Introduction
The Gītā forms part of the Great Epic, which claims to be the ‘fifth Veda’. At about the same time that the Epic was assuming its final form perhaps in the fourth century A.D., a whole mass of new sacred literature was taking shape (Smith 1991). Together with the two epics properly so-called they constitute the bulk of the non-Vedic scripture. The Bhagavad Gita is one of the ancient sources of Hinduism which unveils universal human values and relations of a man to universal truth (Asko 1994). The Gita stresses the continued individual existence of souls after liberation; the individual soul at release returns to dwell in full communion with him, and yet distinct. The verses selected for analysis, Chapter 11, verses 15-16, can be seen as a core of the Chapter reflecting the main idea and philosophy of the whole book. These verses unveil that the grace of God could and did intervene to extricate a man from the trammels of karma, but this was not to be the way of the ‘King of Righteousness’.
Main body
Verse 15, tells that God is always conscious of itself is the one subject to his commands and call to action in the moral sphere. Arjuna argues that it is contrary to the evidence of our senses that there is a cessation of distinction and that, even if some scriptural texts claim that Brahman is one only without a second, there are others that depend on the notion of plurality (Smith 1991). Arjuna asserts that we have to start with the evidence of our senses as the most basic data that we are given, a distinct realist and common-sense position (Asko 1994). Arjuna says: “(15) O God, I see in your body the gods and all kinds of beings come together, Lord Brahma* on his lotus seat, all the seers and the divine serpents” (The Bhagavad Gita, 1994, p. 50). It is possible to say that by contrast with god and selves, a deity is sometimes termed, in the sense that being unconscious is naturally opposed to knowledge. God is the material cause of the world, real and eternal but dependent on the deity, in support of which Arjuna cites these ideas.
Verse 16 explains the creation and functioning of the world around us. “(16) I see you everywhere, many-armed, many-stomached, many -mouthed, many-eyed, infinite in form; I cannot find out your end, your middle or your beginning–Lord of the universe, form of everything” (The Bhagavad Gita, 1994, p. 50). For him, the essence of existence is, no senseless one: each man had his own destiny to work out, his own dharma to fulfill, and only then could he lay aside the burden of duty, responsibility, and the patient endurance of wrong. This is not, indeed, the accepted God of his time, nor is it to be at all conspicuous in the history of Hinduism until India made contact with the immoral but moralistic (Asko 1994).
The two passages reveal understanding and perception of the world and instructor. In general, they position a man and God in-universe and explain their relations and interaction. The system proper admits of no God, and the declared aim is not union with God (as many popular treatises on this subject would have us believe) but complete isolation of the soul in the soul. The Gītā is not an easy text to interpret as it is not consistent with itself (Smith 1991). The climax of the book is, however, the theophany in Chapter 11, in which Krishna, the incarnate God and inseparable friend of Arjuna, reveals himself to the latter in his ‘supreme form as the Lord’.
Verse 15-16 allow us to say that Brahman is both the timeless state of being which characterizes moksha and the source and origin of all that has its being in space and time. It is, then, both time and eternity (Asko 1994). God transcends both, and because he is personal you can never say that the liberated soul actually becomes God as you can say that it becomes Brahman; for the word brahman when used in this context means no more than ‘eternal’ as it normally does in the early Buddhist texts from which the term brahmabhūta ‘become Brahman’ seems to have been borrowed (Smith 1991).
Following Moore and Aldyth (1997), it is possible to say that moksha means no more than to have been liberated from the bonds of saṁsāra into the freedom of immortal life; and because God is by definition beyond space and time, it also means that the soul participates in God’s mode of existence without for that reason. being identical with him, for though God, like Brahman, pervades all things both temporal and eternal, he transcends both as their overseer (Romila 1992). The verse under analysis reveals that God is what is most inward in them and more characteristic of them than they are of themselves, he stands apart from them, contemplates them, and approves of them. He is the foundation of both eternal and temporal beings (Asko 1994).
Following lood (1996) and Klaus Klostermaier (1090) though to enter God may be a yet higher destiny than to ‘become Brahman’ there is as yet no suggestion that it means to love and be loved by him. It is these last words that represent a decisive turning-point in the history of Hinduism, for the whole point of the teaching of the Gītā right up to the last had been that man’s ideal course was to perform the duties imposed on him by the dharma of his caste while remaining all the time perfectly detached, with mind and soul fixed upon the eternal Brahman and on God (Romila 1992). The Rig Veda allows researchers to say that detachment and exalted indifference are only the first steps on the path that leads to union and loving communion with God: and it is this that is totally new. West of the nineteenth century, for even the revitalizing of Hinduism by the bhakti cults of rapt devotion to God, was concerned far more with an escape from this life into God than in the pursuit of dharma in this world in accordance with the will of God. The mention of God in this context calls for comment (Asko 1994). Since ātman and prakṛti constitute the body of the deity, their functioning to further the realization of Brahman or the deity is easily explicable in this analogy. Brahman thus embodied is denoted by all words and so both pronouns refer to Brahman, tat ‘that’ as the absolute, the first cause, and tvam ‘you’ as the inner controller modified by the embodied soul (lood, 1996).
The verse 15-16 can be seen as a core of the Gita explaining its main concepts and paradigms. Following Moore and Aldyth (1967), the goal of the ‘path of knowledge and the ‘path of action’, then, is the same-the realization of an eternal dimension in yourself. The way of ‘loyal devotion’, ‘loving devotion’, however, introduces a new element into Hinduism (Romila 1992). At its lowest, it means no more than concentrating on the idea of God as being the eternal exemplar of the liberated soul, but in the commentaries on these actions. God actively helps the soul to liberation by the exercise of his grace. In the Gita, this divine activity is far more pronounced: God leads the souls not only to liberation, the ‘state of Brahman’ but also to participation in himself–he ’causes them to enter him. He in return loves the soul and asks to be loved by it (Asko 1994).
In order to place the verses in the general meaning of the text, it is important to explain the purpose of the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. Krishna’s prime purpose in the Gītā is, then, to persuade Arjuna to go into battle with a clear conscience. He argues first that though you may kill the body you cannot kill the soul because it is eternal and that since, according to orthodox teaching, the soul of a warrior slain in battle goes straight to heaven, he is really doing a service to his kinsmen in ridding them of their bodies (lood, 1996). Secondly in refusing to fight he would be violating the dharma of his caste, the Kshatriyas or warriors, and thirdly that he would be accused by his enemies of having opted out of the war because he was afraid. If he goes through with the battle he cannot lose: either he will be killed, in which case he will go straight to heaven, or he will conquer, in which case he will inherit the earth (lood, 1996).
Arjuna had already seen the heaven of Indra, who was his father among the gods, and had been but little impressed by what he had seen there, nor was he much more interested in inheriting the earth than was his–worldly brother (Romila 1992). Yudhishthira, who was not interested at all. Higher inducements had, then, to be offered. So Krishna proceeds to instruct him first on how final liberation can be won even by a warrior engaged in battle and secondly on how liberation need not necessarily conflict with and negate the. deep attachment that bound Arjuna to himself. The first, he teaches, can be achieved by a total dissociation of one’s ‘self, which is eternal and not therefore responsible for acts committed in time, from acts performed by a temporal body at the behest of a temporal will, both of which are mere evolutes of matter (Asko 1994). The self-body analogy also serves to distinguish the deity, who for Rāmānuja is the fullest expression of the impersonal Absolute, Brahman, from his dependent bodily parts or attributes, and the dependence of an attribute on its substance is compared to the relation of an adjective to the noun it qualifies.
The nature of God he can infer from the experience of liberation in which time and space are abolished, and he can thus feel present everywhere. His mind and thoughts are intent on God he attains to the ‘peace that culminates in Nirvāna and subsists in God’, for only when it is itself released from the bonds of saṁsāra can the soul draw nigh to God (Klostermaier,1989). The doctrine of love which is called the ‘most secret of all is held in reserve for the last lines of the last chapter of the Gītā, yet even there is the utmost restraint. The Laws of Manu support the same ideas about God and knowledge (Doniger, 1991).
Conclusion
Following verses 15-16, it is possible to conclude that in Hinduism the dependence on god is realized through his relationship with the universe and a man, the intense devotion and submission to Nārāyana in which the devotee realized his total dependence on him. The act of understanding is both the start and the continuing attitude of devotion to the deity and presupposes acceptance of the soul’s subservience; it involves putting oneself completely in the deity’s hands, trusting in his will, and awaiting his grace. For the Gita, though inaccessible to men in the fullness of his divinity, is full of grace and love for his creation. He has therefore made himself accessible to his worshippers by descending into the world in a form similar to theirs, and has the power to override the workings of karma, for he is not in any way subject to karma; indeed Rāmānuja vigorously denies any connection of the deity with evil or suffering, which only affect the divine body not the highest self.
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