Commentary on the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Sama-duhkha-sukhah svasthah (14.24): Pleasure or pain, let it be. It matters little. Svasthah means always calm and quiet, reposed in himself. Sama-loshtasma-kanchanah: Whether he sees a nugget of gold or a big boulder of granite, it makes no difference to him. A clod of earth and a wall of gold have the same value to the eye of this great soul who has transcended the operation of the three gunas. Manapamanayos tulyas (14.25): Praise and censure mean the same thing. It makes no difference to such a person whether he is glorified or condemned. Tulyo mitrari-pakshayoh: Let a friend come or let an enemy come – no difference. Sarvarambha-parityagi: He will still do nothing. He will be like a kutastha. He will be seated calm and quiet in himself, as if the world does not exist at all for him. Such a person is gunatita, one who has transcended the operation of the three gunas.

Mam cha yo’vyabhicharena bhakti-yogena sevate, sa gunan samatityaitan brahma-bhuyaya kalpate (14.26). After having given us so many instructions regarding the details of the working of the three gunas, finally Sri Bhagavan says, “I shall give you a final recipe how you can get over the three gunas. Undividedly love Me; then you will find that the gunas have no effect upon you. You need not have to struggle to observe the operation of the gunas with your witness consciousness, and put forth great effort in your mind. Effortlessly they will vanish; they will leave you of the own accord, provided you genuinely love Me.” Yo’vyabhicharena bhakti-yogena sevate: Such a person, the greatest devotee of God who wants only God and has no other thought in his mind, automatically rises above the three gunas. Brahma-bhuyaya kalpate: He becomes fit for absorption into Brahman.

Brahmano hi pratishthaham amrtasyavyayasya cha, sasvatasya cha dharmasya sukhasyaikantikasya cha (14.27): “I am the very source of the bliss of Brahman.” Or it may mean: “Brahman is the origin, the source, of every kind of incarnation or manifestation.” The literal meaning of the verse is: “My abode, My highest realm which is the Eternal Realm, is Brahman. It is the Absolute Being; It is the source of all things; It is the source of immortality, of imperishability, of perpetual existence, of all goodness and righteousness, of happiness of every kind, of infinite bliss – ekantika sukha.”

While the Fourteenth Chapter has been very busy with a psychological analysis of the properties of prakriti, it has finally clinched the whole matter by saying that love of God is supreme and every other effort on the part of a human being comes afterwards.

We will find that from here on, every chapter has a peculiarity of its own; every chapter has its own characteristic as distinguished from other chapters. From the First to the Eleventh Chapter there is a kind of sequential ascent of thought. But the chapters maintain a kind of individuality of their own from the Thirteenth Chapter onwards; they take up one specific subject, and go into detail on that subject.

We are now face to face with a very important section of the Bhagavadgita known as the Purana Purushottama Yoga Chapter, the Fifteenth Chapter. It is considered very sacred, and people chant it every day before they take their lunch because it glorifies God; it describes what God is in respect of this world and individuals, how we are related to the world and God finally. This subject is briefly touched upon in a very short chapter of only twenty verses, but these twenty verses are very, very important.                 

This world, this creation, is – to put it in a modern language – something like the running away of a force from its centre to its circumference or periphery, and becoming less and less connected to the centre.  It loses its soul, as it were, more and more as it runs away from the centre, until it reaches the very edge of the periphery and remains like a rock without any sensation whatsoever. Inanimate life is the lowest category of existence that we can conceive. But as the movement is in the other direction – from the periphery to the centre – there is greater and greater consciousness of one’s selfhood. As one realises one’s greater and greater nearness to the centre, there is also a larger comprehension of the dimension of one’s being.

This world is a topsy-turvy presentation, as it were, like an inverted tree. The manner in which souls descend from the highest region of Godhood is compared to an inverted tree, as the sap of the inverted tree moves downward from its root through the trunk, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, etc., so that the lower the sap goes, the greater is the ramification of its movement. That is to say, this sap – the vitality of the tree – is highly concentrated in the root, slightly diffused in the trunk, diversified in the branches, and becomes more adulterated as it gets subdivided further into the minor branches, reaching the little tendrils and leaves, where only a modicum of the vital essence of the tree remains.

Urdhva-mulam adhah-sakham asvattam prahur avyayam (15.1): This vast creation, this whole world, is like a peepul tree which has its roots above and branches below. The downward gravitational pull of space and time is the reason for the externalisation and the ramification of the original power, original vitality, which is the root of creation. The root contains everything that the tree has, but the tree’s branches do not have everything that the root contains. A little bit of the essence of the original root is distributed in different proportions among the branches which are thick or thin, as the case may be.

This world is like an inverted asvattha tree, or any kind of tree, as the word asvattha may be construed to mean ‘not lasting for long’. Na svattham – asvattham: It will not endure even until tomorrow. Svah stha means ‘that which can continue and last until tomorrow’ – that is, it will live in the future. But this will not live in the future; it’s nature is perishable. It is not permanent and, therefore, it is asvattha. That is one etymological meaning of the word asvattha: it does not last long. The world will not be there for all times; therefore, it is asvattha. Or we may say that the world is like an asvattha tree – that is, a peepul tree.

Its root is an imperishable, inconceivable essence; and it is above. The aboveness is to be understood very, very carefully because we may be under the impression that for a thing to be above, it has to be distant in space – in terms of so many kilometres or light years – because we can conceive of above and below only in terms of spatial expanse. But that is not actually the meaning of the aboveness of God. As the root of this tree is God Himself, it cannot be regarded as being above in a spatial sense. He is ‘above’ in the quality of manifestation, ‘above’ in a logical sense, ‘above’ in the comprehensiveness and inclusiveness of spirit. It is more a conceptual transcendence and not a physical aboveness like the stars in the sky.

The distance between the world and God is not actually measurable as we can measure the distance between the root of a real tree and its branches. Here is a tree whose length cannot be measured by any yardstick of the world, in the same way as we cannot measure the distance between childhood and old age. There is a distance, of course, between the time when a person is a little baby and the time when he becomes old, but we cannot take a ruler and measure the length of the period that has been covered, because it is a time process that is responsible for the concept of distance between childhood and old age. There is a distance between the knowledge of a little child in kindergarten and a person studying in higher classes, but it is not measurable by a ruler or yardstick. It is a conceptual distance, a logical distance, a very important distance indeed – more important than a measurable distance. We may say that such distance is the distance between us and God. He is very far, and yet that far distance which appears to be there between us and God is not in any way comparable to spatial measurement or even to temporal measurement of duration.

Otherwise, it is very frightening to conclude that millions of light years may be the distance between us and God and we do not have the appurtenances to reach him at all, while the fact is that God is so close to us that there is absolutely no spatial distance at all. It is an immediate experience. Hence, some distinction must be made in understanding the analogy of the inverted tree in this sloka. It is an analogy, and we should not stretch any analogy to the breaking point. It should be taken in its spirit.

Chhandamsi yasya parnani: All the values of life – including the Vedas and all knowledge – are hanging, as it were, like the leaves and the flowers of this tree. The Veda is considered to be the highest knowledge, and it is given a place among the leaves – not the trunk or the root. Yastam veda sa vedavit: Whoever has an insight into the mystery or meaning behind this analogy knows what the Veda really is. Urdhva-mulam adhah-sakham asvattam prahur avyayam, chhandamsi yasya parnani yastam veda sa vedavit.