is the method emphasized in the Gītā. Nimbarka (a.d. 1162) adopts dvaitādvaita, the dual-non-dual doctrine; his disciple Keśavakasmirin wrote a Gītā commentary, the Tattvaprakaśikā. Nimbarka holds that soul (jīva), world (jagat) and God are different from each other, yet the existence and activity of soul and world depend on God’s will; devotion to the Supreme is his principal theme. Vallabha (a.d. 1479) develops Śuddhādvaita, or pure non-dualism: the ego, when pure and unblinded by illusions, and the Supreme Brahman are one; souls are particles of God like sparks of fire and cannot acquire the knowledge necessary for release except by the Supreme’s grace, and devotion to God—bhakti as truth associated with love—is the most important means of release. In our own time the chief commentators are B. G. Tilak and Sri Aurobindo, and Gandhi has his own views. Differences of interpretation are generally held to be determined by the viewpoint adopted; Hindu tradition believes the different views are complementary. Even the systems of Indian philosophy are so many points of view, darśanas, mutually complementary rather than contradictory. The Bhāgavata says sages have described the essential truths in various ways, and a popular verse declares: from the viewpoint of the body I am Thy servant, from the viewpoint of the ego I am a portion of Thee, from the viewpoint of the self I am Thyself. God is experienced as Thou or I according to the plane in which consciousness centres.
Structure of the Book
The volume opens with front matter—Preface, Preface to the Second Edition, List of Abbreviations, and Contents—followed by the Introductory Essay, which is the longest single piece of writing in the book and carries the weight of Radhakrishnan’s interpretation. Then comes the text itself, divided into eighteen chapters, each with translation and notes. The chapter sequence runs: I. The Hesitation and Despondency of Arjuna; II. Sāṃkhya Theory and Yoga Practice; III. Karma Yoga or the Method of Work; IV. The Way of Knowledge; V. True Renunciation; VI. The True Yoga; VII. God and the World; VIII. The Course of Cosmic Evolution; IX. The Lord is more than His Creation; X. God is the Source of all; to know Him is to know all; XI. The Lord’s Transfiguration; XII. Worship of the Personal Lord is better than meditation; XIII. The Body called the Field, the Soul called the Knower; XIV. The Mystical Father of All Beings; XV. The Tree of Life; XVI. The Nature of the Godlike and the Demoniac Mind; XVII. The Three Modes Applied to Religious Phenomena; XVIII. Conclusion.
The arc of the poem is dramatic as well as doctrinal. Chapter I sets the scene on the field of the Kurus, where Arjuna, seeing fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons, companions, fathers-in-law and friends drawn up on both sides, is overcome with compassion and collapses into despondency. Chapter II begins the teaching proper, moving from the rebuke of unmanly grief through the wisdom of the Sāṃkhya and the discipline of Yoga to the portrait of the sage fixed in Brahman. Chapters III and IV work out the relation of action and knowledge—Karma Yoga and the Way of Knowledge—while Chapter V treats true renunciation and Chapter VI the true Yoga, including the practical discipline of meditation. Chapters VII through XII develop the theology of the personal Lord: God and the world, the course of cosmic evolution, the Lord as more than His creation, as the source of all, His transfiguration in the vision of Chapter XI, and the praise of worship of the personal Lord over bare meditation. Chapters XIII through XVIII turn to the constitution of the human being and the moral and religious modes of life: the body as field and the soul as knower, the three modes or guṇas as the mystical father of all beings, the tree of life, the godlike and demoniac mind, the three modes applied to religious phenomena, and the conclusion. The final chapter gathers the whole teaching into a summary and returns Arjuna to his appointed task.
Inside the Book
The Making of the Edition
The volume opens with its publication record: The Bhagavadgītā, with an introductory essay, Sanskrit text, English translation and notes by S. Radhakrishnan, issued in Bombay by George Allen & Unwin (India) Private Limited. It first appeared in Great Britain in 1948, reached a second edition and ninth impression by 1970, and was reprinted in India in 1971. The dedication is a single line: “To Mahatma Gandhi.”
The Preface
Radhakrishnan begins by observing that war and its aftermath drive attention toward the sciences and their practical uses, which serve both the conduct of war and the comfort of citizens in peace. Yet if men’s outlook on life is to gain largeness and wisdom, stress must fall on the humanities. Science stands to the humanities roughly as means to ends, and enthusiasm for means must not eclipse the ends themselves. Notions of right and wrong lie outside science, yet human action and happiness finally depend on ideas clustering around those notions. A balanced culture must bring these two great halves into harmony, and the Gītā, he proposes, is a valuable aid toward understanding life’s supreme ends.
Many editions and good English translations already exist, so a further one would be unjustified if English readers needed only a bare rendering. But those who read the Gītā in English need notes at least as much as those who read it in Sanskrit. Classical commentaries show what the text meant to their authors and their contemporaries. Every scripture has two sides: one temporary and perishable, belonging to the ideas of the people and period that produced it; the other eternal and imperishable, applicable to all ages and lands. Intellectual expression and psychological idiom are products of time, while permanent truths can be lived and seen, by a vision higher than the intellect, in every age. A classic’s vitality lies in its power to produce, from time to time, men who confirm and correct from their own experience the truths it enunciates. Commentators speak from experience, restating ancient wisdom in forms relevant to their age; all great doctrine, repeated across centuries, takes colour from the reflections of the age and bears the imprint of the individual who restates it.
Our times differ; our habits of thought and mental background are not those of the classical commentators. The chief problem now facing humanity is the reconciliation of mankind, and the Gītā is specially suited to this purpose, since it attempts to reconcile varied and apparently antithetical forms of religious consciousness and emphasizes root conceptions of religion that are neither ancient nor modern but eternal, belonging to the very flesh of humanity past, present and future. History poses our problems; if we restate old principles in new ways, it is not because we will to but because we must. Such restatement is the only way a great scripture can hold living value for mankind. The general introduction and notes may serve the intelligent reader; where scholars differ on points of detailed interpretation, Radhakrishnan merely calls attention to the differences, since the book addresses the general reader wishing to enlarge his spiritual environment rather than the specialist.
A translation, he insists, must be as clear as its substance permits—readable without being shallow, modern without being unsympathetic. No translation can reproduce the Gītā’s dignity and grace; its melody and magic of phrase resist recapture. The translator’s anxiety is to render the thought, but he cannot fully convey the spirit, evoke the mood in which the thought was born, or induce the seer’s ecstasy and vision. For this reason the Sanskrit text is given in Roman script, so that those who know Sanskrit may ponder the original and rise to full comprehension, while those who do not will gain a fairly correct sense of the poem’s spirit from Sir Edwin Arnold’s rendering, full of ease and grace and with a flavour of its own, acceptable to all but the scrupulous about scholarly accuracy. Radhakrishnan thanks Professor M. Hiriyanna, who read the typescript, and Professor Franklin Edgerton, who read the proofs, for valuable advice and help. A brief preface to the second edition records his pleasure that a new edition was called for, allowing him to correct many misprints and profit by suggestions from his friend Professor F. W. Thomas, to whom he is greatly indebted.
Abbreviations and Contents
A list of abbreviations follows: Gītā or B.G. for the Bhagavadgītā; I.P. for Radhakrishnan’s Indian Philosophy; MB. for the Mahābhārata; Ś. for Saṃkara; S.B. for Saṃkara’s commentary on the Brahma Sūtra; S.B.G. for his commentary on the Bhagavadgītā; R. for Rāmānuja; and Up. for Upaniṣad. The contents then set out the book’s shape: a preface, the list of abbreviations, the text itself, an introductory essay, and eighteen chapters—beginning with Arjuna’s hesitation and despondency, moving through Sāṃkhya theory and yoga practice, the method of work, the way of knowledge, true renunciation, the true yoga, God and the world, the course of cosmic evolution, and the Lord as more than His creation.
The Commentators and Their Viewpoints
The introductory essay turns to the history of interpretation. Madhva (1199–1276) wrote two works on the Gītā, deriving from it the tenets of dualistic philosophy; he contends it is self-contradictory to call the soul identical with the Supreme in one sense and different in another—the two must be eternally different, and any unity, partial or entire, is untenable. He reads “that art thou” as an injunction to give up the distinction between mine and thine and to hold everything subject to God’s control, and he makes devotion the method the Gītā emphasizes. Nimbarka (1162) adopts a dual-non-dual doctrine: soul, world and God are different from one another, yet the existence and activity of soul and world depend on God’s will, and devotion to the Supreme is his principal theme; his disciple Keśavakasmirin wrote a Gītā commentary, the Tattvaprakaśikā. Vallabha (1479) develops a pure non-dualism in which the ego, when pure and unblinded by illusion, is one with Brahman; souls are particles of God like sparks of fire, unable to acquire the knowledge necessary for release except by the Supreme’s grace, and devotion—truth associated with love—is the most important means of release.
Other commentators exist; in our own time the chief are B. G. Tilak and Sri Aurobindo, while Gandhi holds his own views. Differences of interpretation are generally taken to be determined by the viewpoint adopted, and Hindu tradition holds the different views complementary. Even the systems of Indian philosophy are so many points of view, mutually complementary rather than contradictory; the Bhāgavata says sages have described the essential truths in various ways. A popular verse declares: from the viewpoint of the body I am Thy servant, from the viewpoint of the ego I am a portion of Thee, from the viewpoint of the self I am Thyself. God is experienced as Thou or I according to the plane on which consciousness centres.
Ultimate Reality
The Gītā offers no arguments for its metaphysical position; the Supreme’s reality is not to be settled by a dialectic most of humanity cannot follow.
The Gita’s Metaphysical Framework and the Path of Yoga
Madhusudana reads the Gita as embodying the perfect Godhead—Being, Wisdom and Bliss—with its eighteen chapters mapping onto the three Vedic sections of action, worship and knowledge. The ascent to higher being comes through jijhasa, a disinterested passion for truth, which lifts man beyond narrow limits; knowledge sought for power or fame takes us nowhere. The Gita’s creed is Samkhya philosophy profoundly modified: the soul to be redeemed, the fetter binding it, and the God who releases it. Samkhya’s dualism of purusa and prakrti is retained, but both are made subordinate to God. The self is the permanent, self-luminous principle behind all conscious change—unique, integral, not derived from the world. Man is not self but possesses self and can become self. Prakrti, the other ultimate, evolves all mental and material phenomena through its three gunas—lightness, movement, heaviness, or goodness, passion and dullness. Bondage to the gunas is the cause of evil; when the self realizes its freedom from prakrti, it is released. Metaphysical knowledge becomes realization through yoga, the suppression of the mind’s activities, achieved by a mighty exercise of will.
The Subconscious, Integration and Inward Silence
Man knows only his surface mentality; much lies beneath, affecting conduct. Strong emotions overwhelm us—the lunatic completely, most of us temporarily—and language like “he is beside himself” reflects the primitive sense of possession by a spirit. Normally the subconscious collaborates with the conscious unnoticed, but when we stray from our instinctive pattern we feel its full force. Without complete self-awareness no one masters his life; body, life and mind require integration. Until an organic balance of his many-sided possibilities is achieved, man is not fully master of himself, and integration is never complete while temptation persists, as it did for Arjuna. Purity of intention kills mundane passions, producing tranquillity, inward silence, and contact with the Eternal—in stillness insight is born and man becomes what he is. Our consciousness, turned outward, knows only the phenomena of the self, not the self itself; to gain existential experience of the self we must free ourselves from the diversity of objects that impedes intuitive vision.
Action, Renunciation and the Subtlety of Karma
Some argue that jnana requires renouncing action, since every deed produces effects, confirms egoism and binds. Shankara, holding knowledge the means of salvation, treated Arjuna as a madhyamadhikari for whom renunciation was dangerous. But the Gita adopts a twofold purpose: complete release and work in the world. The teacher points out the extreme subtlety of action—we cannot abstain, for nature is ever at work, and inertia is not freedom. The binding quality lies in motive, not performance; renunciation means absence of desire, not cessation from work. Arjuna’s pacifism is not spiritual development but the product of ignorance and passion; he declines to fight because he must destroy his own friends and relations. Krishna does not endorse warfare—war is the occasion to show the spirit in which all work must be done. One must fight without passion, ill-will or attachment; such a frame of mind makes violence impossible. The Gita’s ideal is ahimsa, and its emphasis on lokasamgraha, world-solidarity, demands changing our whole life pattern and stressing human brotherhood.
Detachment, Sacrifice and Transcending Karma
One who acts with detachment from results and dedication to God is a perpetual renunciate. If ignorance is the root evil, wisdom is the remedy—ever pure, not the fruit of an act—yet karma prepares for wisdom. Work done as yajna, sacrifice, a spontaneous self-giving to the Divine, purifies the mind and ceases to bind. The Gita gives a religion by which the rule of karma can be transcended: there is a realm where karma does not operate, and establishing relations with it we are free in our deepest being. The chain can be broken here and now by detachment and faith in God. For the wise sage living in the Absolute, nothing remains to be done; when all desires are destroyed, action is not possible.
The Field of Dharma and the Armies Arrayed
The world is dharmaksetra, a battleground of moral struggle, and karmabhumi, where soul-making is fulfilled. The Gita enforces practice, not theory; civic and social duties provide religion its tasks, and dharma promotes both prosperity and liberation. The battlefield is called dharmaksetra because the Lord, protector of dharma, is present; Kurukshetra is also tapahksetra, field of penance. “Mamakah” reflects ahamkara, the source of evil. Sanjaya, the blind king Dhrtarastra’s charioteer, reports the war. Duryodhana approaches his teacher Drona, names the Pandava warriors and his own, calls his army unlimited under Bhishma and theirs limited under Bhima, and urges all to support Bhishma. Conches, kettledrums and horns sound tumultuously; Krishna and Arjuna blow their celestial conches, and the uproar rends Dhrtarastra’s sons’ hearts. Arjuna asks Krishna to draw the chariot between the armies. Seeing fathers, teachers, sons and friends on both sides, he is overcome with compassion: his limbs quail, his mouth dries, Gandiva slips from his hand, and he foresees no good from slaying kinsmen. He will not kill them even for the three worlds’ kingdom; family ruin destroys ancient laws, corrupts women, confuses varnas, and drags ancestors to hell.
Arjuna’s Despair and the Turn Within
When Arjuna sets aside the whisperings of his lower self, the Logos within—his own authentic inspiration—reveals the ordained path. His deepest self is Krishna; man and God need no intermediary, only an ardent heart and pure intention. God is not a distant judge but a friend, sakha, ever present. The chapter ends in dejection, yet this too is Yoga, since darkness of soul is an essential step toward spiritual life. Arjuna detaches himself from social obligations, becomes aware of himself as an isolated individual, and faces a threatening chaos; this new freedom creates anxiety, doubt and insecurity. Chapter II opens with Krishna rebuking Arjuna’s sentimental self-pity as un-Aryan, urging him to cast off petty faintheartedness and arise. Arjuna protests that it is better to beg than slay honoured teachers, and confesses he does not know which is better, conquer or be conquered. Stricken with weakness, his mind bewildered about duty, he asks Krishna to tell him for certain what is better, declaring himself Krishna’s pupil seeking refuge. Driven by despair and an ardent wish for certainty, he seeks light from the Divine within; as a man of action he asks not for a metaphysic but for his dharma, what he must do. Like Arjuna, the aspirant must realize his weakness and ignorance yet be anxious to do God’s will.
The Kṣatriya’s Duty and the Call to Battle
Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that a warrior should welcome a war that comes of its own accord as an open door to heaven; his happiness lies not in domestic comfort but in fighting for what is right. To shrink from this lawful battle would be to abandon duty and glory and to incur sin, for abstaining from the struggle between right and wrong out of false sentimentality, weakness, or cowardice is itself a sin. Men would recount Arjuna’s ill-fame forever, and for one who has been honoured, ill-fame is worse than death. Great warriors would think he fled through fear, those who once esteemed him would make light of him, and enemies would slander his strength with unseemly words—nothing could be sadder. Kṛṣṇa concludes that slain, Arjuna goes to heaven; victorious, he enjoys the earth. Whether viewed as metaphysical truth or social duty, the path is clear: treating alike pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, he should fight and so not incur sin. Yet the fight must be undertaken in equal-mindedness, doing assigned work without yielding to restless desire, for faith in the Eternal makes worldly sorrows lose their power to disturb.
The Wisdom of Sāṃkhya and the Wisdom of Yoga
Kṛṣṇa then gives “the wisdom of the Sāṃkhya” and bids Arjuna hear “the wisdom of the Yoga”: if his intelligence accepts it, he will cast away the bondage of works. Radhakrishnan explains that Sāṃkhya here is not the scholastic dualism of puruṣa and prakṛti, but an intellectual account of the intuition of the unchanging One—the yoga of knowledge—while Yoga is karma yoga, the yoga of action. The knowledge described must become inward experience. The teacher develops buddhiyoga: the buddhi must be trained to insight, constancy, and equal-mindedness; the mind, higher than the senses, should be guided by the buddhi and become buddhiyukta. The editor details the scholastic Sāṃkhya’s twenty-four cosmic principles evolving from prakṛti, and the chariot image: buddhi the driver, senses the horses, manas the reins, the self a passive witness superior to buddhi. If buddhi is lit by the self’s consciousness and cleared of obscuring tendencies, it is in union with Spirit; egoism and separateness give way to a vision of harmony. Sāṃkhya and Yoga share one aim but differ in method.
One-Pointedness, the Veda, and the Illumined Sage
On this path no effort is lost and no obstacle prevails; even a little of this dharma saves from great fear, and every effort counts as merit. The resolute understanding is single; the irresolute are many-branched and endless. One-pointedness must be cultivated, and distraction is overcome not by mysticisms of nature, sex, race, or nation but by genuine experience of Reality. The undiscerning who rejoice in the letter of the Veda, contending nothing else exists, desire-driven and heaven-intent, proclaim flowery words resulting in rebirth and specialized rites for enjoyment and power. The teacher distinguishes true karma from ritualistic piety: Vedic sacrifices seek material rewards, but the Gītā asks renunciation of selfish desire, making all life a sacrifice. Those devoted to enjoyment and power, minds carried away by such words, lack intelligence established in the Self. The Veda’s subject matter is the three modes; Arjuna should become free of the threefold nature, free from dualities, fixed in purity, not caring for acquisition and preservation, possessed of the Self. As a pond amid flooded waters, so are all the Vedas for the Brahmin who understands; ritual observances are of little value to the illumined.
Action Without Attachment to Its Fruits
To action alone Arjuna has a right, never to its fruits; let not fruits be his motive, nor attachment to inaction. This verse contains the essential principle of disinterestedness: thinking of fame or income deflects us, and success depends on other factors too. Fixed in yoga, Arjuna should work abandoning attachment, even-minded in success and failure—evenness is called yoga. Mere action is far inferior to buddhiyoga; pitiful are fruit-seekers. One yoked in intelligence casts away both good and evil; yoga is skill in action. The wise renouncing fruits, freed from birth’s bonds, reach the sorrowless state—even while alive released, going to the highest state of Viṣṇu called mokṣa. When intelligence crosses delusion’s turbidity, one becomes indifferent to what has been heard and yet to be heard; scriptures are unnecessary for the attained. When intelligence, bewildered by Vedic texts, stands unshaken in samādhi, one attains yoga. Samādhi is not loss of consciousness but its highest kind; buddhiyoga gets us beyond ritualism.
The Divine State and the Saints of Perfection
Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna that this is the divine state (brahmisthiti). Having attained it, one is no longer bewildered; fixed in that state even at the hour of death, one attains the bliss of God (brahmanirvana). Radhakrishnan glosses brahmisthiti as “life eternal,” and notes that nirvana also denotes perfection in Buddhism, quoting the Dhammapada: health is the greatest gain, contentment the greatest wealth, faith the best friend, nirvana the highest happiness. The saints described have points in common with Nietzsche’s superman and Alexander’s deity-bearers: joy, serenity, consciousness of inward strength and liberation, courage, energy of purpose, constant life in God. They represent the growing point of human evolution, proving humanity can rise above assumed limitations. Wisdom is the supreme means of liberation, but not exclusive of devotion to God and desireless work; even while alive the sage rests in Brahman and lives a life of disinterested service. The chapter is titled “The Yoga of Knowledge.”
Arjuna’s Confusion and the Twofold Way
Arjuna asks why, if Kṛṣṇa deems the path of understanding more excellent than action, He urges him to this savage deed. Radhakrishnan explains that Arjuna misunderstands: he thinks knowledge without action is better than work, and says Kṛṣṇa’s apparently confused utterance bewilders his intelligence; he asks for the one decisive thing by which he may attain the highest good. The editor notes the confusion is only seeming—the teacher does not intend to confuse; Arjuna is confused. Kṛṣṇa replies that a twofold way of life was taught of yore: the path of knowledge for men of contemplation, that of works for men of action. Radhakrishnan compares this to the introvert/extrovert distinction; the distinction is not ultimate since all men are both in degrees. The path of works is as efficient a means of liberation as knowledge; the two are complementary, not exclusive. Wisdom is not incompatible with action; work is adopted as an example to ordinary people.
The Necessity of Work and the Wheel of Sacrifice
Not by abstention from work does a man attain freedom from action, nor by mere renunciation does he attain perfection. What is demanded is renunciation of selfish desire, not of works.
True Renunciation and the Equality of All Beings
The fifth chapter closes by dissolving the apparent opposition between renunciation and action. Verse 5 declares that the status won by men of renunciation is reached equally by men of action, and that whoever sees the two as one truly sees. The editor’s note clarifies that the true renouncer is not the wholly inactive man but the one whose work is done in detachment; renunciation is a mental attitude, the casting-off of desire within work. The note cites the Mahābhārata (Śāntiparva) and the Avimāra, and observes that the Mahābhārata holds the Bhāgavata religion equal in merit to the Sāṃkhya religion. Verse 6 adds that renunciation is difficult without yoga, but the sage earnest in yoga soon attains the Absolute. Verse 7 describes the man trained in works, pure in soul, master of himself, who has conquered the senses and whose soul has become the self of all beings: though he works, he is not tainted. The note explains that he renounces all actions inwardly, not outwardly; even Śaṅkara admits such action is consistent with knowledge of the Self, and acting for world-solidarity he is not bound.
Verses 8–9 give the inner voice of the man united with the Divine and knowing truth: “I do nothing at all,” for in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, walking, sleeping, breathing, speaking, emitting, grasping, and opening and closing the eyes, he holds that only the senses are occupied with sense-objects. The note calls us to realize the pure, free self distinct from the factors of personality, since the senses are an impermanent flux with no changeless centre. Verse 10 compares the man who works, giving up attachment and resigning his actions to God, to a lotus leaf untouched by water. The Gita, the note insists, does not ask us to renounce works but to do them, offering them to the Supreme; renouncing attachment to the finite ego and placing action in the Eternal yields a true renunciation consistent with free activity. A further note remarks that Brahman is here equivalent to prakṛti. Verse 11 tells how yogins perform works merely with body, mind, understanding, or senses, abandoning attachment, for the purification of the soul. Verse 12 contrasts the earnest soul who abandons attachment to the fruits of works and attains well-founded peace with the man not in union with the Divine, who, impelled by desire and attached to fruit, is bound; a note cites Emerson’s poem on the patient stars.
Verse 13 describes the embodied soul who has controlled his nature and renounced all actions by the mind, dwelling at ease in the city of nine gates, neither working nor causing work. The note cites the Kaṭha Upaniṣad and identifies the nine gates as two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, the mouth, and the two organs of excretion and generation (Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad III, 18). Verse 14 states that the Sovereign Self does not create agency, actions, or the connection of works with fruits for the people; it is nature that works these out—Prabhu being the Sovereign Self of the knower. Verse 15 adds that the All-pervading Spirit takes on neither the sin nor the merit of any; wisdom is enveloped by ignorance, whereby creatures are bewildered. The notes explain vibhu, ajñāna as the ignorance that makes us believe in multiplicity, and jñāna. Verse 16 promises that for those in whom ignorance is destroyed by wisdom, wisdom lights up the Supreme Self like the sun; the Self above the ego is untouched by sin or merit, joy or sorrow, and is the witness of all. Verse 17 describes those who think of That, direct their whole conscious being to That, make That their whole aim and sole devotion, reaching a state from which there is no return, their sins washed away by wisdom; the false ego determined by works disappears and the jīva realizes its identity with the Supreme Self.
Verse 18 presents the sage who sees with an equal eye a learned and humble Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog, or an outcaste. The note observes that great learning brings great humility; vinaya is humility or modesty resulting from cultivation or discipline, and the first division of the Buddhist Tipiṭaka bears that name. Samadarśinah means seeing with an equal eye, since the Eternal is the same in all. The characteristics of the Supreme—being, consciousness, bliss—are present in all existences; differences relate only to names and forms. The fundamental dualism is spirit and nature, not soul and body. The note cites Newton and Henry Adams on human ignorance. Verse 19 declares that even here the created world is overcome by those whose mind is established in equality; God is flawless and the same in all, and therefore they are established in God—liberation is attainable here on earth. Verse 20 counsels that one should not rejoice on obtaining the pleasant nor sorrow on obtaining the unpleasant; he who is firm of understanding, unbewildered, a knower of God, is established in God. Verse 21 says that when the soul is no longer attached to external contacts, one finds happiness in the Self, and such a one, self-controlled in yoga on God, enjoys undying bliss. Verse 22 warns that pleasures born of contacts are sources of sorrow, having beginning and end; no wise man delights in them. Verse 23 holds that he who can resist the rush of desire and anger before giving up the body is a yogin and happy—non-attachment, from which peace, freedom, and joy arise, is realizable even here on earth. Verse 24 concludes that he who finds happiness, joy, and light only within, that yogin becomes divine and attains brahmanirvāṇa.
The Practice of Meditation
The sixth chapter turns to the discipline of meditation. Attention must be withdrawn from all external objects and absorbed in the object of meditation. A footnote cites XVIII, 72, where the teacher asks Arjuna whether he heard the teaching with his mind fixed to one point (ekāgrena cetasā). Since the aim is purity of vision, the mind requires fineness and steadiness. Present dimensions are not the ultimate limits of being; by summoning all mental energies onto one point, one raises the level of reference from the empirical to the real, from observation to vision, letting the spirit possess the whole being. The Book of Proverbs is quoted: “the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.” Satatam—constantly—means practice must not come by fits and starts; continuous creative effort develops higher consciousness. Rahasi—in solitude—means the aspirant selects a quiet place with soothing natural surroundings, river banks or hilltops. In a noisier world, civilized man’s duty is to have moments of thoughtful stillness; Matthew vi, 6 is cited (“enter into thy closet”), as is Origen’s description of the first hermits dwelling in the desert. Ekakī—alone—means the seeker should be alone to feel the gentle pressure and hear the quiet voice. Yatacittātmā—self-controlled—means he must not be excited, strained, or anxious; ātma here means deha, or body, according to Śrīdhara. Entering the closet with the daily paper and business file is useless; worries and preoccupations must be left behind.
The Supreme Self and the Deluded
Kṛṣṇa is presented as the Supreme Self who pervades the universe, supporting all beings while remaining transcendent and untouched by them. Anandagiri warns against asking why creation exists at all: the Supreme enjoys nothing, being pure consciousness and mere witness, and there is no other conscious enjoyer; nor is creation meant to secure mokṣa, since that would contradict mokṣa itself. Creation proceeds from the Supreme’s māyā, and a Ṛg Veda verse asks who could ever declare whence and why this variegated world arose. Devotion to the Supreme brings great reward, lesser devotions lesser rewards. The deluded, Kṛṣṇa says, despise the Lord clad in a human body, blind to His higher nature as Lord of all existences—seeing only the outward form, not the Divine within. Recognizing God in His earthly disguise demands effort; unless we turn our whole existence toward the Eternal, we remain prey to finite fascinations. Image worship is a means to the Divine, faulty only when it becomes an end in itself. Partaking of the deceptive nature of fiends and demons, some find their aspirations, actions, and knowledge vain, clinging to transient forms. By contrast, the great-souled who abide in divine nature, knowing the imperishable source of all beings, worship with undistracted minds. The highest perfection, the text notes, joins knowledge, devotion, and work together.
The Lord as All Things
Others sacrifice with the sacrifice of wisdom, worshipping the Supreme as one, as distinct, and as manifold. Kṛṣṇa declares Himself the ritual action, the sacrifice, the ancestral oblation, the herb, the hymn, the melted butter, the fire, and the offering—the whole Vedic sacrifice interpreted as the offering of our entire nature to the Universal Self. He is father, mother, supporter, grandsire, the object of knowledge, the purifier, the syllable Aum, and the three Vedas. He is the goal, upholder, lord, witness, abode, refuge, friend, origin and dissolution, ground, resting place, and imperishable seed. He gives heat and withholds and sends rain; He is immortality and death, being and non-being. The main idea is that the Supreme Lord grants our prayers in whatever form we worship Him. Those who know the three Vedas and drink soma, cleansed of sin, pray for heaven’s way and reach the holy world of Indra, enjoying divine pleasures—but when their merit is exhausted they return to the mortal world, still bound by karma and lured by desire, their ignorance undestroyed. Human life is the opportunity to develop the soul’s divine nature out of imperfect material. Those who worship the Lord alone, meditating on Him with perseverance, receive from Him both the attainment of what they lack and security in what they have.
The Lamp of Wisdom
To those constantly devoted and worshipping Him with love, Kṛṣṇa grants buddhiyoga—the concentration of understanding by which they come to Him. Out of compassion, remaining within His own true state, He destroys the darkness born of ignorance with the shining lamp of wisdom. Bhakti leads to the destruction of ignorance and the rise of illumination; when ignorance is destroyed, God stands revealed in the human spirit. Arjuna responds by addressing Kṛṣṇa as Supreme Brahman, Supreme Abode, Supreme Purifier, Eternal Divine Person, First of gods, Unborn, All-pervading, accepted by sages, by Nārada, Asita, Devala, and Vyāsa. He asks Kṛṣṇa to tell of His divine manifestations without exception. The commentary compares vibhūti to Plato’s Divine Ideas—living formative principles, not pale abstractions. Since worship of the Absolute is difficult for embodied beings, approaching the Supreme through relations with the world is easier. Kṛṣṇa agrees to declare His prominent forms only, for there is no end to His extent: He is the Self seated in the hearts of all creatures, the beginning, middle, and end of beings. Of Ādityas He is Viṣṇu; of lights, the radiant Sun; of Maruts, Marīci; of stars, the moon; of Vedas, the Sāmaveda; of gods, Indra; of senses, mind; of beings, consciousness; of Rudras, Śiva; of Yakṣas and Rākṣasas, Kubera; of Vasus, Agni; of mountain-peaks, Meru; of household priests, Bṛhaspati; of war-generals, Skanda; of lakes, the ocean; of great sages, Bhṛgu; of utterances, Aum; of offerings, silent meditation; of immovable things, the Himālaya; of trees, the Aśvattha; of divine seers, Nārada; of Gandharvas, Chitraratha; of perfected ones, Kapila; of horses, Ucchaiśravas; of elephants, Airāvata; of men, the monarch; of weapons, the thunderbolt; of cows, Kāmadhuk; of progenitors, Kandarpa; of serpents, Vāsuki; of Nāgas, Ananta; of water-dwellers, Varuṇa; of ancestors, Aryaman; of law-maintainers, Yama; of Titans, Prahlāda; of calculators, Time; of beasts, the lion; of birds, Garuḍa; of purifiers, wind; of warriors, Rāma; of fishes, the alligator; of rivers, the Ganges; of creations, beginning, end, and middle; of sciences, the science of the self; of debaters, dialectic; of letters, “A”; of compounds, the dual; imperishable time; the creator facing all sides; death the all-devouring; the origin of things to be; and among feminine beings, fame, prosperity, speech, memory, intelligence, firmness, and patience. Of hymns He is the Bṛhatsāman; of metres, the gāyatrī; of months, Mārgaśīrṣa; of seasons, spring; of the deceitful, gambling; of the splendid, splendour; victory; effort; the goodness of the good. Of Vṛṣṇis He is Vāsudeva; of Pāṇḍavas, Arjuna; of sages, Vyāsa; of poets, Uśana; of chastisers, the rod; of seekers of victory, wise policy; of secrets, silence.
The Lord’s Transfiguration
The vision continues: beings rush into the Lord’s fearful mouths set with terrible tusks, some caught between the teeth with heads crushed to powder—like torrents racing to the ocean, like moths rushing into a blazing fire to perish. Blinded by their own ignorance, they rush to destruction, and the Divine permits it because they carry out the effects of their own deeds; when we will a deed, we will its consequences. The whole cosmos—gods, blessed souls, animals, plants—exists in the plenitude of God’s life, for God cannot move outside Himself, having all within Himself. The Divine mind knows all as one, with no past or future. The Lord devours all worlds with flaming mouths, His fiery rays scorching the universe. Arjuna, trembling, asks who the Lord is with so terrible a form, saluting the Great Godhead and begging mercy.
The Three Modes and the Soul Beyond Them
The text turns to the closing verses of the fourteenth chapter, where the Lord declares that those who resort to wisdom and grow into the likeness of the Divine are neither born at creation nor disturbed at dissolution. Radhakrishnan explains that eternal life is not absorption into an indefinable Absolute but the attainment of universality and freedom of spirit, lifted above the flux of experience. The saved soul grows into the likeness of God—a similarity of quality, not an identity of substance—and he compares this to the Gospel’s call to be perfect as the Father is perfect. Śaṅkara reads such likeness as identity of nature, while other commentators differ.
The Lord then names great brahma, or prakṛti, as His womb, into which He casts the seed that produces the birth of all beings. All existence is a manifestation of the Divine; the Lord becomes Hiraṇyagarbha, the cosmic soul, and the world is the play of the Infinite upon the finite. Whatever forms are born in any womb, prakṛti is the mother and God the father casting the seed—a conception the text notes underlies certain forms of worship derided as phallicism. The Supreme is the seminal Reason of the world, and beings arise from the impregnation of matter through the logoi spermatikoi. Unlike the dualism of Socrates and Plato, the Gita holds that ideas and matter alike belong to the Divine, and the cosmic process continues until alpha and omega coincide.
The three guṇas—sattva, rajas, and tamas—are then presented as the primary constituents of nature, born of prakṛti, binding the imperishable dweller in the body. Sattva reflects consciousness as radiance; rajas is outward movement; tamas is inertia and indifference. The cosmic trinity mirrors their dominance: sattva in Viṣṇu, rajas in Brahmā, tamas in Śiva. When the soul identifies with the modes of nature it forgets its eternity, and to rise above bondage one must become triguṇātīta—sattva sublimated into light, rajas into austerity, tamas into tranquillity. Each mode binds in its own way: sattva by attachment to happiness and knowledge, rajas by attachment to action, tamas by negligence, indolence, and sleep. The commentary compares this to the humours of physiology, though the Hindu classification takes psychic characteristics into account. Sattva leads after death to pure worlds, rajas to rebirth among those attached to action, tamas to the wombs of the deluded; the sāttvika rise upward, the rājasa remain in the middle, the tāmasa sink. Yet even sattvika goodness is imperfect while it involves struggle with its opposite; the highest ideal is to transcend the ethical level and become a saint.
One who perceives no agent other than the modes, and knows what is beyond them, attains the Lord’s being; rising above the three modes brings freedom from birth, death, old age, and pain. Arjuna asks by what marks such a person is known, what his way of life is, and how he transcends the modes. The commentary identifies these marks with those of the sthitaprajña and the bhaktimān, showing that perfection’s marks are the same however reached. The Lord answers that one who neither abhors nor longs for illumination, activity, and delusion; who sits unconcerned, unperturbed by the modes, knowing that only the modes act; who regards pain and pleasure alike, looks equally on clod, stone, and gold, and is the same in honour and dishonour, to friends and foes, having given up all initiative of action—such a one has risen above the modes. And one who serves the Lord with unfailing devotion rises above them as well.
The Supreme Person
For the Gita, the moving world is a creation of the Lord, who accepts the world and acts within it. From the cosmic end, the Supreme is Īśvara, the Highest Person, Puruṣottama, Lord of the universe, dwelling in the heart of every creature. The Paramātman is the Supreme Self, God in the soul; the Gita refers not to the unknown abyss of the Godhead but to the Spirit indwelling and moving creation, exalting the Personal God who combines timeless existence and temporal beginning. Śaṅkara interprets the mutable as the changing universe, the immutable as the māyāśakti or power of the Lord, and the Supreme as eternal, pure, intelligent, and free from the limitations of both; Radhakrishnan takes the immutable as the emancipated soul. The universe has two essences—self and inanimate, immutable and mutable—and above them stands the Supreme, transcending yet permeating all. As the Lord surpasses the perishable and is higher even than the imperishable, He is celebrated as the Supreme Person in the world and in the Veda. He who, undeluded, knows Him as the Highest Person is the knower of all and worships Him with all his being; knowledge leads to devotion. Thus has this most secret doctrine been taught, and knowing it a man becomes wise and fulfils all duties.
Divine and Demoniac Natures
The Blessed Lord then lists the divine endowments: fearlessness, purity of mind, wise apportionment of knowledge and concentration, charity, self-control, sacrifice, study of scriptures, austerity, uprightness; non-violence, truth, freedom from anger, renunciation, tranquillity, aversion to fault-finding, compassion, freedom from covetousness, gentleness, modesty, steadiness; vigour, forgiveness, fortitude, purity, freedom from malice and pride. The human race is not divided into kingdoms of light and darkness; each man contains both, and the distinction is neither exclusive nor comprehensive. The demoniac endowments are ostentation, arrogance, excessive pride, anger, harshness, and ignorance—the divine make for deliverance, the demoniac for bondage. The demoniac do not know action or renunciation; they say the world is unreal, without basis, without a Lord, not causally ordered, caused by desire. Holding this view, lost souls of feeble understanding rise as enemies of the world. Giving themselves to insatiable desire, hypocrisy, and pride, they act with impure resolves, obsessed with cares ending only at death, amassing wealth unjustly. They say: “This I have gained; this I shall attain; this foe I have slain; I am lord, enjoyer, successful, mighty, happy.” This is the sin of Lucifer—claiming to be oneself the godhead. Bewildered and entangled in delusion, they fall into foul hell; self-conceited, they perform sacrifices in name only. Despising the Lord dwelling in their bodies, these cruel haters are hurled into demoniac wombs, and fallen there they do not attain Him but go to the lowest state. This is not predestination; it is always open to turn godward. The triple gate of hell is lust, anger, and greed—abandon these.
Main Arguments
The central argument of the book, as Radhakrishnan presents it, is that the Gītā does not teach world-denial but world-transfiguration. The world is dharmakṣetra, a battleground for moral struggle, where decisive issues are fought daily and hourly in human hearts; it is also karmabhūmi, where karma is worked out and soul-making fulfilled. The ascent from earth to heaven, from suffering to spirit, is through the path of dharma; even in corporeal existence, practising dharma reaches safety where difficulty culminates in joy. The Gītā’s aim is not to teach theory but to enforce practice. Theory cannot separate what life cannot separate; civic and social duties provide religion its tasks. Dharma promotes both worldly prosperity and spiritual freedom, and the Gītā accepts life’s duties and relationships as opportunities for realizing spiritual freedom, offering life to be transfigured. The battlefield is called dharmakṣetra because the Lord, protector of dharma, is actively present; Kurukṣetra means the field of the Kurus, land of a leading clan, and the compound suggests the law of life by death. Life is warfare against evil; the creative process is a perpetual tension between incompatibles whose conflict advances development and furthers cosmic purpose. War is retributory judgment and discipline; Kurukshetra is also tapahkṣetra, field of penance. God is judge and redeemer, destroyer and creator, Śiva and Viṣṇu.
A second argument concerns action and renunciation. Some hold that jñāna in the Gītā requires renouncing action, citing the view that created beings are bound by karma and saved by knowledge; every deed, good or bad, produces effects, involves embodiment, confirms egoism and separateness, and sets off new effects, so one should renounce all action and become a saṃnyāsin. Śaṃkara, upholding jñāna as the means of salvation, argues that Arjuna was a madhyamādhikāri for whom renunciation was dangerous, so he was advised to act. But the Gītā adopts the twofold purpose of the Bhāgavata religion: complete release and work in the world. Vyāsa tells Śuka that the most ancient method of the Brahmin is to obtain release by knowledge and perform actions; the Īśā Upaniṣad adopts a similar view. The Gītā asks us to live in the world and save it. The teacher points out the extreme subtlety of action (gahana karmaṇo gatiḥ). We cannot abstain from action; nature is ever at work. Inertia is not freedom. The binding quality lies not in performance but in motive or desire. Renunciation means absence of desire, not cessation from work. Action based on false premises binds; if life is based on ignorance, even altruistic conduct binds.
A third argument concerns Arjuna’s pacifism. When Kṛṣṇa advises Arjuna to fight, he is not supporting the validity of warfare; war is the occasion to show the spirit in which all work must be done. Arjuna takes a pacifist attitude, declining to fight for truth and justice, representing the extreme of non-violence, saying it is better to face kinsmen weaponless than to answer blow with blow. Arjuna does not raise the right or wrong of war; he has fought many battles. He declares against war because he must destroy his own friends and relations (svajanam). His reluctance is not spiritual development or sattvaguna but the product of ignorance and passion; he admits being overcome by weakness and ignorance. The Gītā’s ideal is ahiṃsā. Kṛṣṇa advises fighting without passion, ill-will, anger or attachment; such a frame of mind makes violence impossible. We must fight against wrong, but allowing hatred ensures spiritual defeat. War is an illustration. Kṛṣṇa tells Arjuna one can attain perfection even while doing duties—action done devotedly, without attachment to results.
A fourth argument concerns lokasaṃgraha, world-solidarity. Arjuna, a householder of the warrior caste, speaks like a saṃnyāsin, not from dispassion but from false compassion. Everyone must grow upward from where he stands. The Gītā’s emphasis on lokasaṃgraha requires changing our whole life pattern. We are kindly men shocked if a dog is hurt, yet persist in wrong on a large scale to millions, believing we do our duty to family, city or state. The Gītā requires stress on human brotherhood. Śaṃkara points out that the imperative to fight is not mandatory (vidhi) but refers to prevailing usage. The Gītā belongs to a period of upheaval when intellectual, moral, social and political forms are at strife; in the conflict between the law of good and forms impeding it, force is sometimes necessary. We must act in the world as it is while improving it, not defiled by disgust even in loss, bereavement and humiliation. Acting with detachment, dedication and love even for the enemy helps rid the world of wars.
A fifth argument concerns the transcendence of karma. One who acts with detachment from results and dedication to God is a perpetual saṃnyāsin. Hostility to the method of works is hostility to salvation by works, not to work. If ignorance (avidyā) is the root evil, wisdom (jñāna) is the remedy. Wisdom is ever pure, not the fruit of an act; an eternal attainment cannot result from a temporary act. But karma prepares for wisdom. Śaṃkara, commenting on the Sanatsujātīya, says liberation is accomplished by wisdom, but wisdom does not spring without purification of the heart; therefore one should perform all acts of speech, mind and body prescribed in the Śrutis and smṛtis, dedicating them to the Supreme Lord. Work done thus becomes yajña, sacrifice—a making sacred to the Divine, a spontaneous self-giving, surrender to a greater consciousness. By such surrender the mind is purified and shares the Divine’s power and knowledge. Action as yajña ceases to bind. The Gītā gives a religion by which the rule of karma can be transcended. There is no caprice or arbitrary interference of a transcendent purpose within the natural order. The teacher recognizes a realm where karma does not operate; establishing relations with it, we are free in our deepest being. The chain of karma can be broken here and now. We become masters of karma by developing detachment and faith in God.
Key Concepts
The vocabulary of the Gītā, as Radhakrishnan expounds it, is a vocabulary of levels. Brahman is the subsistent simplicity, its own object in an intuition which is its very being—the pure subject whose existence cannot be ejected into the external world. Strictly, we cannot describe Brahman; the austerity of silence alone brings out the inadequacy of our halting descriptions. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad says: where everything indeed has become the Self itself, whom and by what should one think? By what can we know the universal knower? The duality between knowing and knowable characteristic of discursive thought is transcended. The Eternal One is so infinitely real that we dare not even name It One, since oneness is an idea derived from worldly experience (vyavahāra). We can only speak of It as the non-dual, advaita, known when all dualities are resolved in the Supreme Identity. The Upaniṣads indulge in negative accounts—the Real is not this, not this (na iti, na iti), “without sinews, without scar, untouched by evil,” “without either shadow or darkness, without a within or a without.” The Gītā supports this view in many passages: the Supreme is “unmanifest, unthinkable and unchanging,” “neither existent nor non-existent.” Contradictory predicates indicate the inapplicability of empirical determinations: “It does not move and yet it moves. It is far away and yet it is near.” These bring out the twofold nature of the Supreme as being and becoming—para or transcendent and apara or immanent, both inside and outside the world.
Māyā is the concept by which the world’s relation to Brahman is expressed. If the Supreme is nirguṇa and acintya, the world is an appearance not logically related to the Absolute. The world depends on Brahman, but Brahman does not depend on the world. This one-sided dependence and logical inconceivability are brought out by māyā. The world is neither essential being nor mere non-being—indefinable as either. Māyā does not imply the world is illusion or absolutely non-existent. God is a living principle, a consuming fire; the Supreme is both this and that. Eternity is transfiguration of time. Subject and object are two poles of one Reality. The principle of objectivity, mūlaprakṛti, the unmanifested (avyakta) potentiality, is of the nature of the creative Logos, Īśvara. Nārāyaṇa broods over the waters. Cosmic process is interaction between being and non-being. God is the upper limit; prakṛti the lower. The Gītā does not uphold metaphysical dualism; non-being depends on being. The first product of interaction is the cosmic egg (brahmāṇḍa). Arjuna sees the whole Viśvarūpa. Those viewing the Supreme as impersonal regard Īśvara with self-manifestation as ignorance (avidyā). The Lord says though birthless, He comes to birth by His own power (ātmamāyayā). The manifested world hides the real from mortals’ vision, so it is called delusive. Yet the world is not an illusion; regarding it as mere mechanical nature unrelated to God makes us miss its Divine essence, and only then does it become a source of delusion. The Divine māyā becomes avidyāmāyā, but only for mortals shut off from truth; to God, who knows and controls all, it is vidyāmāyā. God seems enveloped in māyā‘s cloak. Since the world is an effect of God the cause, and the cause is more real than the effect, the world is less real than God. This relative unreality is confirmed by becoming’s self-contradictory nature: experience struggles with opposites, and the real is above all opposites.
The avatāra is the descent of God into man. God is never born in the ordinary sense; birth and incarnation implying limitation do not apply to Him. When the Lord manifests at a particular time, it occurs with reference to a finite being. In Chapter XI the whole world is seen in God. When a finite individual develops spiritual qualities, he sits in judgment on the world and starts spiritual and social upheaval—then God is said to be born for protection of the good, destruction of evil, and establishment of righteousness. As an individual, Kṛṣṇa is one of millions of forms of the Universal Spirit; the author mentions Kṛṣṇa of history alongside his disciple Arjuna. The avatāra demonstrates man’s spiritual resources and latent divinity—not contraction of Divine majesty into human frame but exaltation of human nature to Godhead. Theism holds Kṛṣṇa is an incarnation (avatarana), a descent of the Divine into human frame. Though the Lord knows no birth or change, He has many times been born. Kṛṣṇa is the human embodiment of Viṣṇu. Creation and incarnation both belong to the world of manifestation, not to the Absolute Spirit. If the Infinite is manifested in finite existence throughout time, special manifestation at one moment raises no fresh problem beyond creation. Scholastic theologians say God is present in creatures “by essence, presence, power.” When unrighteousness increases, He creates Himself to lift the world onto new tracks; out of love He is born again and again. A Mahābhārata passage describes the Supreme’s four forms: one dwells on earth practising penance; the second watches over erring humanity; the third is engaged in activity in the world of men; the fourth is plunged in slumber of a thousand years. Hindu tradition holds avatāras are not confined to the human level. Suffering is traced not to man’s rebellious will but to disharmony between God’s creative purpose and the actual world. The Gītā points to a Divine Creator imposing forms on the abysmal void; prakṛti is raw material, chaos out of which order evolves. Whenever deadlock is created, Divine interference releases it. The idea of one unique revelation is inconsistent with present views of the universe. The avatāra is a descent of God into man, not ascent of man into God (which is the liberated soul’s case). The fact of descent indicates the Divine is not opposed to full vital and physical manifestation. Though the Gītā accepts avatāra as the Divine limiting Himself, it also stresses the eternal avatāra, God in man. According to the Bhāgavata, “at midnight, in the thickest darkness, the Dweller in every heart revealed Himself in the divine Devakī.” Kṛṣṇa is said to be born of Vasudeva and Devakī. The incarnation is not so much conversion of Godhead into flesh as taking up of manhood into God. The teacher guides the pupil to attain mama sādharmyam. Arjuna typifies the struggling soul; when bewildered, he takes refuge in his higher self, typified as Kṛṣṇa, the world teacher (jagadguru). The rider in the chariot of the body is Arjuna, but the charioteer is Kṛṣṇa.
The guṇas are the strands of prakṛti: with reference to matter they act as lightness (sattva), movement (rajas) and heaviness (tamas); as mental phenomena, as goodness, passion and dullness. Evil is caused by bondage to the guṇas: the seed of life or spirit cast into matter becomes fettered by the guṇas. According to the preponderance of one or another guṇa, the soul rises or falls. When we recognize the self as distinct from prakṛti with its guṇas, we are released. Sattva binds as much as rajas and tamas; we must rise above ego, become triguṇātīta. The Veda’s subject matter is the three modes; Arjuna should become free of the threefold nature, free from dualities, fixed in purity (nityasattva—eternal truth, not the guṇa), not caring for acquisition and preservation (yogakṣema), possessed of the Self.
Yoga, from yuj, to bind, means binding, balancing, enhancing psychic powers. The Gītā gives a comprehensive yoga-śāstra including jñāna-yoga, bhakti-yoga, karma-yoga. Arjuna typifies the human soul seeking perfection, his mind clouded. Saṃsāra is historical becoming; action (karma) keeps the world going; at the human level action is caused by desire (kāma), rooted in avidyā. We cannot cure desires by fresh desires. Vidyā is liberation from avidyā-kāma-karma. Wisdom is not theoretical learning but spiritual vision; per Advaita Vedānta it is always present, needing revelation.
