THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 07
JNANA VIJNANA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE AND REALIZATION:
VERSE NUMBER 15
Text in Transliteration:
na maam dushkritino moodhaah prapadyante naraadhamaah
maayahaa ‘pahrtajnaanaa aasuram bhaavam aasritaah
Text in English:
The evil-doers, the deluded, the lowest of men, deprived of discrimination by Maya and following the way of the Asuras, do not seek refuge in Me.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
Asuras are they who delight in deceit, falsehood, and torture of beings. Their ways are elaborately dealt with in chapter sixteen. They stand against the worship of the Divine. Practice of cruelty is their pastime.
Evil deeds hide the noble traits in man and expose the base ones. The perpetrators of wickedness become progressively deluded. They are not able to discern between the divine and the unholy. They are therefore the lowest of men. The question of pursuing any good path and pulling up in ethical life does not arise in their cases. Their understanding gets completely distorted. That it is Ishwara who manifests Himself, is something beyond their ken. They detest everything pertaining to the Divine. The deluded have therefore no alternative to self-destruction.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI SIDBHAVANANDA:
The way of the sieve is to let the fine things pass through and holding the coarse things to itself. Likewise, the way of the wicked is to let the merits go and hold the evils fast.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
The evil doers cannot attain to the Supreme, for their mind and will are not instruments of the Spirit but of the ego. They do not seek to master their crude impulses but are a prey to the rajas and tamas in them. If we control them by the sattva in us, our action becomes ordered and enlightened and ceases to be the result of passion and ignorance. To get beyond the three gunas, we have to attain first the rule of sattva. We have to become ethical before we can become spiritual. At the spiritual level, we cross the dualities and act in the light and strength of the Spirit in us. We do not act then to gain any personal interest or avoid personal suffering but only as the instrument of the Divine.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
These three kinds of people have no discrimination between right and wrong, the Real and the unreal. They commit murder, robbery, theft and other kinds of atrocious actions. They speak untruth and injure others in a variety of ways. Those who follow the ways of the demons take the body as the Self like Virochana and worship it with flowers, scents, unguents, nice clothes and palatable foods of various sorts. They are deluded souls. They try to nourish their body and do various sorts of evil actions to attain this end. Therefore they do not worship Me. Ignorance is the root-cause of all these evils. (Cf. XVI.16 and 20)
Comments by the blogger:
As per Swami Sidbhavananda’s commentary, Asuras are they who delight in deceit, falsehood and torture of beings.
When beings are tossed into the ocean of samsara or the worldly life, they become subject to maya. Maya acts on all of us. But we also have the conglomeration of the three gunas. Actually we are held in a vice like grip and the world is full of attractions. So when a person’s preponderating guna is sattva or the light he takes delight in the songs of the birds. They give up themselves when a small child smiles at them. All their activities are imparted by the good things of prakriti or Nature. Their heart melts at the mention of the Lord’s name. They love all beings. According to the Saintly Poet Tiruvalluar, who inspired Leo Tolstoy to write fine short stories, those who have no love for others want to aggrandise all the wealth of the world for themselves, and those who have love only for others, their very body does not belong to them.
When samsara or the worldly life begins and our gunas react from within us, we can never say what we will do.
Most of the people are law abiding because the law is there and any act not consonant with it will procure punishment. The fear of law should not be the reason for our good acts. Even privately where no one could see us and learn what we do, we should be blameless and worthy.
Coming back to the beings being tossed in to the worldly ocean and the beings also are swayed by three gunas, we are helpless to start with. Maya or God’s illusion also breeds ignorance. So it is a very stiff uphill task even to live an ordinary life of not harming others, not coveting others properties and things, not inflict pain on others. Worldly life is full of illusion and we are led by the preponderating guna; a perfect combination for following the Demon or demoniacal beings or inspired by people who use deceit and stealth to make money. Greed comes to smother us.
So we are held in a vice, impaled, as it were, by a long piercing sharp needle.
Our nature also wants to enjoy this world to the full and deny, if it is possible, the rightful things to the neighbours.
Then why does God blame the ignorant who do not seek refuge in Him and take refuge in the welcoming hands of the Demon?
God knows what we are up against. God knows that He has tossed us into the worldly life. He knows we hadn’t consciously chosen, in the first place, to come to play a game of life for His sport on the earth’s plane. He knows, unlike in the case of the beasts which are led by instinct, we have been given a choice by Himself. And the choice is liable to be misused most of the times than be used to gain salvation.
But, still, He wants us to exert a bit.
Yes, we have been tossed into the worldly life and maya or illusion breeds ignorance and that leads us to do things that we shouldn’t.
Yes, we are the creatures of three gunas or tendencies for which, to start with, we were not consenting parties.
But, still, He wants us to exert a little bit more by way of developing faith in Him.
If we take one step toward the Lord, He takes ten steps towards us!
He craves for us!
He wants us to lead a perfect life in this essentially imperfect world. For this world is not perfect goes without saying.
Most of the time the house maid is holding the small child. At the time of play, mother comes to play with her child. She has just now finished her household chore. She and the house maid are seated in the opposite directions. And the child, a toddler, stands in the middle. Both the mother and the house maid are crying for the child to come to them. The child is confused. The child loves both of them. The maid is playing with it all the time. That is why she is appointed. And there is a genetic factor, the love for mother. Now the child thinks if we wrong the maid and go to Amma the maid would be offended. On the contrary, if the child goes to the maid, the lovable mother would get tears in her eyes. Who shall the child choose?
This is our position. The prakriti is the house maid. God is the loving mother who gave birth to us. Who shall we select? We are deluded both by three gunas and illusion.
Still, God wants us to select Him and Him only.
That is why he has given us the choice of countless births.
At some part of our millennial travel, we will turn fully and exclusively toward God.
Till then we should consciously pray for deliverance.
We should never turn toward the Demon, which is what the prakriti is.
We should pray. And prayer holds the key.
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