THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER NUMBER 12, VERSE NUMBER 01, BHAKTI YOGA OR THE YOGA OF DEVOTION

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER NUMBER 12

VERSE NUMBER 01

BHAKTI YOGA OR THE YOGA OF DEVOTION:

TEXT IN TRANSLITERATION:

arjuna uvaacha

evam satatayuk taa ye bhak taas tvaam paryupaasate

ye chaa ‘py aksharam avyaktam teshaam ke yogavittamaah

SANSKRIT WORDS AND PHRASES AND THEIR MEANING IN ENGLISH:

evam = thus: satata yuktaah = ever steadfast: ye = those: bhaktaah = devotees: tvaam = thee: paryupaasate worship: ye = those: cha = and: api = also: aksharam = the imperishable: avyaktam = the unmanifested: teshaam = of these: ke = which: yoga vittamaah = better versed in yoga.

TEXT IN ENGLISH:

                                                  Arjuna said

Those devotees who, ever steadfast, worship You thus, and those again who worship the Imerishable, the Unmanifest—which of these are better versed in yoga?

COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI  CHIDBHAVANANDA:

At the conclusion of chapter eleven the adoration of the Supreme was advocated. But Brahman is both with and without attributes. Of these two aspects of His, which is better suited for worship? This is the point raised herein for clarification.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

There are those who seek oneness with the Absolute, one and impersonal and unrelated to the universe, and others who seek unity with the Personal God manifested in the world of men and nature. Which of these have the greater yoga knowledge? Are we to turn our back on all manifestations and strain after the Unchanging Unmanifest or are we to be devoted to the Manifested Form and work in Its service? Is it Absolute or the Personal God, Brahman or Isvara that we should worship?

COMMENTARY BY SRIMAT SWAMI SIVANANDA:

The twelfth discourse goes to prove that Bhakti Yoga or the Yoga of devotion is much easier than Jnana Yoga or the Yoga of knowledge. In Bhakti Yoga the devotee establishes a near and dear relationship with the Lord. He cultivates slowly any one of the five Bhavas (attitudes) according to his temperament, taste and capacity. The five attitudes are the Santa Bhava (the attitude of peaceful adoration); Dasya Bhava (attitude of servant towards the master); Sakhya Bhava (attitude of a friend); Vatsalya Bhava (the attitude of a parent to the child); and Madhurya Bhava (the attitude of the lover towards the beloved). The devotee adopts these attitudes towards the Lord. The last (Madhurya Bhava) is the culmination of devotion. It is merging or absorption in the Lord.

The devotee adores the Lord. He constantly remembers Him (Smaranam). He sings His name (Kirtanam). He speaks of His glories. He repeats His name. He chants His Mantra (Japa). He prays and prostrates himself. He hears His Lilas (divine plays). He does total, ungrudging and unconditional self-surrender, obtains His grace, holds communion with, and eventually gets absorbed in Him.

The devotee begins by worshipping the idols or the symbols of God. Then he performs internal worship of the Form. Ultimately he is led to the supreme worship of the all-pervading Brahman (Para Puja).

Thus: as declared in the last verse of the previous chapter.

Avyaktam: The unmanifested, i.e., incomprehensible to the senses, transcending all limiting adjuncts. The unmanifested Brahman is beyond all limitations. That which is visible to the senses is called Vyakta or manifest.

The hearts of the devotees are wholly fixed in Thee. They worship Thee with all their heart and soul.

There are others who worship the unmanifested Brahman which is beyond time, space and causation, which is attributeless, which is eternal and indefinable, which is beyond the reach of speech and mind. These are the wise sages.

Of these two, the devotees and the men of knowledge—who are the better knowers of Yoga? (Cf. XI.55)   

Comments by the blogger:

Mohammedanism accepts the Old Testament fully and as for the New Testament of the Holy Bible it urges that the Jesus Christ of Christianity is one of the Prophets sent by Allah, the Great. So Mohammedanism re-christened Jesus Christ as Esa Nabi. Thus the Mohammedanism can be held as an offshoot of the Christian religion. Among other things, Mohammedanism comes down heavily on idol worship. There has been much avoidable violence on this aspect. Mohammedanism considers idol worship as heretical and an unpardonable sin against Allah, the Great, who is Pure Spirit. But Christianity takes in its stride both idol worship and the worship of the Pure Spirit. But there is not much difference between the two religions when it comes to one point; both the religions assert that the Truth found out by the Seers of their religions as the original and only Truth and whoever differs from them are under the influence of the Saturn! The two religions have waged sanguinary and terrible wars on this aspect. “The Davinci Code” is a well-researched novel; it contains shocking pages and passages on how in the earlier times the Christian warriors and the Church enforced their own brand of religion on the other sects of worshipers who had other Gods and or the Worshipers of Nature. They all were branded as heathens by the Church and butchered without any compunction. The Church today has shed that sort of violence. But at the beginning of the Christian Era, there has been horrendous bloodshed just because the Church could not put up with anyone who differed from the Church’s idea of Truth. The Mohammedanism is not inferior to the Church of those days and Times and it cannot put up with even the Church though they both share parts of the Gospel! Religious intolerance is the forte of these two religions. The Christian Church now no longer wage wars. But it indulges in far more abominable war and its modern weapon is Money. They select countries like India where there is no dearth for impoverished people and buy their faith up wholesale. The Christians and the Protestants from the European Countries and America send unbelievably huge sums of money every day to India to buy up the impoverished Indians’ Faith which dates back to four or five thousand years before the birth and advent of Jesus Christ! What we say is the Truth and no other Faith could be tolerated is these two religions’ posit.

We are living in the Time of Information Explosion. Both these religions have TV Channels exclusively endowed to the spreading of their individual Faith in India and buy up the Hindu Indians. Time and again and day in and day out famous pulpit speeches are telecasted which do not only for worshipping according to their individual Faith but to mount an intolerably formidable attack on the Hindu Religion and the Hindu Faith. Some time back I had an opportunity of watching a Priest making a pulpit speech and he had been dealing with the multi idol worship. At one stage, he had gone over the board by asserting the fact that America has become a materialistic country because of these Hindus who were allowed to indulge in idol worship of multiple Gods! He was arguing innocently that if America had not allowed Hindus to become American citizens the Land would not have turned towards sins of every kind in the book of Saturn! In another pulpit speech another priest was holding forth and when he came to the topic of Sabbatical observation he came down strongly against the Hindus having marriage and other functions on Sundays! Does he want the Hindus to go to Church and pray to Lord Jesus Christ! And don’t forget that this kind of things can happen only in Hindu India which gives much space to the so-called minorities in the Constitution itself!

The Hinduism or the Hindu Faith respects all religions of the world for they all, it holds, lead to one and only God of the Universe. It gives ample space for all religious Faiths fully knowing and understanding the inexorable fact that God knows no religious and spiritualistic differences. When the major part of the world was steeped in darkness, Hindu India was fully awakened to Man’s spiritual potentiality. In those days before the starting of the world history or, to put it more succinctly, prehistoric period of time so far as the so-called Old World, the Europe, was peopled by grunting apes, the Seers and Saints of India addressed not only the human beings of the world but also the beings in other Worlds and proclaimed that they had understood Iswar of the Universe who scintillates and shines like gold, and only by understanding this God of the world one can escape the chain of births and deaths, and they further asserted addressing the whole of humanity when they exclaimed ‘O children of immortal Self pay heed to what we proclaim! The Hindu Rajas of those days were cosmopolitans. Much later when Jesu Christ was born and much still later when Prophet Mohammad was born, and they started The Christianity and the Mohammedanism respectively both asserted that their particular Gospel must be taken to all over the world and the heathens must be saved and be made to pray for forgiveness for the Original Sin! It was when Vivekananda, in recent times, went to America and the Chicago Address happened and then the Swami toured all over America preaching the Ancient Hindu Faith the priestly community there in America came to understand that Hindu India also had found the Maker of the Universe much earlier than themselves and as such Indians need not be saved from the Original Sin!

A Muslim friend of mine used to assert that when the Great Prophet Mohammed was born all the heathen deities fell down to the ground! It all indicates religious bigotry and intolerance which taught these two religions to assert their individual Faith alone was the true Faith and all other Faiths were heathen.

As the Christians who prayed both to the Saguna Brahman, namely Lord Jesus Christ, and also the Imperishable and unmanifested Holy Spirit, the Nirguna Brahman, the Hinduism also holds that there is any number of Deities who can be offered worship and also the Nirguna Brahman, Turiya, could be worshipped. All the Gods of the Hinduism like Vishnu and Siva are fully known and prayed as the Saguna Brahmam. And the formless God or who has no dimensions and corporeal existence, Imperishable and unmanifested can also be worshipped by those who are imbued with Jnana or Wisdom.

The Bhagavad Gita takes care of both the types of worshipers! The all-inclusive Hinduism gives one an absolute freedom of worship. They can worship either Lord Vishnu or Lord Siva or the Spirit that is known as Turiya, the Imperishable and unmanifested.

Arjuna’s question in this sloka or verse relates to the greatness of the two types of Yogis, worshipping the Saguna Brahman or Nirguna Brahman.