Universal Message

Universal Message of the Bhagavad-Gītā

Monotheism in the Bhagavad-Gītā

Normally it is thought that the people of India "worship millions of gods." This is a common complaint thrust forward as fact in any argument involving yoga. And yet much of the Bhagavad-Gītā, escecially the chapters that many refuse to translate, rests on a monotheistic platform. Beginning in the 9th Chapter, Kṛṣṇa speaks convincingly and forcefully about the existence of a Supreme Being, monotheistic in character, and dismisses the worship of lesser, parochial deities.

Sectarianism and the Universal Message of the Bhagavad-Gītā

The message of Bhagavad-Gītā is not exclusive or sectarian. Rather it is an inclusive message, meant to be uplifting to all. When Kṛṣṇa says, for example, that the soul is eternal, he makes no reference to a “Christian” or “Jewish” or “Muslim” or “Hindu” soul. The principles of karma or action and reaction are equal for all souls: engage in bad karma and go down; follow the simple ideas of compassion, purity, mercy, honesty, and austerity and consciousness will be purified, no matter one’s social class or religious principles. 

One who approaches a genuine “truth-seer” or tattva-darṣibhiḥ can receive transcendental knowledge regardless of race, caste, class position, nationality or religion. And one who has transcendental knowledge is also a candidate for liberation from birth and death, regardless of mundane considerations.

Nondiscrimination

Kṛṣṇa says, “Even if you are considered to be the most sinful of all sinners, when you are situated in the boat of transcendental knowledge, you will be able to cross over the ocean of miseries.” api ced asi pāpebhyaḥ sarvebhyaḥ papa-kṛttamaḥ sarvaṁ jñāna-plavenaiva vṛjinaṁ santariṣyasi अपि चेद् असि पापेभ्यः सर्वेभ्यः पप-कृत्तमः सर्वं ज्ञान-प्लवेनैव वृजिनं सन्तरिष्यसि B.G. 4.36 
The fire of knowledge burns karma to ashes. BG 4.37. Kṛṣṇa gives the characteristics of a realized soul or one in transcendental knowledge in the 5^th Chapter: “A person in the divine consciousness, although engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving about, sleeping and breathing, always knows within himself that he actually does nothing at all."

"Because while speaking evacuating, receiving opening or closing his eyes, he always knows that only the material senses are engaged with their objects and that he is aloof from them…The yogis, abandoning attachment, act with body, mind, intelligence, and even with the senses, only for the purpose of purification. ” B.G 5.10, 5.12

Spiritual Equality

There is no mention made here of any sectarian rituals. Renunciation, self-control, purification, transcendental knowledge of the self are all stressed. No one is barred from this transcendental practice of meditation and self-realization because of color, race, religion, or nationality. The message here is universal and eternal. There is no discrimination on the basis of caste or race.

 Kṛṣṇa specifically states: “The humble sage by virtue of true knowledge, sees with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, and elephant, and an outcaste.” (BG 5.18) vidyā-vinaya-sampanne brāhmaṇe gavi hastini śuni caiva śvapāke ca paṇḍita sama-darśinaḥ. विद्या-विनय-सम्पन्ने ब्राह्मणे गवि हस्तिनि शुनि चैव श्वपाके च पण्डित सम-दर्शिनः Here the word for “outcaste” is śvapake,  “dog-eater.” A wise man (paṇḍita) sees them equally. Swami Bhaktivedānta comments: “A Kṛṣṇa conscious person does not make any distinction between species or castes...

these differences of body are meaningless from the viewpoint of a learned transcendentalist.” The message of the Bhagavad-Gītā is not sectarian, but a universal spiritual message meant for everyone.

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Pernicious Stereotypes and Wrong-headed Ideas

Contrast this message with the pernicious ideas perpetuated by sectarian Western evangelists and Hollywood stereotypes.

 In Western movies from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” to “The Love Guru” 

or Raj in the “Big Bang Theory”  we discover that India is filthy, the people of India are dishonest and given to ridiculous superstitions. I've heard it again and again. They practice pagan idolatry involving millions of gods and dead bodies floating in the polluted river Ganges. Their caste system enforces cruel and disgusting wedding practices and inhuman discrimination. Their mythology is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that no one can understand. If only they would give up their superstitions and foolish religions their people would advance from heart-breaking poverty to the 21^st century.

Christianity and Kṛṣṇa

Many Victorian scholars who approached the Bhagavad-Gītā from an imperialist point of view felt that anything worthy in its message must have been stolen from Christianity. Unfortunately many of their views prevail today, having been perpetuated by mere repetition. Hegel promoted that idea since the primitive religious forms of India involve fatalistic views about a predetermined fate (karma) conditioned by acceptance of one’s social caste (varnashrama dharma) while worshipping thousands of pagan gods, any more modern ideas as for example,  surrender to divinity, compassion, universality, and monotheism, must have derived from Christian practices which represent an evolution towards a superior form of consciousness. Hinduism is part of humanity’s dark past, where Christianity is the most evolved theistic system. Hegel's views have permeated the views of many apparently academic thinkers. A relation between Christianity and Kṛṣṇa according to these thinkers,  implies some interpolation ex post facto of Christian values into Hindu systems by imitators. Therefore, the Puranas and other devotional literatures must have come into being at a later date.
These scholars therefore argue that Mahabharata is probably from the 5^th Century after Christ. We should see the attempts by the Hindus to introduce Christian values through the back door for what they are, attempts to imitate a superior system. These should be rejected as a sham and the genuine system should be embraced, that of Christianity.   And yet, the antiquity of the Mahabharata can hardly be questioned. 

The Mahabharata was well-known during the time of the Buddha around 5 centuries before Christ. Alexander the Great had copies of Panini’s grammar and Mahabharata sent to his libraries in Alexandria, in Egypt around 326 B.C., the time of his Indian campaign. Since the grammar of Panini is much older than the Alexandrian campaign and is a sophisticated treatise on an ancient language, the grammar probably predates Alexander by a few hundred years. And since Panini mentions the Mahabharata in references, we know that the Mahabharata was ancient in Panini’s time. 

It is speculated that if the Mahabharata itself existed as an epic poem some 500 years prior to Panini, the actual war must have taken place at least 3,000 years ago, while some argue for an even older date.

So, if Kṛṣṇa’s message to Arjuna was encoded in Sanskrit perhaps some 1,000 years before Christ, how could Kṛṣṇa’s universal message of spiritual realization be derivative of the Christian message?

It may be argued that the commentators of Bhagavad-Gītā like Śrīdhara Swāmī wrote after the 5^th Century, but Christianity itself had hardly received wide propagation in India even in the 5^th Century A.D. Also interesting is the modern message of Christianity. 

If, as Hegel suggests, humanity has seen an evolution in ideas from the dark paganism of the past to the highest ideals of compassion and sacred love in Christ’s sacrifice, how is it that after more than 500 years of evangelism in India, Christianity has received such a tepid response there? Are we to attribute that to the “backwards and superstitious nature” of the Indian people? How is it that the “backwards and superstitious” Indians produce the most advanced theoreticians in mathematics and computer science? Then again, if the primitive and pagan religions of India were left in the dustbin of history by the evolution of thought, how can we explain the incredible popularity of yoga?

Strangely, the message of Bhagavad-Gītā has withstood the onslaught of time. Its message today remains as timely and fresh as it was when it was first spoken: during the crisis of conscience of a great warrior on the field of battle.

And yet, while the message of the Gītā is certainly timeless and universal, here in the 9^th Chapter, Kṛṣṇa is drawing our attention to an idea that was to revolutionize the Christian world: monotheism. It cannot be often that God Himself comes to earth in human form. If we are to understand the deepest, most confidential secrets of the Bhagavad-Gītā, we must come to terms with this. Here God Himself is revealing Himself and describing the process by which a mortal soul might attain to divinity. Even if this is might be mythology, isn’t it worth considering the argument, suspending our disbelief for a moment to see where the idea leads us?

Kṛṣṇa Himself anticipates this point. (BG 9.11) He knows how difficult it must be for ordinary men to have faith: “fools deride Me when I descend in the human form. They do not know My transcendental nature and My supreme dominion over all that be. By Me in My unmanifested form, this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are in Me, but I am not in them. Behold My mystic opulence! Although I am the maintainer of all living entities, and although I am everywhere, still My Self is the very source of creation. As the mighty wind, blowing everywhere, always rests in ethereal space, known that in the same manner, all beings rest in Me. At the end of the millennium every material manifestation enters into My nature, and at the beginning of another millennium, by my potency, I again create. The whole cosmic order is under Me. By My will it is manifested again and again, and by My will it is annihilated at the end. And yet I am unaffected by any karmic reaction. I am ever detached, as though neutral. The material nature is working under My direction and it is producing all moving and unmoving beings. By its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again. And yet the bewildered cannot understand the nature of God. Delued and attracted by demonic and atheistic views their hopes for liberation, their hard work, and their culture of knowledge are all defeated. Great souls are not deluded. Under the protection of the divine nature they dedicate themselves in divine love because they know Me as the Lord, thy God, original and inexhaustible.”

Now, if these words were spoken by God to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane or by Jehovah to Gabriel, many in the West would have no problem accepting the general ideas here outlined. 

What Kṛṣṇa has argued here is that divinity is monotheistic. God is Original and Inexhaustible. Material nature moves under His dominion, and by that dominion is created and dissolved again and again. Here, Kṛṣṇa gives us a detailed description of the nature of divinity. It is a philosophically concise theological argument made some 30 centuries ago. What makes us squirm is that it is not coming from Jehovah or Christ but from Kṛṣṇa. It troubles us to hear that someone besides Jesus is calling Himself God. Many people like the message but wish to do away with the messenger, arguing that Kṛṣṇa can't be God, but that he might be a highly realized yogi of some kind. He may have been a true religious genius with brilliant insights along the lines of Buddha or the Dalai Lama. But to place him on the same level as Jesus would be blasphemy to many. That this took place thousands of years before the appearance of Jesus doesn’t matter.

But at the risk of being blasphemous or facing accusations of heresy, one may indeed ask, when did Jesus become God? Was it during the Sermon on the Mount when he declared, “blessed are the poor?” 

Was he exalted above men for championing the cause of the meek and the poor and the downtrodden? Perhaps not. Perhaps that is why he was crucified. In any case, Jesus was not an overnight success. He did not go from being a prophet among the poor fishermen and carpenters of Jerusalem to sitting at the right hand of God overnight. How did he become a deity?

After his crucifixion, the interpretation of the Christ story underwent a long evolution: with the passing of time, as he became increasingly identified as divine Jesus went from being a potential prophet to messiah; to being the Son of God exalted to a divine status at resurrection; to being a preexistent angelic being who came to earth incarnate as a man; to being the incarnation of the Word of God who existed before all time and through whom the world was created; to being God himself, equal with God the Father and always existent with him.

This evolution from humble carpenter to Absolute Deity unfolded over a period of 2,000 years from the time of the living Christ to the Nicene Councils where Eusebius deified Him and Constantine consecrated Him, to the numerous wars fought from the time of the crusades to the conquest of Mexico and today in Iraq and the Middle East.

The culture wars and the “War on Christmas” continues to establish by force of arms the right of Christians everywhere to assert that Christ is the One True God.  Naturally any assertion to the contrary is apt to make one queasy.

But without calling the divinity of Jesus Christ into question, we may consider the values of Christianity parallel with the values of Kṛṣṇa bhakti in the sense that the monotheism of the Bhagavad-Gītā is not different from the monotheism of Jesus, when He talks about His Father in Heaven.

When Christ says, “My Father has many mansions,” and Kṛṣṇa says speaks of different material and spiritual planets where one resides after death, could they be speaking of the same essential truths?