Bhagavad Gita 84: Love of God Awakens - Yoga Research Foundation

The seventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita is called Jnana-Vijnana Yoga, and Swami Jyotirmayananda opens this lesson by taking the two words apart. Jnana is knowledge you can hold in the intellect, the way you can know that Mount Everest stands in the Himalayas. Vijnana is the direct experience of being there and scaling its heights. They are two different things, and yet they come in sequence. You must know it first, and then go on exploring. Verses 26 to 28 follow that sequence exactly. Verse 26 is a piece of jnana: a statement about God and the soul that the mind can take in at once and spend a lifetime understanding. Lord Krishna tells Arjuna that He knows all beings, past, present and future, but no one knows Him. Swamiji spends the first part of the class making that sentence large enough to feel, through creatures, flowers, the lilies of the field, millions of suns, and a river entering the ocean. Verse 27 names what stands in the way. Every being is born into the delusion of the pairs of opposites, arising from desire and aversion. Swamiji reads Arjuna’s two names in the verse as a method for meeting it, and then sets out the five kleshas, the afflictions that keep the mind restricted, from ignorance down to the fear of death. Verse 28 is the way out, and it leads into vijnana. Those whose sins have come to an end, freed from the delusion of opposites, worship God with steadfast resolve. Swamiji shows how that freedom is reached through ordinary work done in harmony with one’s nature, with its fruit offered to God, and he closes on the image that gives the lesson its heart: a piece of iron that flies to the magnet the moment its impurities are removed. If you read for one thread, follow the soul’s relationship to God. It begins as a contrast, God who knows and the soul who does not, and it ends as a pull the soul has always had and only needs to stop resisting.

Where each passage begins

God knows all beings

Verse 26 gives the highlights of the whole world experience in two figures, God and the soul. The soul goes on experiencing pleasure and pain, passes through countless miseries, and ascends great heights. “God guides the soul until the soul and God become one.” The verse itself states the contrast between Ishvara and jiva, God and the individual soul. Ishvara knows all, and is omniscient and omnipotent. Swamiji warns that these words slip into the mind too easily. They are simple, and you need to exercise your mind to understand the profundity behind them. So he begins with the word “all.” Human beings are not the only beings. There are countless creatures, birds, animals and aquatic creatures, down to small insects, down to plants, grass and flowers. Behind all of it there is a profound intelligence, and grace.

Consider the lilies of the field

That intelligence reminds Swamiji of a saying of Jesus: consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not and struggle not, and yet even Solomon in all his greatness was not arrayed like one of them. Solomon here is a symbol of human intelligence and power. Scientists can do amazing things, but they cannot produce even the most ordinary life, not even a little bacterium. The comparison turns gently humorous. A human being works for years to put things together, and by the time everything is in place, who knows, the heart fails. Meanwhile the grass and the little birds blossom. As you walk by they seem to smile at you, and laugh at you, because we have so much reason to be happy and are not. Study one little creature or one flower, and you would need volumes to describe it, and still your knowledge would not be perfect. All of this is known to God. And then Swamiji turns the lens around. When you hear that God knows everything, you sit back and wonder: “Does He know my prayer?” Did He forget what you asked of Him? The contrast is almost comic, and he means it to be. “Human mind has very little capacity for knowing.” The difference is like the sun beside a glow worm. Both give light, but there is no comparing them. “God’s mind is like the sun.”

The sun in a little jar of water

Then he widens time and space. Multiply a thousand years by a thousand, and that by a million, and you do not reach the beginning of the world process. There is no end in sight either. The earth itself is not the world; it is a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe. Astronomers find millions of suns, many far bigger than ours, and our sun pales into nothingness before them. This is not meant to make the soul feel small. It is meant to make the idea of God accurate. When you think of God, your mind should have a broader and profounder understanding of what you are really thinking about, and of your relationship to it. “You are growing in the image of God. You are a ray of God.” You are, Swamiji says, the same God restricted by ignorance. His image is the sun reflected in a little jar of water. The reflected sun is the same sun, restricted by the limitations of the pot and the water. So does anyone know God? You may say the mahatmas do, and that is true. But they know Him by enlightenment, by self-effacement. “A river knows the ocean by entering into the ocean.” When it has entered, it is no longer there as a river. The reflected sun realizes, while still in the jar, that it is the sun. “That full awareness is called realization.” Such a soul will not move from jar to jar, into another embodiment. It remains a limited person until the karma of the present body is exhausted, but its deeper sense of who it is has changed completely. Others do not see it, and the mind cannot explain it. “It is this inner attunement that is what you are looking for.”

Arjuna, the scorcher of enemies

Verse 27 addresses Arjuna by two names, and Swamiji treats each name as a teaching. The first is Parantapa, one who is like a great fire scorching his enemies. The epic speaks in gross terms of battles, but the enemies are inner. “But your enemies are anger, hate, greed, pride, narrow mindedness, miserliness.” Ordinarily the relationship runs the wrong way. “Anger scorches you.” The task is to become a scorcher of anger instead, and the fire that does it is understanding. Anger does nothing concrete for you; it is only an expression of your helplessness. With a bigger heart and a profounder understanding, you see that the people who provoke you are like yourself, at different stages of evolution, and your heart no longer gives way to irrational anger. That understanding is the fire weapon Arjuna discharges. The Puranas portray enemies like cartoon personalities, many-headed or skeletal, falling by the thousands before the hero’s fiery weapons. Swamiji wants that picture moved out of the mind. “All this is not a description of physical force.” Physical battle is inhuman, irrational and degrading. The scriptures highlight the battle against negative qualities within, and real heroism lies in overpowering them and developing virtues in their place, until your very presence scorches those enemies.

Bharata, devoted to the light

The second name is Bharata. Swamiji divides it: bha is light, and rata is one devoted to it. Devotion to the light within begins with an idea: there is God within me. “The Truth within me is Light of lights.” Once that idea takes hold and goes on pleasing you, your problems and negative qualities begin to look like darkness and its many shadows, while the understanding that God is the Reality is like the light of lights. He gives the affirmations plainly. “I am in tune with God. I am a ray of God.” I am sustained by God, I am held by God. Work upon that, and you watch the forces of darkness diminish. Delight grows as ignorance disappears day by day, and life becomes more like festivity. Celebrate Vijayadashami, the festival of victory, every day.

The five kleshas

The verse speaks of the delusion of the pairs of opposites, born of raga and dvesha, and Swamiji uses it to review the five kleshas, the afflictions that keep the mind restricted. The first is avidya, ignorance, the absence of awareness of your essential nature. Look up and the sky is blue. “Blue color is not there.” Why do you see blue? Ignorance. In the same way ignorance towers over all your understanding. Out of ignorance arises asmita, egoism, the sense that “this is me,” a distinct and separate reality. “Cosmic Self alone exists.” The ocean alone exists, and for any wave to raise its head and claim to be a separate being is the result of ignorance. Having taken that notion on, the mind works to enrich the individual personality. It turns to the world with the deluded idea that some things are lovable and must be grasped, and others are not and must be discarded. So the ego nourishes two movements, raga and dvesha, attachment and hatred, like and dislike.

Serenity beyond like and dislike

Caught between like and dislike, the mind lives in stress and agitation. Its likes are not even definite. In the morning you like someone, and by evening you do not, and you cannot tell whether you dislike them thoroughly or like them thoroughly. You can neither dismiss the person nor keep them always with you. Overcome like and dislike, and the picture changes. “Mind will enjoy serenity.” Swamiji compares it to resting by a lake without worries while a cool, gentle, fragrant breeze blows. That experience is with you at all times, but attention moves with a lightning flash to raga and dvesha, or to confusion, and so time passes and the mind has not tasted joy. Fulfillment always seems to be somewhere in the distance. Sleep shows that the joy was never far away. “Because in sleep you are not the body, not the mind, not the intellect, not even the ego.” All problems move away, whatever your circumstances, and you are untouched. The same is true of the Reality at all times. The world of mind and senses is a distortion of the light of the Self, and at the deepest level you are not really being dragged into the world. As serenity, shama, develops, like and dislike are neutralized, and the sense of individuality is transformed. You are not a limited individual but a ray of God. The last two kleshas follow when this is forgotten. Body idea develops, I am the body, and it becomes so secure in the mind that any thought of losing the body creates fear. That fear of death is abhinivesha. Under the pressure of all five, a person may still attain success and glory, and Swamiji says bravo. “But whatever you are attaining is transient.” The real attainment is to free the mind of this pressure and let in the breeze of eternity.

Verse 28: freedom from the pairs of opposites

Verse 28 describes the souls who do escape: those whose sins have come to an end, freed from the delusion of opposites, who worship God with steadfast resolve. “These are highly condensed writings.” Simply doing good karmas does not end sins. You have to understand more profoundly. Karma comes in two categories, virtuous and sinful, and human beings perform mixtures of both, in proportions they rarely know. “Human embodiment is a result of mixed karma.” From childhood, certain activities are in harmony with you and others are not, and yet you can be tempted into the ones that are not.

Svadharma and paradharma

So the first point is a keen insight into svadharma and paradharma: what is natural for me? Swamiji gives a practical test. Work that suits you does not leave you exhausted, confused or stressed. “Rather you feel a kind of inner inspiration.” The trouble starts with work chosen against your nature because it pays. Even though I do not like it, if I do it I will get big money, and big money means immediately I will go to Hawaii. That concept, he says, is the source of big trouble. “Paradharma degrades your mind.” “Once greed enters, many other negative qualities enter.” A little violence, a little falsehood, and then it is no longer little, though the mind keeps saying it is, and you begin to sink into a marshy land. Even within svadharma there is good and evil karma, so the mind should turn to punya karmas: how much can I help? A teacher who loves teaching should not stay settled, but ask how to help more effectively. That opens the question of expectation. Work done with expectation of fruit is sakamya; the choice not to expect is nishkamya, and that choice only develops while you are doing svadharma. In paradharma, gripped by greed, you have no choice. The next step is to dedicate the fruit of action to the service of humanity, and one step further, to God. At that point activity has become a form of sadhana, karma yoga, and it brings about chitta shuddhi, purity of heart. You may not appear to be doing any spiritual practice at all, and yet duties done with the right attitude, their fruit offered rather than held back, open the door to successive steps toward enlightenment. Even the mango seed you sow in expectation of a great harvest may bear fruit after you are gone. Do the duty, let whoever benefits benefit, and better still, let God enjoy it.

The iron and the magnet

When purity of heart has developed, a resolve emanates from your inner nature: may I attain enlightenment. It comes the way appetite comes to a healthy body. It does not have to be manufactured. “Love of God is not to be practiced, it awakens.” The soul already has love of God sufficient. “Love of God is like a magnetic pull.” Suppose a piece of iron lies close to a magnet and does not move, because impurities cover the iron. Remove the impurities, and the iron flies into the magnet. We are always flying one of two ways, Swamiji says: toward the world of misery because of impurities and negative karmas, or toward God. All you have to do is remove the impurities, and to that extent the divine pull becomes effective. Then comes immense joy in knowing that you are a human being with the capacity for liberation, and a thrill beyond imagination. You who feel yourself an individual have the indwelling Self that rules over the stars, the heavens, the ocean and the mountains. A feeling of being blended with God wakes up within you on its own. Even a little taste of that ideal gives a patience that is hard to imagine, and the mantra that even this will pass. “Dark clouds move away from the moon, the moon shines brighter.” Each time you overcome an adversity by holding to righteousness, you find yourself greater and evolve faster. This is the steadfast resolve of the verse. “I exist for attaining enlightenment.” Swamiji closes with the Buddha’s pledge before his enlightenment: here, in this place, let my body wither away; I will stay in samadhi until I attain nirvana. Do not take it literally, he says. Nobody stays stuck in one place like a statue. “It simply means you have a goal within your heart, and that goal remains strong.”

Terms in this lecture

jnana — knowledge held by the intellect; indirect knowledge
vijnana — direct, intuitional experience of what has been known
Ishvara — God as the omniscient and omnipotent Lord
jiva — the individual soul
mahatma — a great soul who has inwardly merged with the Absolute Reality
Parantapa — scorcher of enemies; one whose understanding burns up anger, hate and greed
Bharata — devoted to light; from bha, light, and rata, devoted
klesha — an affliction that keeps the mind restricted; there are five
avidya — ignorance of one’s essential nature
asmita — egoism, the sense of being a separate individual
raga and dvesha — attachment and hatred, like and dislike
abhinivesha — fear of death, clinging to the body
shama — serenity, which neutralizes like and dislike
svadharma — work and duty in harmony with one’s own nature
paradharma — work against one’s nature, taken up under pressure or greed
punya karma — meritorious action
sakamya — action done with expectation of its fruit
nishkamya — action done without expectation of its fruit
chitta shuddhi — purity of heart
sadhana — spiritual practice

Questions for reflection

When you pray, are you asking God to remember you, or trying to remember God?
Which of your enemies within, anger, greed or pride, would lose its hold if you saw it as an expression of helplessness?
What impurity, if you removed it this week, would let the pull you already feel become stronger?

Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 7, Jnana-Vijnana Yoga, verses 26 to 28. Lecture 84 by Swami Jyotirmayananda, Yoga Research Foundation. The complete archive of Swamiji’s lectures is free to all at yogaresearchfoundation.org.

This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.