Bhagavad Gita pt 2 – the original yoga text on who we are and the meaning of life

The Bhagavad Gita is the main go-to text on the planet for yoga instruction. It forms a small subsection of a greater work known as the Mahabharata – the history of greater India (known originally as Bharata, after the king of the same name who once ruled it). If there is one book on the planet that we should read and understand, it is this one. Stranded on a desert island with only one book, I would recommend Bhagavad Gita. The rest are all frills. 

During my 10 years at the yoga ashram, student monks attended classes daily where we learned to recite and memorise verses from the Bhagavad Gita and other important literatures. Younger scholars or learners are taught to memorise all 700 verses by heart, much like students of the Koran might do. Since it’s in poetic verse from, it’s easier to memorise, being sung according to a particular melodic meter which facilitates memorisation. Although it was 30 years ago, I still have several verses permanently memorised, which I can recite at will today.  

The importance and value of learning and understanding the wisdom of Bhagavad Gita cannot be stressed enough. The process of yoga is basically the goal of life. That is it. I mean what are you going to do once you have attained all the money you can possibly spend? You will probably try to enjoy it as much as your limited senses will allow. You may share it with others so they can enjoy life too. But at some point your senses will become satiated, or age will wear them down and the capacity to enjoy will deteriorate. It’s inevitable.  

At some point even the wealthiest sense-enjoyer becomes bored with “chewing the chewed”. S/he then begins to inquire into the deeper meaning of life. At least that is what an intelligent and self-aware person would do. Many are simply dulled or brainwashed into less conscious pursuits and their intelligence becomes covered by illusion, like a mirror covered by dust. Survival and sense gratification are merely the lowest rungs on the ladder. There is more that can be achieved in this valuable human form of life. At the top is self-actualization (as described in the psychologist Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), also called individuation by deep psyche researcher Carl Jung, and self-realization in the yoga tradition.  

Social work, humanitarian or philanthropic service to raise the quality of life on planet earth is a noble cause, allowing one to cultivate a sense of compassion, considered by the Buddha as the most important of qualities. This far supersedes mere selfish sense-gratification, which is the level of a child, bent on survival and ignorant of the reality around them. Even a parent instinctively wants to nurture their offspring, and a socially aware person wants to uplift their society. However, above even that is the real quest awaiting all who evolve to a level of maturity that some only glimpse at the very end of their lives, namely the search for the Absolute Truth, the origin of our existence, our transcendent natures or self-realization.  

Fortunately one doesn’t have to wait until the end of life to seek the answers to the ultimate questions of “who am I, what is the meaning of life and what happens when I die?” Sometimes that may be too late. We need to start inquiring from the moment we become aware enough. I left home and university to join the yoga ashram at 19 years old because I was so eager to get to the real business of life on earth. I lived there for the next 10 years as a celibate monk, training in meditation and Sanskrit studies, in order to begin to awaken the dormant consciousness of my true nature. I’m still learning. 

I remember a story of a great king, 5000 years ago, at the end of the previous great age or Yuga, and the beginning of this Kali Yuga. Maharaja Yudhistira was the ruler of the entire known world at that time, when the planet was divided into different principalities, but governed by one king or emperor. In other words, he had all the power and wealth one could desire. He was however destined to die, yet knew in advance of the approach of his death just seven days before the date. In those days the kings were called “rajarshis”, from the Sanskrit “raja” meaning king and “rishi” meaning wise soul. They were enlightened kings, not just militarily powerful. Knowing of his imminent demise, he renounced the entire kingdom, handed it over, left his palace and family and went to sit on the bank of the river, by the forest. There he invited the wisest yogis and mystics to come and teach him or instruct him on the procedure of leaving the body and what to remember as one makes that ultimate exit. 

One of the points here is that even if you have everything you could desire here, you still need to know how to walk away from it and leave it behind to attain something higher. Also another point is that we may not know, like the king did, the time of our moment of death. We may not have the good fortune to prepare in advance. Therefore life is like a razor’s edge and death could be at any moment and so we would be wise to become interested and aware of the most important lessons and gifts that this human life has for us as souls journeying through reality. According to the Vedic teachings of India, the soul can journey through lifetime after lifetime, repeating the same mistakes and stuck in the same illusion, unless they take the opportunity offered to awaken to full consciousness and make the effort to attain transcendence once and for all. 

To do this we begin by hearing from the yogis and mystics about the very techniques required to attain full consciousness. And that information is in the Bhagavad Gita and other texts. For example one verse is as follows:

                                                               sri bhagavan uvaca 

                                                      may astaka-manah partha 

                                                    yogam yunjam mad-asrayah 

                                                    asamsayam samagram mam 

                                                       yatha jnasyasi tac chrnu 

Bhagavad Gita as it is chapter 7:1 by Swami A.C. Bhaktivedanta 

Translation: “The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Now hear, O son of Pritha, how by practicing yoga in full consciousness of Me with mind attached to Me, you can know Me in full, free from doubt.” 

The verse begins “Sri Bhagavan uvaca”. This means “the Supreme Godhead said”. Notice the word Bhagavan. It is the same word as the title of the book Bhagavad Gita. It here means God, and the book title means “Song of God” in the sense that the book is a conversation between the incarnation of God, Krishna and his dear friend, Arjuna, the great prince and warrior, spoken around 5000 years ago. The word “Bhagavan” is a label or noun referring to the divinity by one of his many attributes. It translates as “one who has all opulence in full”. Sometimes students of different sects in India may be heard addressing their teacher or guru as Bhagavan. This is a misnomer and distortion that arises when false gurus appear and teach that they themselves are God. Such bogus practice is quite common in India where naïve and uneducated followers are easily bewildered by charlatans with a little knowledge or even mystic/psychic power. 

The misnomer is there in the very word used to describe them, namely “bhagavan”. To be the “one who has all opulence in full”, means that you have all of the 6 known opulences, namely all strength, wealth, beauty, fame, knowledge and renunciation. We may have great strength, but do we also have great wealth and beauty? Or one may have great wealth but does s/he have all the wealth? Obviously not. So no mortal human being can claim to be “bhagavan” because no one exists in a meterial that has all 6 opulences, in full. The closest one can get to that level as a mortal human is about 75%. Above that is Shiva who has 96% of all the opulence of Vishnu/Krishna in the Vedic pantheon. Anyway that’s described in detail as a technicality, but you get the point. The Bhagavad Gita is spoken by God, is a revelation from God, or a sacred text and has been seen as such for thousands of years. Whether you buy into that or not is secondary to the fact that it does contain the technical aspects of how to raise our consciousness to its highest level, using techniques unseen in any other literature or revelation on the planet outside of the Vedas. Within the Vedic body of literature it is one of several texts which all describe this identical process of yoga, all be it in various ways, focusing on the various styles of yoga. 

Nevertheless, in this verse Krishna begins to describe the technique of using yoga to attain full consciousness and knowledge of the divine, or the source, which is transcendental to this temporary material body and mind. It describes the process by which we can link up (yoga) our transcendent spirit self (atma) with the one original source (paramatma). The individual “atma” is the spirit self that is you, animating the material body, while the “paramatma” is the Supersoul or one expansion of God or the source, in the heart of everybody. There are many spirit souls and only one Supersoul. Each soul animates one body and one Supersoul resides simultaneously in every body. They are different, the same in spiritual quality but different because we the individual are very small and localised, compared to the Supersoul which is very great and all-pervaiding, though in quality we are both spirit.  

That is the most fundamental difference, and is the most crucial distinguishing philosophical factor between true Vaishnava Vedanta, or knowledge of the Veda, and speculative interpretations taught by “impersonalist” (mayavada) philosophers who pose as avatars or incarnations of the Godhead or source. This is a very deep philosophical truth, easily misunderstood by naïve students of the Vedas and Bhagavad Gita. The Shankara impersonalist Adwaita school is not taught in Bhagavad Gita for the very reason I have just logically explained. No one can claim to be “bhagavan” when they lack the 6 opulences in full. And secondly, to say that the soul is bhagavan/god but has just become covered, means that you are saying that god can become covered by illusion or Maya, that maya is greater than the Godhead, thus the name given to the impersonalist school – “Mayavada”.  

It is unfortunately an illogical nonsense propounded by followers of Shankaracharya, who himself said at the end of his life “bhaja Govinda bhaja Govinda mudha mate…” which means “oh fools, just worship Govinda (another name of the source or Godhead.) It is half the truth. The full truth is that we are indeed one in quality (spirit) with the divine source, but different in quantity. This is summed up in the Vedic aphorism:

                                                “achintya bhedabheda tattva” 

Which translates as  

                        “we are inconceivably simultaneously one and different” 

That is my conclusion of life in a phrase one can print on a t-shirt. It is to spirituality or yoga what E=mc2 was to Science before quantum physics came along and found out that Einstein was only half right. According to quantum theory we now actually can prove that matter can be simultaneously a wave and a particle, and secondly is affected by conscious observation. Even science is coming up with discoveries that defy science as we know it, that defy reality, that begin to look more and more like the mystical revelations of the Vedic texts on yoga, that have been around for 5000 years. And what is mysticism and magic other that the science that we have not yet discovered or identified fully?  

So take it from me when I say you have it all in Bhagavad Gita, via the descending process of knowledge, as opposed to the scientific ascending process, trying to uncover new heights by trial and error. The knowledge was already there all along, it just needed to be understood and realized. We already know the absolute truth and everything else. It is within us, we just need to become more conscious and remember it via the process of meditation and self-realization which is best obtained via the scientific technique and practice of yoga as taught in Bhagavad Gita.