English
The most important point in which the Gita differs from the Upanisads is that the Gita very strongly emphasizes the fact that the best course for attaining our highest realization is to dedicate all our actions to God, to cling to Him as our nearest and dearest, and always to be in communion with Him. The Gita draws many of its ideas from the Upanisads and looks to them with respect. It accepts the idea of Brahman as a part of the essence of God, and agrees that those who fix their mind on Brahman as their ideal also attain the high ideal of realizing God. But this is only a compromise; for the Gita emphasizes the necessity of a personal relation with God, whom we can love and adore. The beginning of our association with God must be made by dedicating the fruits of all our actions to God, by being a friend of all and sympathetic to all, by being self-controlled, the same in sorrow or happiness, self-contented, and in a state of perfect equanimity and equili- brium. It is through such a moral elevation that a man becomes apt in steadying his mind on God and ultimately in fixing his mind on God. Inthe Gita Krsna as God asks Arjuna to give up all ceremonials or religious courses and to cling to God as the only protector, and He promises that because of that God will liberate him*. Again, it is said that it is by devotion that a man knows what God is in reality and, thus knowing Him truly as He is, enters into Him. It is by seeking entire protection in God that one can attain his eternal state®. But, though in order to attain the height at which it is possible to fix one’s mind on God, one should first acquire the preliminary qualification of detaching oneself from the bonds of passions and desires, yet it is sometimes possible to reverse the situation. The Gita thus holds that those whose minds and souls are full of God’s love, who delight in constantly talking and thinking of God and always adore God with love, are dear to Him, and God, through His great mercy and kindness, grants them the proper wisdom and destroys the darkness of their ignorance by the light of knowledge’. 1 Gitd, xu1.6,7. ? Ibid. xvii. 66. * Ibid. xvi. 55,62. * Ibid. x. 9-11. XIV] God and Man 531 In the Gita, xvii. 57-58, Krsna as God asks Arjuna to leave all | fruits of actions to God and to fill his mind with God, and He assures him that He will then, by His divine grace, save him from all sorrows, troubles or difficulties. Again, in 1x. 30-32 it is said that, even if a man is extremely wicked, if he adores God devotedly, he becomes a saint; for he has adopted the right course, and he soon becomes religious and attains eternal peace of mind. Even sinners, women, Vaigyas and Sidras who cling to God for support, are emancipated. Krsna as God assures Arjuna that a devotee (bhakta) of God can never be lost!. If a inan clings to God, no matter whether he has understood Him rightly or not, no matter whether he has taken the right course of approaching Him or not, God accepts him in whichever way he clings to Him. No one can be lost. In whichever way one may be seeking God, one is always in God’s path®. If a man, prompted by diverse desires, takes to wrong gods, then even unto those gods God grants him true devotion, with which he follows his worship of those gods, and, even through such worship, grants him his desires?. God is the Lord of all and the friend of all beings. It is only great- souled men who with complete constancy of mind worship God, and with firm devotion repeat the name of God, and, being always in communion with Him, adore Him with devotion. God is easily accessible to those who always think of God with inalienable attachment*. In another passage (vi1. 16, 17) it is said that there are four classes of people who adore God: those who are enquiring, those who are in trouble, those who wish to attain some desired things, and those who are wise. Of these the wise (j#anin), who are always in communion with Him and who are devoted to Him alone, are superior; the wise are dear to Him and He is dear to them. In this passage it has been suggested that true wisdom consists in the habit of living in communion with God and in being in constant devotion to God. The path of bhaktz, or devotion, is thus praised in the Gita as being the best. For the Gita holds that, even if a man cannot proceed in the normal path of self-elevation and detach himself from passions and desires and establish himself in equanimity, he may still, simply by clinging to God and by firm devotion to Him, bring himself within the sphere of His grace, and by grace alone acquire true wisdom and 1 Gitd, Ix. 30-32. 2 Ibid. 1v. 11. 3 Tbid. vil. 20-22. 4 Ibid. 1v. 13-153 V. 29; VII. 14. 34-2 532 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita [cH. achieve that moral elevation, with little or no struggle, which is attained with so much difficulty by others. The path of bhakti is thus introduced in the Gita, for the first time, as an independent path side by side with the path of wisdom and knowledge of the Upanisads and with the path of austere self-discipline. Moral elevation, self-control, etc. are indeed regarded as an indispensable preliminary to any kind of true self-realization. But the advantage of the path of devotion (bhakti) consists in this, that, while some seekers have to work hard on the path of self-control and austere self-discipline, either by constant practice or by the aid of philo- sophic wisdom, the devotee makes an easy ascent to a high eleva- tion—not because he is more energetic and better equipped than his fellow-workers in other paths, but because he has resigned himself completely to God; and God, being pleased with his devotees who cling fast to Him and know nothing else, grants them wisdom and raises them up through higher and higher stages of self-elevation, self-realization and bliss. Arjuna treated Krsna, the incarnation of God on earth, as his friend, and Krsna in the réle of God exhorted him to depend entirely on Him and assured him that He would liberate him—He was asking him to give up everything else and cling to Him as his only support. The Gita lays down for the first time the corner-stone of the teachings of the Bhagavata-purana and of the later systems of Vaisnava thought, which elaborated the theory of bhakti and described it as the principal method of self-elevation and self-realization. Another important feature of the Gita doctrine of devotion consists in the fact that, as, on the one hand, God is contemplated by His devotees in the intimate personal relation of a father, teacher, master and friend, with a full consciousness of His divinity and His nature as the substratum and the upholder of the entire animate and inanimate cosmic universe, so, on the other hand, the transcendent personality of God is realized not only as the culmination of spiritual greatness and the ultimate reconciliation of all relative differences, of high and low, good and bad, but as the great deity, with a physical, adorable form, whom the devotee can worship not only mentally and spiritually, but also externally, with holy offerings of flowers and leaves. The transcendent God is not only immanent in the universe, but also present before the devotee in the form of a great deity resplendent with bright- ness, or in the personal form of the man-god Krsna, in whom XIV] God and Man 533 God incarnated Himself. The Gita combines together different conceptions of God without feeling the necessity of reconciling the oppositions or contradictions involved in them. It does not seem to be aware of the philosophical difficulty of combining the concept of God as the unmanifested, differenceless entity with the notion of Him as the super-person Who incarnates Himself on earth in the human form and behaves in the human manner. It is not aware of the difficulty that, if all good and evil should have emanated from God, and if there be ultimately no moral re- sponsibility, and if everything in the world should have the same place in God, there is no reason why God should trouble to incarnate Himself as man, when there is a disturbance of the Vedic dharma. If God is impartial to all, and if He is absolutely unperturbed, why should He favour the man who clings to Him, and why, for his sake, overrule the world-order of events and in his favour suspend the law of karma? It is only by constant endeavours and practice that one can cut asunder the bonds of karma. Why should it be made so easy for even a wicked man who clings to God to release himself from the bonds of attachment and karma, without any effort on his part? Again, the Gita does not attempt to reconcile the disparate parts which constitute the complex super-personality of God. How are the unmanifested or avyakta part as Brahman, the avyakta part asthe cosmic substratum of the universe, the prakrti part as the producer of the gunas, and the prakrti part as the jivas or individual selves, to be com- bined and melted together to form a complex personality? If the unmanifested nature is the ultimate abode (param dhama) of God, how can God as a person, who cannot be regarded as a mani- festation of this ultimate reality, be considered to be transcendent? How can there be a relation between God as a person and His diverse nature as the cosmic universe, jiva and the gunas? In a system like that of Sankara Brahman and Igvara, one and the many could be combined together in one scheme, by holding Brahman as real and Igvara and the many as unreal and illusory, produced by reflection of Brahman in the maya, the principle of illusoriness. But, howsoever Sankara might interpret the Gita, it does not seem that it considered [vara or the world as in the least degree illusory.