Commentary on the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Jara marana mokshaya mam ashritya yatanti ye, te brahma tadviduh kritsnam adhyatmam karma chakhilam; sadhibhutadhidaivam mam sadhiyajnam cha ye viduh, prayanakale’pi cha mam te viduryuktachetasah. With this tremendous earth-shaking gospel given in two verses at the end of the Seventh Chapter, we are now introduced into the Eighth Chapter. It is indeed earth-shaking, because Arjuna himself was confused about what the Lord was saying. Arjuna asked: “What is this that You are speaking? You said there is Brahma, the Absolute; then You said there is adhyatma; then You said there is karma; then You said there is adhibhuta; then You said there is adhidaiva; then You said there is adhiyajna. I cannot understand what all this is; and You want me to bring them together into a total focus?”

Kim tad brahma (8.1): “Which is that Supreme Absolute that You are speaking of, O Lord?” Kim adhyatmam: “Which is that subjective self?” Kim karma: “Which is that action that You refer to?” Adhibhutam cha kim proktam: “Which is the objective world that You are speaking of? What does it actually mean?” Adhidaivam kimuchyate: “Which is that transcendent element which You spoke of as being between the subject and object?” Adhiyajnah katham ko’tra: “You refer to adhiyajna as an activity that You are performing in the cosmos. What does it mean, Bhagavan Sri Krishna?” And the last question: “Also, how am I to think of You at the time of death?” These are philosophical, mystical, spiritual questions, no doubt, but they point to a final aim in our mind: how to quit this world honourably, and not be forcefully dispatched. Prayanakale cha katham jneyo’si niyatatmabhih: “How do people with a restrained mind and senses contemplate You at the time of death?”

There are so many questions in this Eighth Chapter. Firstly, what is Brahman? Secondly, what is adhyatma? Then, what is karma? Then, what is adhibhuta? Then, what is adhidaiva? Then, what is adhiyajna? And lastly, how to think about Bhagavan at the time of death? Arjuna raises seven types of queries for one answer to all these diversified questions, because it was pointed out in the concluding verses of the Seventh Chapter that these so-called diversities have to be put together into a pattern of singleness for the purpose of total liberation.

Sri Bhagavan uvacha (8.3): The Lord answers these questions, one by one. The indescribable, eternal, timeless and spaceless Absolute is called Brahman: aksharam brahma paramam. It exists everywhere, and yet it appears to be nowhere. It exists everywhere and, therefore, everything lives and exists. It appears to be existing nowhere because it is not the object of the perception of anybody’s sense organs. Inasmuch as the world is an object and the Absolute Brahman is not an object, the world appears to exist and the Absolute does not appear to exist anywhere at all.

Asadeva idamagra asit: “Non-existence was there in the beginning” is a statement that is sometimes made in the Upanishads, such as the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The negation of all causes of duality and multiplicity – non-existence of every conceivable name and form, and non-existence of even the thinkers of the names and forms – ends in a tremendous positivity, and the so-called void becomes the complete plenum. Bhuma is the word used in the Chhandogya Upanishad for this utter perfection; such is the Absolute. Aksharam brahma paramam: Eternal space and time – eternal reality, which is indivisible – that is Brahman.

The adhyatma that I spoke of is the svabhava, or the natural characteristic, of an individual person. The word svabhava has been used in several contexts when dharma, or duty, was described in the previous chapters, and it also will be mentioned in subsequent chapters, especially in the Eighteenth Chapter. The natural disposition of the individual is his svabhava. This disposition – the contour, the behaviour, the pattern of our movement, psychologically or even socially – is conditioned by a peculiar action of the soul on the structure of our psychophysical personality. That kind of peculiar individuality, conditioned by the mind and the body, differentiates one individual from the other – just as one house can be differentiated from another house, not because of the building bricks which may be the same in all cases, but because of the different shape given by the architects. The permutation and combination of the physical elements and the psychic components differ in different individuals, though the soul that charges these components with life and intelligence is one and the same. The different individual disposition that each one has on account of a preponderance of a different permutation and combination of sattva, rajas and tamas is called svabhava. In that, there is also an indwelling principle called adhyatma.

Bhuta-bhavodbhava-karo visargah karma-samjnitah (8.3). The word karma that is used here represents the power or the energy with which the whole universe emanates from the Absolute. Everything rushes out, as it were, from the bosom of the Ultimate Reality – the Mahat Brahma, as it is called. This great force, this complete potentiality rushing outwardly in the direction of space and time, is the originally conceived karma. This total karma, we may say, which is the action of God that causes the emanation of the world, gradually descends into lower categories of activity until it becomes an ordinary action of a human individual. The process of the coming down of the intensity of this action, which was originally cosmic, delimits itself into lesser and lesser dimensions of personality so that finally it becomes a very little individual. In the beginning, it was a cosmic action; then it became a space-time vibration, then it became akasa, then vayu, then agni, then apas, then earth, and finally it became the individual bodies. All these are karmas in different densities and areas of action.

But original action is the will of God. The Supreme Purusha’s original will is the first action. The Purusha Sukta makes reference to this original dharma. That dharma subsequently conditioned every other condition in the world by delimiting the process of creation through the tanmatras and the five elements, etc. The original dharma is the will of God. But that will of God, which is the originality, also permeates all other lesser wholes that act as the media of action, including our own selves. Even our will, that prompts us to act, is actually a reverberation, as it were, of the original will. But, unfortunately, we are unable to believe that our will is acting under the impulsion received from the cosmic will, so we get caught by the selfishness of our wrong thinking that our will is confined to our body while actually it is a propulsion from a cosmic existence. It is said in the earlier chapters that no action is individual; every action is God’s. So karma is defined here as the propulsion of the cosmic cause for the purpose of the emanation of the effects in various degrees of descent, until the lowest atom is created.

Adhibhutam ksharo bhavah (8.4): The perishable world is the adhibhuta prapancha. All the world of names and forms, including this body, is perishable. It is under mutation; it is a flux. It is a continuity of a succession of events, and no object in this world can be said to be existing individually or independently even for a second. Persons like Buddha have highlighted this aspect by saying that the world is like a flowing river where we cannot touch the same water the next moment. Like a flame that is burning and every minute, every second, there is a new set of atoms of fire rushing forth, the world is not a total indivisibility, but a movement. As a flame is a movement, as water in the river is a movement, the world is a movement. Therefore, it is perishable because when it moves, it is conditioned at every minute into bits of process. Similarly, this kind of concoction of matter into the form of this so-called physical world is cut into pieces – into little processes which are like links in a long chain – and so it cannot be regarded as imperishable. It is perishable. Adhibhutam ksharo bhavah: All the perishable nature that we see in this world, including our own body and the entire structure of space-time-object, is adhibhuta prapancha.

Purushas chadhidaivatam: There is a Supreme adhidaiva who brings everything together into a hierarchy of divine operations, even when the different gods act. Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Surya, Agni, Devi, Narayana, Vishnu, Siva, Ganesha – all these divinities represent facets of the Supreme Absolute – or, we may say, the fingers of God operating; and they have to be put into a pattern of harmonious action so that one will not do something which would contradict what the other does. Gods do not contradict themselves. Siva does not contradict what Ganesha does, nor does Ganesha contradict what Narayana does. There is a harmony of principle in the mode of behaviour and action of these gods. They are all conditioned by a supreme constitution of the Absolute, and that is the adhidaiva. The constitution of the government is the adhidaiva that rules the entire governmental system, and this adhidaiva comes down in lesser and lesser degrees until it becomes a little connecting link between you and me.

Adhiyajno’hamevatra dehe dehabhritam vara: “The adhiyajna that I mentioned, which is the field of action, is nothing but Myself becoming intensely active through the forces of rajas and sattva for the purpose of the evolution of the cosmos.”