THE HOLY GITA
THE
HOLY GITA
CHAPTER
NUMBER 14
VERSE
NUMBER 04
GUNATRAYA
VIBHAGA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF THE DIVISION OF THE THREE GUNAS
TEXT
IN TRANSLITERATION
sarva
yonishu kaunteya moortayah sambhavanti yaah
taasaam
brahma mahad yonir aham beejapradah pitaa
SANSKRIT
WORDS AND PHRASES AND THEIR MEANING IN ENGLISH
sarva
yonishu = in all the wombs
kaunteya
= O Kaunteya
moortayah
= forms
sambhavanti
= are produced
yaah
= which
taasaam
= their
brahma
= Brahma
mahat
= great
yonih
= womb
aham
= I
beejapradah
= seed-giving
pitaa
= father
TEXT
IN ENGLISH
Whatever
forms are produced, O Kaunteya, in any wombs whatsoever, the great Brahma
(Prakriti) is their womb, I the seed-giving Father.
COMMENTARY
BY SRIMAT SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA
The
wombs of the Prakriti are infinitely graded providing scope for all types of
beings to sprout forth. The celestials, the human beings, the beasts, the
birds, the insects, the vegetable kingdom, the bacteria – all these have their
suitable wombs to take birth and thrive. The Prakriti is the Cosmic Mother for
the entire creation. And Iswara is the Father.
How
does the Prakriti bind the Jivas? The process is explained in the next Verse.
COMMENTAR BY DR. S. RADHAKRISHNAN
Prakriti
is the mother and God is the father of all living forms. As prakriti is also of
the nature of God, God is the father and mother of the universe. He is the seed
and the womb of the universe. This conception is utilized in certain forms of
worship which are developed out of what some modern puritans deride as obscene
phallicism. The Spirit of God fertilizes our lives and makes them what God
wants them to be.
The
Supreme is the Seminal Reason of the world. All beings result from the
impregnation of matter through logoi spermatikoi or animating souls. Through
them God caries out His work in the world. These seeds of the logos are the
ideal forms which would the gross world of matter into beings. The ideas, the
patterns of things to be, are all in God. Every possibility of manifestation
has its root in a corresponding possibility in the unmanifestation is an
explicit affirmation. God has an eternal vision of creation in all its details.
Whereas in Socrates and Plato, ideas and matter are conceived as a dualism,
where the relation between the subtle world of ideas and the gross world of
matter is difficult to understand. God Himself incarnates the seminal ideas in
the forms of the gross world. These seminal ideas which have a divine origin,
which belong to the causal Logos are the explanation of our love for God. While
God is in one sense transcendent to human nature, there is also in the soula
direct expression of the Divine. The cosmic process continues until the causal
origin, alpha and the final consummation, omega, coincide.
COMMENTARY
BY SRIMATH SWAMY SIVANANDA
I am the father: The Primordial Nature is the
mother. The whole manifested world is the child Nature has produced in its
association with Me. Therefore I am called the father of this world.
Wombs:
Such as the gods, the manes men, Cattle, beasts, birds, etc.
Forms:
Bodies consisting of parts, limbs, organs, etc
Blogger’s
comments:
The theory of creation has been attempted in
each and every scripture of the major religions of the world. For example, the
Old Testament has a detailed passage about Genesis. In the Upanishads each
Rishi attempts through an exclusive way to explain creation. But through this
variation runs a core idea in all the major Upanishads we call the Principal
Upanishads. Since the Bhagavad Gita contains the quintessence of the Principal
Upanishads, the core idea contained and developed superbly in the Upanishads
about Creation gets a final utterance, if I may say so.
Only in Hinduism such a great theory of
creation has been put forth. This theory holds good even after the coming of
the famous and ground-breaking theory of evolution by Charles Darwin.
Darwin does not attempt to explain the theory of creation. He only deals with the
evolution of the species. Even here I have a different viewpoint. You, the
Readers know that fully, as I have many times published in this column my
detailed views about the Theory of Evolution of the Species.
Only
in Hinduism do we have a very plausible theory about God’s ineffable work of
creation. And that is precisely why and how Hinduism was and can
withstand the modern scientists’ acumen in the matter of understanding this
universe, besides Darwin’s ground-breaking theory; while the Christianity lost
many many souls who refused to go to the church after Darwin’s theory and the
Christendom had to pay a heavy price because of the advent of Darwin’s theory,
Hinduism was and can hold its own and continue to flourish.
It
is because, among other things, of this most plausible theory of Creation.
God
created all beings both bodily and with reference to the Life Principle. His
Prakriti (Nature) created for Him the body of all beings into which the life
principle or the Soul is injected as the seed by God Himself. In a way, as
Dr.S.Radhakrishnan points out, God is the creator of the Prakriti so he is the
Mother as well as the Father of all beings here.
Anyhow, God takes a technical stand here in Verses 3 and 4 that the Hiranyagarbha,
the universal Soul, as the seed was given to the womb of Nature in the creation
of all beings. The Prakriti is the womb into which God placed his seed.
Before
creation, nothing was here. While God created the beings, they were individually
injected with their own tendencies and guna. This is very important. God was
not for uniformity. He did not create all beings in his exact mould; rather, he invested each and every being in this universe with an exclusive tendency, or guna, or, we can even say, characteristics. Thus God avoided
uniformity.
Among
human beings, just imagine what would be the consequences if all of us were of
the same character! Suppose all are sattvik and good and honest, do you think
this worldly life would have any of its attraction? Never. For the attraction
of the world which mesmerizes us birth after birth lies in the infinite variety
in the character, behavior and needs of all the human beings. Otherwise life
would not only be intolerable, but life in the world would have stopped and
come to an end because of the resultant ennui.
Who
can put up with the world which is full of people like Rama, like Sita, like
Krishna, like Dharmaputra, like Bhishma? We need Valis, Ravanas, Duriyodhanas,
etc, etc to make this world go on and move on. Not only abjectly absolutely bad
characters like Ravana and Duriyodhana. But we need people who have both the
good and bad in their inbuilt personality. Even here not of the same
proportion. There must be infinite variety in this also, in the sense that if
I have 30% of goodness and 70% of badness and you are also having the good and
bad qualities and traits in similar percentages, the world would end because of
sheer boredom.
Each
and every one of the people of the world must be different in their goodness and
badness. Even Ravanan was good to his brother, wife, and son. The point is there
must be infinite variety in the character and characteristics of human beings.
And another thing is God cannot and should not involve Himself at the birth of
each one of us to give us a unique DNA-like different and differing tendency,
character and even idiosyncrasies. It should happen automatically.
And God has taken care of that. He himself is not full of infinitely monotonous qualities in his Saguna Brahman state. Thus God must give each and every one a unique character and tendency. And this has been made possible by God by giving all human beings individual choice. But for this choice-factor, even God cannot create endlessly infinitely different and differing types of people forever.
He has invested with us a fair amount of personal Choices. We will deal with this aspect of personal choice and the resultant infinitely different kinds and types of human beings coming and going on the plane of the earth both in this column in days to come as well as in yet another blog of mine, THE ANCIENT INDIAN SCRIPTURES! (the URL of the same being: ramayanamahabharataupanishadsbhagavadgita0056.wordpress.com
