The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata
and the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Well, this is an opinion; the word by itself can be interpreted either way. Anyway, there seems to be, in the opinion of the great Master of the Bhagavadgita, degrees in devotion and levels of approach to God. Jigjnasu, as I mentioned, is one who seeks knowledge of reality. He is a devotee of the Supreme Being with the intention of seeking omniscience ultimately, and there are such devotees who ask nothing from God. They request the blessing or the grace of enlightenment, and nothing else. That should be regarded as the highest type of devotion where one prays to God, not for anything that is temporary, transient or physical, but for enlightenment, the divine flash of the supreme wisdom of divinity.

The last-mentioned is jnani, one who has become totally united with That which is. Udarah sarva evaite: “All these are good people,” says the Lord. He does not condemn any devotee, saying that he is the lowest type. “All these are wonderful. They are dear to Me; they are good. But the jnani, the knower who has established a conscious identity between his being and the Supreme Being, is verily My own Soul. He has become My Soul; he has become the Universal Soul.” Vasudevah sarvam iti sa mahtma sudurlabhah: Rare indeed is that soul, blessed indeed is that person who realises that God is all—not that God is merely pervading things or is immanent in a theoretical sense, not that God is merely a Creator as a carpenter who is a creator of a chair or table, but that He is the All. Such a great soul is rare to find. We will find many devotees of God, perhaps, but we will not find many who are convinced, from the bottom of their hearts, that God alone is and nothing else can be. The possibility of the existence of anything external to God creates an endless variety of questions and problems and sorrows. We rush from one trouble to another trouble from the initial mistake of imagining even the least distinction between God and His created universe.

We have been told that God did not create the universe out of some substance like wood or bricks or mortar. In some scriptures it is said that God created the universe out of nothing. To say that He created the world out of nothing is another way of saying that He created it out of Himself, because ‘nothing’ is a word which connotes no thing. There is no substance behind the word ‘nothing’. So if nothingness is the material cause of this world, the world would also be nothing. It would be like a balloon, looking like a huge, bloated something but with no substance inside. If God created the world out of nothing, taking the word ‘nothing’ in its literal sense and accepting the logical conclusion that the effect is of the same nature as the cause, the world would be nothing in the same way as its cause is nothing. So what we see in front of us as the vast universe is nothing, hollowness, zero, an insubstantial phantom, a delirium of spirit, if God has created the world out of nothing. But if the world has been created out of God Himself, then also a similar conclusion follows—we are not seeing the world in front of us, we are seeing only God. We may say that the world does not exist, or that only God exists; both mean the same thing. So to say that God created the world out of nothing, or to say that God created everything out of Himself are two ways of stating one reality, one fact, one conclusion that there cannot be anything external to God—vasudevah sarvam.

This is the height of devotion, which the mind cannot ordinarily contain, because devotion here melts into experience. Where there is a lover and a beloved, there can be love, devotion, affection and longing. There can be yearning and an agony and anguish within because of the consciousness of having lost the beloved, being in a state of bereavement of the beloved, and longing for proximity to the beloved, the devotion getting intensified as the devotee moves nearer and nearer to the great object of his devotion. The four stages mentioned here—arto jijnasur artharthi jnani—explain subtly the various stages of bhakti, gaunabhakti, vaidhibhakti, culminating in parabhakti. Ritualistic devotion is called vaidhibhakti. The well known devotions of the world, where devotees cry to God in prayers of various types, as inculcated in the various religions, is gaunabhakti; but parabhakti is the inability to exist without God.

In the Bhakti Shastras, various rasas are mentioned—various tastes, as they are called. The subjects treated of in the Alankara Shastras are rhetoric. We pass through various stages of emotion in devotion to God, right from the social level, the physical level, the vital, the mental, the intellectual and the spiritual levels. We find that we are shaken up gradually as we proceed onwards, stage by stage, to the Being of God. It is as if the river is straining towards the ocean—it is sensing the very presence of the flood that is dashing in front of it at the delta. The river has not yet touched the ocean, but it can sense it. It can feel the atmosphere of the ocean which is there to swallow it. The rasa bhakti, the various experiences, is the impact of the Soul upon the various vestures of our personality, God touching us in different degrees of intensity. Devotion to God is the connection that we establish between ourselves and God, and this connection increases in its intensity and strength as the devotion goes on developing gradually by daily practice. In the beginning it may be true that we are expecting something from God. Yes, we cannot deny this fact. Who can say that we do not expect something from God—at least ‘peace of mind’, as we say. It is the least harmful of things that we are asking; even then it is something that we ask from God. Well, everyone asks for something from God, a redress from some kind of difficulty—psychological, intellectual, social, political, and what not. So, He is the resource-filled and abundant reservoir of bounty to bestow all that we need, and we seek God for this purpose.

We seek God for enlightenment, that is true, and devotion takes a new turn when the soul asks for God only. Not that it has obtained God, not that it has even comprehended the infinitude of God, but it has come to a definite conclusion that God is the goal of life. Even to come to this conclusion is a hard thing for normal people. The comprehension of the infinitude of God and the philosophical, mystical, spiritual meaning hidden behind the relationship between us and God—they are a different thing altogether. But even apart from these profundities, the deepest conviction that can charge our feelings is that we can accept nothing as our aim of life except God’s Being. If our deepest essence convinces itself that what we need is God’s Being and nothing else—not favours from people, not satisfaction from objects, not status in society, not a long life in space and time—but only That, and nothing but That, even this conviction, driven into the heart, should be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of spiritual life. It is not an ordinary feeling. Among the millions and millions that live in this world, how many can be so very deeply convinced that this is the truth of life? We have many tentacles to distract our attention and we bargain with God; we establish a commercial relationship with God, even if it may be in a philosophical manner.

So the seventh chapter of Gita tells us that jnana is the highest type of devotion. In the earlier stages of devotion, our hair may stand on end. There may be perspiration; there may be chocking of the throat; there may be trembling of the voice and a shutter of the whole system, a feeling of melting, as it were, into nothingness. A kind of swooning also takes place in ecstasy of devotion. These are the bhavas of bhakti. But the swooning is not a morbid psychological swooning of a patient who is bereft of consciousness—it is the shock that is injected into the soul by the presence of God. When God touches us, we may become unconscious, and this unconsciousness is not a disease, like an ordinary unconsciousness that comes to us when we fall from a tree, for instance, and get hit on the head. How is it possible that we can be in a swoon when God touches us? Yes, it is possible, on account of a particular situation in which the individual soul finds itself when it is bordering upon merger into God. The impact of God upon the individual soul creates an unconsciousness of a spiritual type, which is not an unconsciousness of the tamasic character.

It is the last fear that the ego of the individual has to shed. If everything is going to be lost and you are not going to have even a farthing left in your life, you are going to be deprived of your kingdom, your profession, your land and house, your relations, everything—even the raiment you put on your body will be snatched away from you and the very ground that you are standing on is going to be cut from under your feet—you will be shocked indeed to hear all these things. But the shock that you get at the moment you feel that you yourself are going to be lost will be much greater than the other shocks. At the time of losing possessions—even the last thing that you can think of—the fear of losing oneself is the greatest of all fears, greater than the fear of losing all property and even status in life. So the last sorrow of the ego is this touch of God, and that is why the great mystics have said that no one can see God and live afterwards. You cease to be. Can you ever imagine what it is to cease to be? Can there be a greater shock than the expectation that you will cease to be?

This is the divine madness of the great mystics, the sages and saints who were God-intoxicated. We have words which demonstrate the incapacity to express the depth of this reality that we are trying to convey. Otherwise, why do we say “God-mad”, “God-intoxicated”, etc? These words ‘intoxication’, ‘madness’, etc. have extreme meanings, which alone seem to be able to convey this extreme experience that is going to take place. We will be surprised to read the expositions on the mystical revelations of saints and sages in mystical texts, in language which is not normal. All these superb poets, who established themselves in God-experience, tried to express their feelings and experiences in terms which is not the ordinary language of the world, and that is why when we read this poetry we feel shaken up—we are disturbed in a very profound manner. The greatest art is that which disturbs our feelings the moment we look at it or hear it. If we walk away unaffected after seeing a painting, it is not a good painting. But, if the moment we see it we are disturbed, transported and thrown out of our personality, and we have lost ourself in one second—that is art, that is poetry, that is mystical experience. This is the great culmination, the apotheosis to which the Bhagavadgita will lead us from the seventh chapter, as we proceed further.