English
It is with reference to the operation of these prakrtis that the cosmic world and the world of life and spirit may be said to be existent in God. But there is the other form of God, as the transcendent Brahman, and, so far as this form is con- cerned, God transcends the sphere of the universe of matter and life. But in another aspect of God, in His totality and super- personality, He remains unexhausted in all, and the creator and upholder of all, though it is out of a part of Him that the world has come into being. The aspect of God’s identity with, and the aspect of His transcendence and nature as the father, mother and supporter of the universe, are not separated in the Git@, and both the aspects are described often in one and the same passage. Thus it is said, ‘‘I am the father, mother, upholder and grandfather of this world, and I am the sacred syllable OM, the three Vedas, Rk, Saman and Yajus; I am the sacrifice, the oblations and the fire, and yet I am the master and the enjoyer of all sacrifices. I am the final destiny, upholder, matter, the passive illuminator, the rest, support, friend, the origin, the final dissolution, the place, the receptacle and the immortal seed. I produce heat and shower, I destroy and create, I am both death and the deathless, the good and the bad®.”\ With reference to His transcendent part it is 1 Gitd, 1x. 3-5. * 2 Ibid. 1x. 6-8. 8 Ibid. 1x. 16-19, 24. XIV] God and Man 527 said, ‘“The sun, the moon and fire do not illuminate it—it is my | Guat abode, from which, when once achieved, no one returns!.”’ | And again, immediately after, it is said, ‘‘It is my part that forms | the eternal soul-principle (jiva-bhiita) in the living, which attracts , the five senses and the manas which lie buried in prakrti, and | which takes the body and goes out of it with the six senses, just __|_as air takes out fragrance from the flowers®.”” And then God is ‘ said to be the controlling agent of all operations in this world. Thus it is said, ““By my energy I uphold the world and all living beings and fill all crops with their specific juices; as fire in the bodies of living beings, and aided by the biomotor prana functions, I digest the four kinds of food; I am the light in the sun, the moon and fire.”” Again it is said, ‘‘I reside in the hearts of all; knowledge, forgetfulness and memory all come from me; I alone am to be known by the Vedas; I alone know the Vedas, and I alone am the author of the Vedanta’.”” From these examples it is evident that the Gita does not know that pantheism and deism and theism cannot well be jumbled up into one as a consistent philosophic creed. And it does not attempt to answer any objec- tions that may be made against the combination of such opposite views. The Gita not only asserts that all is God, but it also \ again and again repeats that God transcends all and is simul- ' taneously transcendent and immanent in the world. The answer apparently implied in the Gi#d to all objections to the apparently \ different views of the nature of God is that transcendentalism, immanentalism and pantheism lose their distinctive and opposite | aetege— in ) characters in the melting whole of the super- -personality. of God.—— ' Sometimes inthe same passage, and sometimes in passages of the same context, the Gita talks in a pantheistic, a transcendental or ca theistic vein, and this seems to imply that there is no contra- ‘diction in the different aspects of God as preserver and controller “of the world, as the substance of the world, life and soul, and {as the transcendent substratum underlying heal all. In order to emphasize the fact that all that exists and all that is worthy of existence or all that has a superlative existence in good or bad are God’s manifestation, the Gita is never tired of repeating that whatever is highest, best or even worst in things is God or 1 Gitd, xv. 6. 2 Ibid. xv. 7 and 8. It is curious that here the word Igvara is used as an epithet of jiva. 8 Ibid. xv. 8, 12, 13, 14, 15. 528 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. God’s manifestation. Thus it is said, ‘I am the gambling of dice in all deceptive operations, I am victory in all endeavours, heroism of the heroes and the moral qualities (sattva) of all moral men (sattvavatam)’’; and after enumerating a number of such instances Krsna says that, wherever there are special gifts _or powers or excellence of any kind, they are to be regarded as the special manifestation of God!. The idea that God holds within Himself the entire manifold universe is graphically em- phasized in a fabulous form, when Krsna gives Arjuna the divine eye of wisdom and Arjuna sees Krsna in his resplendent divine form, shining as thousands of suns burning together, with thousands of eyes, faces and ornaments, pervading the heavens and the earth, with neither beginning nor end, as the great cosmic person into whose mouths all the great heroes of Kuruksetra field had entered, like rivers into the ocean. Krsna, after showing Arjuna his universal form, says, ““I am time (kala), the great destroyer of the world, and I am engaged in collecting the harvest of human lives, and all that will die in this great battle of Kuruk- setra have already been killed by me; you will be merely an instru- ment in this great destruction of the mighty battle of Kuruksetra. So you can fight, destroy your enemies, attain fame and enjoy the sovereignty without any compunction that you have destroyed the lives of your kinsmen.” ,-— The main purport of the Gitd view of God seems to be that ultimately there is no responsibility for good or evil and that good and evil, high and low, great and small have all emerged from God and are upheld in Him. When a man understands the nature and reality of his own self and its agency, and his relation with God, both in his transcendent and cosmic nature, and the universe around him and the gunas of attachment, etc., which bind him to his worldly desires, he is said to have the true knowledge. There is No opposition between the path of this true knowledge (jrana- yoga) and the path of duties; for true knowledge supports and is supported by right performance of duties. The path of knowledge is praised in the Gita in several passages. Thus it is said, that just as fire burns up the wood, so does knowledge reduce all actions to ashes. There is nothing so pure as knowledge. He who has true faith is attached to God, and he who has controlled his senses, attains knowledge, and having attained it, secures peace. He who 1 Gitd, x. 36-41. ; ; / . | XIV] God and Man 529 is foolish, an unbeliever, and full of doubts, is destroyed. He who is always doubting has neither this world, nor the other, nor does he enjoy any happiness. Even the worst sinner can hope to cross the sea of sins in the boat of knowledge?. In the Gita, Iv. 42, Krsna says to Arjuna, ‘‘ Therefore, having destroyed the ignorance of your heart by the sword of knowledge, and having cut asunder all doubts, raise yourself up.” But what is this knowledge? In / the Gita, 1v. 36, in the same context, this knowledge is defined to be that view of things by which all beings are perceived in this self or God. The true knowledge of God destroys all karma in the sense that he who has perceived and realized the true nature of all things in God cannot be attached to his passions and desires _as an ignorant man would be. In another passage, already referred “to, it is said that the roots of the worldly Agvattha tree are to be cut by the sword of unattachment. The confusion into which Arjuna falls in the Gita, 111. 1 and 2, regarding the relative excellence of the path of karma and the path of knowledge is wholly unfounded. Krsna points out in the Gita, 111. 3, that there are two paths, the path of knowledge and the path of duties ( jfana-yoga and karma-yoga). The confusion had arisen from the fact that Krsna had described the immortality of soul and the undesirability of Vedic actions done with a motive, and had also asked Arjuna to fight and yet _remain unattached and perform his duty for the sake of duty. The purpose of the Gita was to bring about a reconciliation | between these two paths, and to show that the path of knowledge | | leads to the path of duties by liberating it from the bonds of attachment; for all attachment is due to ignorance, and ignorance | is removed by true knowledge. But the true knowledge of God may be of a twofold nature. One may attain a knowledge of God in His transcendence as Brahman, and attain the philosophic ‘ wisdom of the foundation of all things in Brahman as the ultimate .“ substance and source of all manifestation and appearance. There is another way of clinging to God as a super-person, in a personal relation of intimacy, friendship and dependence. The Gita admits \. that both these ways may lead us to the attainment of our highest realization. But it is the latter which the Gita prefers and considers easier. Thus the Gita says (x11. 3-5) that those who adore the in- ' definable, unchangeable, omnipresent, unthinkable, and the un- manifested, controlling all their senses, with equal eyes for all 1 Gitd, Iv. 37-41. DII 34 if | | 530/ The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. ind engaged in the good of all, by this course attain Him. Those / who fix their mind on the unmanifested (avyakta) find this course _very hard. But those who dedicate all their actions to God and, clinging to Him as their only support, are devoted to Him in constant communion, them He saves soon from the sea of death and rebirth?.