(1)

New York University; New York, New York, USA

Vanderbilt Hall
3 March 1970

I read the Gita because it is the Eye of God. I sing the Gita because it is the Life
of God. I live the Gita because it is the Soul of God.
The Gita is God’s Vision immediate. The Gita is God’s Reality direct.
They say that the Gita is a Hindu book, a most significant scripture. I say that
it is the Light of Divinity in humanity. They say that the Gita needs an introduction.
I say that God truly wants to be introduced by the Gita.
Arjuna is the ascending human soul. Sri Krishna is the descending divine
Soul. Finally they meet. The human soul says to the divine Soul: “I need you.”
The divine Soul says to the human soul: “I need you, too. I need you for my Selfmanifestation.
You need me for your Self-realisation.” Arjuna says: “O Krishna,
you are mine, absolutely mine.” Sri Krishna says: “O Arjuna, no mine, no thine.
We are the Oneness complete, within, without.
The Gita is an episode in the sixth book of the Mahabharata. Mahabharata
means ‘Great India’, ‘India the Sublime’. This unparalleled epic is six times the
size of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. Surprising in size and amazing in
thought is the Mahabharata. The main story revolves around a giant rivalry
between two parties of cousins. Their ancestral kingdom was the apple of discord.
This rivalry came to its close at the end of a great battle called the Battle of
Kurukshetra.
Santanu had two wives: Ganga and Satyavati. Bhishma was born from the
union of Santanu and Ganga; Chitrangada and Vichitravirya from that of Santanu
and Satyavati. Vichitraviya’s two wives were Ambika and Ambalika.
Dhritarashtra was the son of Ambika and Vichitravirya; Pandu, the son of
Ambalika and Vichitravirya. Dhritarashtra’s hundred sons were the Kauravas;
Pandu’s five sons, the Pandavas.
Yudhisthira was the legitimate heir to the kingdom. His father, Pandu, had
reigned a number of years, offering the utmost satisfaction to his subjects. Finally,
Pandu retired to the forest. To succeed him was his eldest son, Yudhisthira. And
he did it devotedly and successfully. Dhritarashtra was Pandu’s elder half
brother. God had denied him sight. Strangely enough, his affection for his
hundred sons blinded his heart as well. Being blind, naturally he was not
qualified to inherit the throne. The eldest son of Dhritarashtra was Duryodhana.
Ninety-nine brothers were to follow him. Yudhisthira, Pandu’s eldest son, had
only four others to follow him.
Truth’s pride was Yudhisthira. Falsehood’s pride was Duryodhana. Through
the illumined hearts of Pandu’s five sons, God smiled. Through the unlit minds
of Dhritarashtra’s hundred sons, the devil smiled. The devil often succeeded in
embracing the blind father, too.
The eyeless father made repeated requests, strong and weak, to Duryodhana—
his morally, psychically and spiritually eyeless son—not to go to war. Vidura, the
pure heart, Duryodhana’s uncle, failed to throw light on Duryodhana’s thick
head. Sanjaya, his father’s prudent charioteer, equally failed. Neither was
Bhishma, the oldest and the wisest, successful. Duryodhana felt his own understanding
to be superior. Finally Sri Krishna, the Lord of the Universe, most
fervently tried to avert the hurtful and heartless battle. But the ignorance-night
in Duryodhana would by no means surrender to the knowledge-sun in Sri
Krishna.
Seven hundred verses are there in the Gita. About six hundred are the soulstirring
utterances from the divine lips of Lord Krishna, and the rest are from the
crying, aspiring Arjuna, the clairvoyant and clairaudient Sanjaya, and the inquisitive
Dhritarashtra.
The sage Vyasa enquired of Dhritarashtra if he desired to see the events and
have a first-hand knowledge of the battle, from the battle’s birth to the battle’s
death. The sage was more than willing to grant the blind man vision. But
Dhritarashtra did not want his eyes—the eyes that had failed him all his life—to
obey his command at this terribly fateful hour for his conscience and his
kingdom’s life, especially when his own sons were heading for destruction. He
declined the sage’s kind and bounteous offer. His heart was ruthlessly tortured
by the imminent peril of his kinsmen. However, he requested the sage to grant the
boon to someone else from whom he could get faultless reports of the battle.
Vyasa consented. He conferred upon Sanjaya the miraculous psychic power of
vision to see the incidents taking place at a strikingly great distance.
Is the Gita a mere word? No. A speech? No. A concept? No. A kind of concentration?
No. A form of meditation? No. What is it, then? It is The Realisation. The
Gita is God’s Heart and man’s breath, God’s Assurance and man’s promise.
The inspiration of Hinduism is the soul-concern of the Gita. The aspiration of
Hinduism is the blessing-dawn of the Gita. The emancipation of Hinduism is the
compassion-light of the Gita. But to pronounce that the Gita is the sole monopoly
of Hinduism is absurdity. The Gita is the common property of humanity.
The West says that she has something special to offer to the East: the New
Testament. The East accepts the offer with deepest gratitude and offers her
greatest pride, the Bhagavad Gita, in return.
The Gita is unique. It is the Scripture of scriptures. Why? Because it has
taught the world that the emotion pure, the devotion genuine can easily run
abreast with the philosophy solid, the detachment dynamic.
There are eighteen chapters in the Gita. Each chapter reveals a specific
teaching of a particular form of Yoga. Yoga is the secret language of man and God.
Yoga means ‘union’, the union of the finite with the Infinite, the union of the
form with the Formless. It is Yoga that reveals the supreme secret: man is
tomorrow’s God and God is today’s man. Yoga is to be practised for the sake of
Truth. If not, the seeker will be sadly disappointed. Likewise, man’s Godrealisation
is for the sake of God. Otherwise, untold frustration will be man’s
inevitable reward.
The Gita was born in 600 B.C. Its authorship goes to the sage Veda Vyasa.
With a significant question from Dhritarashtra, the Gita commences its journey.
The whole narrative of the Bhagavad Gita is Sanjaya’s answer to Dhritarashtra’s
single question. Sri Krishna spoke. Much. All divinely soulful. Arjuna spoke.
Little. All humanly heartful. Dhritarashtra was the listener. The divinely and
humanly clairvoyant and clairaudient reporter was Sanjaya. On very rare
occasions, Sanjaya contributed his own thoughtful remarks, too.
Sri Krishna was Arjuna’s body’s relation, heart’s union and soul’s liberation.
As God, he illumined Arjuna with the Truth Absolute; as a humane human, he
illumined his earthly friend with truths relative.
Philosophers enter into a deplorable controversy. Some enquire how such a
philosophical discourse could take place at the commencement of a war. How was
it possible? There are others who firmly hold that this momentous discourse was
not only possible but inevitable at that hour, since it was the divinely appropriate
occasion for the aspiring Hindu to discover the inner meaning of war and live in
accordance with his soul’s dictates, instead of following the poor, unlit knowledge
of morality.
The Gita is the epitome of the Vedas. It is spontaneous. It is in a form at once
divinised and humanised. It is also the purest milk drawn from the udders of the
most illumining Upanishads to feed and nourish the human soul. The Gita
demands man’s acceptance of life, and reveals the way to achieve the victory of
the higher Self over the lower by the spiritual art of transformation: physical,
vital, mental, psychic and spiritual.
The Gita embodies the soul-wisdom, the heart-love, the mind-knowledge, the
vital-dynamism and the body-action.
(The series of four lectures on the Gita which Sri Chinmoy offered at New York
University in March 1970 were drawn from a series of eighteen talks covering each
chapter of the Bhagavad Gita which he had given privately to his students between 13
February and 8 June 1968. The complete talks were published by Rudolf Steiner
Publications in 1973 under the title Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita: The Song
of the Transcendental Soul.)