The Bhagavad Gita – The Need for the Gita today

By

Dr. R. J. Kalpana Ph.D

Visvaayudha September 2024

vasudevasutaḿ devaḿ kaḿsa-cāṇūra-mardanam

devakī-paramānandaḿ kṛṣṇaḿ vande jagadgurum

I bow down to Sri Krishna, who is the Master of the Universe, beloved son of Vasudeva, who vanquished Kamsa and Chanura, who brings immense joy to his mother, Devaki.

Pranams from Dr. R.J. Kalpana, Welcome to the study of The Bhagavad Gita.

Dear Readers, last month you had been introduced to the concept of Dharma. I hope you have pondered deeply and wisely on the Dharma. No doubt, you have drawn your own conclusions to the outcome of those stories. But let us understand that there is only one Truth – the Eternal Truth – Sanatana Dharma. In the light of which, we learn the truths – the explanations and reasoning of knowledge. There are always two truths; that which are told in the scriptures – that which is temporal, perishable and sprung from local customs and culture. And the other, which is eternal, imperishable; lived and experienced by the greatest spiritual sages of India.

Today, we stand at civilisational crossroads where humanity is bent on destroying itself. We need not look at our past but it is important to envision our future and the values we leave for future generations. We are particularly blessed because we stand on firm ground of greatly realised spiritual truths and profound spiritual experiences of our highly advanced sages and avataras have given.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of them. It stands tall in the middle of the Mahabharata casting its Divine Light to all and sundry. Our object in studying the Gita will not be a mere academic exercise nor a philosophical speculation. But we must approach it for its living message as to how to live a life of spiritual calibre and to imbibe the essence which will lead humanity to its highest spiritual goal.

According to Adi Shankaracharya, jagadguru, it is a blessing to be born as a human being – not an animal, not a plant but a human being. The second requirement is to be born with all our faculties intact. The third requirement is to be born in the same time period as that of a living master – a guru of calibre. The fourth requirement is to become his disciple and benefit by his teachings.

When our time in the human dimension ends and it will end, we must make use of the opportunity to reach Them – the hierarchy of spiritual masters. For human life has no other purpose but to go back home; from where the soul first arrived at the dawn of time. That is our sole duty to ourselves, to our soul – the promise we made before we were born that we will return home.

Everything else is secondary, earning money – just enough to keep body and soul together. Getting married and having children – only to work out samskaras that we have carried from past lives. Procreation is Nature’s goal to keep the human species alive. It is not our goal – our goal, our promise to ourselves is to return home, to the Divine, our birthright!

The soul has the capacity to be the paramahamsa – the discerning faculty to separate milk from water but our mind second guesses, our ego supersedes, our thoughts scatter like dead leaves. So having been blessed with a human life, let us not waste it by getting enmeshed in worldly affairs. Let us learn to stand tall like the lotus in a mud pond.

That is the reason why we need to study the Gita today. To understand the lessons it imparts us about how to live a life of dharma. Our aim is to distinguish its message and let its Divine Light lead us to the highest perfection a human being can achieve and to the highest spiritual goal that it promises. The Gita consists of living truths that help the mentality and needs of current-day humanity.

We stand surprisingly at the cusp of transition where the old values have eroded and we have lost the ability to command respect from the future generation. And we have ourselves to blame for the current state of affairs. So let us turn once more to the Gita and refresh ourselves at its eternal spring and fountain of self-transformation and create a spiritual life out of its Divine Light.

There are three aspects of the Gita that we have to prepare ourselves for – the teacher, the taught and the teaching. The teacher is that Divine consciousness that takes a finite form to lead us towards our own inner divinity. When this eternal Divine consciousness always present within every human being awakens and deigns to guide us, we are assured of the love that takes us to the goal of merger with the Divine.

The taught – the disciple, everyone of us struggling in the battlefields of our own lives trying to excel, trying to circumvent the violent crisis that humanity faces today with apparent incompatibility of a spiritual condition. From the beginning of the Gita, it is clearly indicative of the temperament and etiquette of the disciple. Clearly, one must want to learn in order to be taught. We will as we proceed further in our studies understand the nature of the disciple for whom the Gita gives its Divine teaching. The secrets of the Gita will be revealed only to one who is willing to learn with an open heart and a humble nature.

That which the Gita teaches is not a mere human action but Divine action. In the quiet and calmness of meditation blooms the realisation of surrender and sacrifice. The first truth that we learn is to evolve from an animal consciousness to a human consciousness. Leave aside the laws of the jungle and adopt the laws of reasoning and restraint. The Gita then introduces the concept of action that leads the human from the planes of bondage to the planes of the Divine – the Divine law prevails over the human law.

Renounce not only the action, the fruits of the action but also the doership; and in that lies the realisation of the Immutable principle so that the human will becomes one with the Divine will in a manner in which the Divine Transcendence and the human soul act in perfect spiritual liberty.

yogeśaṁ(m) saccidānandaṁ(v̐), vāsudevaṁ(v̐) vrajapriyam,

dharmasaṁsthāpakaṁ(v̐) vīraṁ(ṅ), kṛṣṇaṁ(v̐) vande jagadgurum

I bow to the Master of Yoga, who is the beloved son of Vasudeva, the brave warrior who established Dharma, the spiritual guru of the world.

OM ŚRĪKṚṢṆĀRPAṆAMASTU