Bhagavad-gita As It Is

by A.C. Bhaktivedanta

The speaker of Bhagavad-gītā is Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

Here the Lord informs Arjuna that this system of yoga, the Bhagavad-gītā, was first spoken to the sun-god, and the sun-god explained it to Manu, and Manu explained it to Ikṣvāku, and in that way, by disciplic succession, one speaker after another, this yoga system has been coming down. But in the course of time it has become lost. Consequently the Lord has to speak it again, this time to Arjuna on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra.

Oral transmission

That is a very elaborate subject matter, but briefly it can be stated that a devotee is in a relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead in one of five different ways: One may be a devotee in a passive state; One may be a devotee in an active state; One may be a devotee as a friend; One may be a devotee as a parent; One may be a devotee as a conjugal lover.

Arjuna was in a relationship with the Lord as friend. Of course there is a gulf of difference between this friendship and the friendship found in the material world. This is transcendental friendship,

which cannot be had by...

Every living being, out of the many, many billions and trillions of living beings, has a particular relationship with the Lord eternally. That is called svarūpa.

svarūpa, and that stage is called svarūpa-siddhi – perfection of one’s constitutional position.

“Arjuna said: You are the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the ultimate abode, the purest, the Absolute Truth. You are the eternal, transcendental, original person, the unborn, the greatest. All the great sages such as Nārada, Asita, Devala and Vyāsa confirm this truth about You, and now You Yourself are declaring it to me. O Kṛṣṇa, I totally accept as truth all that You have told me. Neither the demigods nor the demons, O Lord, can understand Your personality.”

He is the supreme rest or abode of everything; pavitram means that He is pure, untainted by material contamination; puruṣam means that He is the supreme enjoyer; śāśvatam, eternal; divyam, transcendental; ādi-devam, the original Supreme Personality of Godhead; ajam, the unborn; and vibhum, the greatest.

Arjuna also says that the personality of the Lord is very difficult to understand and that He cannot be known even

by the great demigods. This means that the Lord cannot even be known by personalities greater than human beings. So how can a human being understand Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa without becoming His devotee?

The purpose of Bhagavad-gītā is to deliver mankind from the nescience of material existence.

this Bhagavad-gītā was spoken.

Dictado como la torá?

Our very existence is in the atmosphere of nonexistence. Actually we are not meant to be threatened by nonexistence. Our existence is eternal. But somehow or other we are put into asat. Asat refers to that which does not exist.

Unless one is awakened to this position of questioning his suffering, unless he realizes that he doesn’t want suffering but rather wants to make a solution to all suffering, then one is not to be considered a perfect human being. Humanity begins when this sort of inquiry is awakened in one’s mind. In the Brahma-sūtra this inquiry is called brahma-jijñāsā. Athāto

brahma-jijñāsā. Every activity of the human being is to be considered a failure unless he inquires about the nature of the Absolute. Therefore those who begin to question why they are suffering or where they came from and where they shall go after death are proper students for understanding Bhagavad-g

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Material nature itself is constituted by three qualities: the mode of goodness, the mode of passion and the mode of ignorance.

this material manifestation takes place at a certain interval, stays for a while and then disappears. Such are the workings of prakṛti. But this cycle is working eternally.

The Lord refers to this as “My prakṛti.”

So the Lord, the living entity, material nature and time are all interrelated and are all eternal.

The jīvas, or the living entities, being parts and parcels of the Supreme Lord, are also conscious. Both the living entity and material nature are explained as prakṛti, the energy of the Supreme Lord, but one of the two, the jīva, is conscious. The other prakṛti is not conscious.

The living being cannot be supremely conscious at any stage of his perfection,

the Lord is conscious of all bodies. Because He lives in the heart of every living being, He is conscious of the psychic movements of

is living in everyone’s heart as īśvara, as the controller, and that He is giving directions for the living entity to act as he desires. The living entity forgets what to do.

As the soul thus migrates, he suffers the actions and reactions of his past activities. These activities can be changed when the living being is in the mode of goodness, in sanity, and understands what sort of activities he should adopt. If he does so, then all the actions and reactions of

his past activities can be changed. Consequently, karma is not eternal.

Diferente a los griegos

Our consciousness, at the present moment, however, is materially contaminated. The Bhagavad-gītā teaches that we have to purify this materially contaminated consciousness. In pure consciousness, our actions will be dovetailed to the will of the īśvara, and that will make us happy. It is not that we have to cease all activities. Rather, our activities are to be purified, and purified activities are called

bhakti.

When we are materially contaminated, we are called conditioned. False consciousness is exhibited under the impression that I am a product of material nature. This is called false

ego. One who is absorbed in the thought of bodily conceptions cannot understand his situation.

One must become free from the bodily conception of life; that is the preliminary activity for the transcendentalist. One who wants to become free, who wants to become liberated, must first of all learn that he is not this material body.

mukti means liberation from the contaminated consciousness of this material world and situation in pure consciousness.

consciousness. Purified consciousness means acting in accordance with the instructions of the Lord.

This is the whole sum and substance of purified consciousness.

the living entity, being part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, is neither the creator nor the enjoyer, but a cooperator. He is the created and the enjoyed. For instance, a part of a machine cooperates with the whole machine; a part of the body cooperates with the whole body.

The central figure of creation and of enjoyment is the Supreme Lord, and the living entities are cooperators. By cooperation they enjoy.

complete whole is comprised of the supreme controller, the controlled living entities, the cosmic manifestation, eternal time and karma,

This phenomenal world or material world in which we are placed is also complete in itself because the twenty-four elements of which this material universe is a temporary manifestation, according to Sāṅkhya philosophy, are completely adjusted to produce complete resources which are necessary for the maintenance and subsistence of this universe.

mundaner (1) is sure to commit mistakes, (2) is invariably illusioned, (3) has the tendency to cheat others and (4) is limited by imperfect senses. With these four imperfections, one cannot deliver perfect information of all-pervading knowledge.

So no one should claim to be the proprietor of anything; one should accept only things set aside for him by the Lord as his quota for his maintenance.

In this world men are not meant for quarreling like cats and dogs. Men must be intelligent to realize the importance of human life and refuse to act like ordinary animals.

Animals can kill other living animals, and there is no question of sin on their part, but if a man kills an animal for the satisfaction of his uncontrolled taste, he must be responsible for breaking the laws of nature.

three kinds of activities according to the different modes of nature: the activities of goodness, of passion and of ignorance.

eatables in goodness, passion and ignorance.

sanātana sky, the eternal, spiritual sky.

the combined association of the Supreme Lord and the living entities in the sanātana abode is the perfection of human life.

Therefore, sanātana-dharma does not refer to any sectarian process of religion. It is the eternal function of the eternal living entities in relationship with the eternal Supreme Lord.

superior a religion

the eternal occupation of the living entity.

“that which has neither beginning nor end,”