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“By means of the mental faculty, renounce all actions unto Me and
make Me your greatest goal. Taking refuge with Buddhi Yoga, be steadfast in thinking
about Me. By being in constant communion with Me, you will be able to get rid of
all evils in your life by My grace. However, if you do not listen to Me out of
egoism, you will perish.”
By cultivating thoughts which are devoted only to the Lord,
one is able to transcend all miseries and troubles. One then attains a state of
mind which is pure and tranquil. When all actions are renounced to the Lord, the
person concerned has no aspiration, worry, anxiety, attachment, aversion, lust
or desire left. His entire nature is then filled with the thoughts of the
Supreme Being. However, if by being egoistic, one disregards the advice provided
by a purified intelligence and mind, one is bound to suffer. Sri Krishna has asked Arjuna to fight relinquishing all
fruits. If Arjuna, out of the pity
that he had possessed in the beginning, thinks otherwise, he will be in deep
sorrow as the war will claim all his relatives and friends. Instead, if he
battles, he will be able to save lives and also be able to recover from the
blows which destiny will deal to him. Being established in God, he will get the
knowledge and wisdom to tide over all crises and losses. We have seen the same
happening during and after Kurukshetra war, when Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu died, the five sons of Draupadi were killed, allies like Virata and Drupada fell, and the entire Panchala clan was destroyed by Drona and his son Asvastthama. Arjuna and
Pandavas temporarily lost mental peace but could recover the same with
Sri Krishna's grace.
“If out of egoism you claim that you will not fight, you take a
false vow, as your nature will direct you (to fight). Everybody, Kaunteya, is engaged in their own work
propelled by their own nature. Whatever you refuse to do out of delusion, you
will be forced to do (by your nature).”
This is a masterpiece of psychology. A
carpenter is drawn towards wood work because his nature forces him to work on
wood. An artist will paint and a musician will sing because of the same reason.
We all are born with certain inherent tendencies which are part of our nature.
Such tendencies manifest themselves as we grow up and these tendencies decide as
to what we are fit to do in our lives. If we do something different from the
inherent tendencies, we normally suffer. It takes a great force to go against
one’s nature and often it is counterproductive.
Does that mean that a thief or murderer can be acquitted and
can never be reformed since it is in their nature to steal and commit violence?
A thief steals because his nature compels him to do so but it is in his power to
subdue that nature and imbibe a higher nature. A nature which compels one to
perform baser actions is a poorer nature of the Tamasik type and we know that Tamas can be overcome by Rajas and Rajas by Sattva – a gradual progress from lower
to higher forms of nature. So unless there is a struggle within ourselves we are
victims in the hand of our nature. Does this mean that the Lord advises the
thief to carry out its own activity, i.e. stealing? Again, that’s not the case.
The Lord wants us to follow our higher nature and call of the duty and not the
lower nature and the call of the wild. Arjuna’s duty is to fight and therefore
by being negligent he is actually falling prey to his lower nature, of the Tamasik type. Often Tamas comes in the garb of Sattva. Here also Arjuna (and the scholars and
intellectuals) think that he is being compassionate by not waging the war, when
in reality he is afraid, of losses, of suffering, of pain, of sin and
ingratitude. The whole endeavor of Gita is to enable us to overcome our
lower nature and reach the higher and higher ones. This is further evident from
the last few lines. In the next verse Sri Krishna explains the reason
behind all our troubles and miseries.
“Oh Arjuna, Iswara, the
Lord God, is situated in the heart of all beings. (Without knowing it) all
beings are caught up in the whirlwind of Maya, the divine illusive force, in a
mechanical way. Therefore go and perform all your duties and actions in all
circumstances by remembering that (Iswara). By the grace of that you will
get the eternal state of supreme bliss.”
This is the core of Gita’s teaching. Every living being is
inherently divine, only we know it not. We are deluded by the nature, the Maya, who is the great Para Prakrti. Maya is a great mystery. It is Maya that deludes us from knowing our
nature. It is a great force that pervades this universe. It exists and also it
does not exist. It is an instrument in the hand of God to perpetuate the
creation. It is composed of the three gunas – Sattva, Rajas and Tamas which make up the entire universe.
One, who transcends the gunas,
transcends Maya and therefore
realizes God or Self. The Maya is
composed of Avidya or ignorance and
Vidya or knowledge. Vidya directs us towards God and enables
us to ascend along the spiritual path, while Avidya forcefully thrusts us into the
frying pan of the world and worldliness, the quicksand of the base nature, with
the help of its weapons like lust, greed, desire, anger, attachment, delusion,
pride, ego, vanity, sloth, hatred, suffering, sickness, selfishness, cowardice,
i.e. in sort all rajasik and tamasik qualities. It is Avidya Maya that is variously known as
Satan or Devil or Mar in different religions. It is the source of all
temptations for a spiritual aspirant. As long as one is under the spell of Avidya, one never realizes God, or even
possesses the urge to do so. It is only when an aspirant comes under Vidya Maya that the first glimpses of
truth dawn on him or her and therefore he or she pines for the Absolute Truth,
living behind all prejudices, dogmas, and doctrines of established religions. Avidya Maya is the sustainer of the
material world, while Vidya, like St.
Peter has the key to the golden gate of the kingdom of heaven, the Absolute
Bliss, the Supreme Knowledge, the Supreme Consciousness or Being (Sat-Chit-Ananda or Brahman). Maya is the veil that covers the God
realization from us. Remove the veil and you will see the Supreme Truth
yourself, just as scum cover the clear water in a tank or a cloud covers the sun
light – so says Sri Ramakrishna
Paramhansa.
How is Maya overcome, or how can the veil be removed? Chapter 7
first provided the answer – One who worships Me can swim across the great ocean
of Maya. Now the Lord reveals
that Maya is overcome through the
grace of the God, if one takes complete refuge in
God in all activities.
“Now you have been told the great secrets and mysteries (of
spiritual life) by Me. By listening to this raptly, do whatever you
desire.”
The intellectuals who claim that Sri Krishna coaxes
Arjuna to fight the war should do well to read this statement of His.
After explaining everything to Arjuna and revealing to him all secrets
the Lord neither coaxes, nor cajoles, nor does He request him to fight. He
merely says, "do whatever you please." Desire of fighting was always there
inside Arjuna, only he was hesitating under the spell of weakness. When the
teaching enabled him to regain his strength, his desire to fight was
intensified, and after that he did not look back.
Sri Krishna thus reveals Himself to all
spiritual aspirants through this discourse to Arjuna. The entire world is facing a
terrible battle, which is fought in the innermost core of the human heart – the
fight between good and evil, between gods and demons, the daiva or the divine tendencies and the
asura or the demoniac qualities. It
is up to us to listen to Him and act and thus excel in our spiritual life or
ignore Him at our own peril.
But this is not the end; something is still there in the Lord’s
mind. He knows the tendencies of all the worldly beings, those who appeared in
the past, those who are present and those who would come in the future. He knows
that not everybody is fit for the path of contemplation or action or even the
highest devotion as prescribed in Gita. But they would still pine for
the Truth. They need to have some hope. There should also be some hope for
Arjuna, after he had fought and won over his enemies. He may think his mission
accomplished but still may not get the much cherished peace, thinking all the
while about the mayhem. Therefore He says, “Now listen to the greatest of all
secrets, you are my great favorite and therefore I tell unto you something of
immense benefit. Relinquish all duties and take complete
refuge in Me. I shall free you from all sins, do not grieve.
Devote your mind to Me, be My devotee, My worshiper, bow down to Me (i.e.
surrender to Me). I truthfully promise you, who is so dear to Me that you’ll get
Me.”
Complete surrender is not for everybody. That would need the
greatest strength imaginable for a devotee. Sri Ramakrishna bestowed the same to Girish Chandra Ghosh, the bravest of his
devotees, when he asked the latter to give “power of attorney” to him. A “power
of attorney” to God implies total and unconditional surrender of everything – of
will, name, fame, thoughts, actions, desires, families, friends, in short,
everything connected with the twin attributes of possessiveness and ego – “I”
and “Mine”. Once this happens, one is automatically free from all sins, because
all his actions are destroyed as a result. At the same time, this is so
difficult. Girish realized this when
he could not even cry when his sons and daughters and dear wife died as they
were not his to cry. Total surrender demands surrender over the all rights and
responsibilities. Arjuna also
realized this when sons of five Pandavas were all killed in the great
battle. The Lord will take up responsibility of only those who become children
of the Lord. One cannot take up responsibility of an adult but one willingly
takes up the responsibility of children. Therefore through such complete
surrender one becomes as pure and simple as a little child. Jesus meant the same
when he said that kingdom of heaven is reached only through children. Such
children are the pure hearted children of the universal mother who will not even
look back when her child is busy playing with his toys of material happiness,
but will come running when the child, leaving behind all such toys, piteously
cries for her company.
A devotee who has surrendered unconditionally will get the
Lord, is His solemn promise to the mankind. This is a message of great hope.
Every message of Gita is universal because it transcends
all artificial barriers of religion, caste, race, cultures and geographies. The
same truth as proclaimed in Gita is
seen in other scriptures. The languages may be different, the context may be
different, the dogmas may vary, but the message is applicable to all. Unless
that happens a scripture isn’t truly God’s message to the mankind, because God
does not speak to one particular sect, culture or creed. He is universal and
therefore His message must be universal.
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