{42}
Father of the world, of all that moves and all that doesn’t,
Its guru most venerable, worthy of worship,
No one compares to you. How could another be greater,
Unrivaled Original, anywhere in three worlds?
{43}
And so I bow, I lay my body flat,
Asking for mercy from you, praiseworthy Lord.
As father would son, or friend would friend,
As lover would lover, please, God, bear with me.
{44}
I rejoice to have seen what has never been seen
Before, but terror shakes my mind!
God, let me see you again in that form—
Have mercy, Lord God, home of the moving world!—
{45}
With a crown and a mace and a chakram in hand.
I want to see you that way.
Become the form with four limbs,
Oh you with a thousand arms, a universe of shapes….
{46}
The Blessed Lord said,
By my grace and my yogic power, Arjuna,
I have shown you this highest of forms.
It’s made of light, primordial, cosmic, endless.
I have shown it to no one before you.
{47}
Not by Vedic sacrifice or study, not by gifts,
Not by doing rites or harsh austerities—
No one in the human world can see this Form.
Only you. The hero of the Kurus.
{48}
Do not tremble. Do not be confused.
Now that you have seen this fearsome Form of mine,
Be free of fear again, and in high spirits.
Now look at me in this form.
{49}
Sanjaya said,
Krishna, having said this to Arjuna,
Showed his own form, as before. Becoming
Gentle and wondrously handsome again,
The mahatma calmed the frightened one.
{50}
Arjuna said,
Krishna, I see this human,
This gentle form of yours.
I am composed now, my mind
Returning to its nature.
{51}
The Blessed Lord said,
This Form of mine you saw
Is hard to see.
Even Gods are always
Hoping for the sight of it.
{52}
Not the Vedas, not austerities,
Neither charity nor sacrifices
Make it possible
To see me as you saw me.
{53}
It’s possible, Arjuna,
Through focused devotion alone
To know and witness my
Reality and enter me.
{54}
Someone who does my work, depends
On me, devotes himself to me, attachments
Let go, no enmity for any being:
Arjuna, he comes to me.
{55}
SESSION 12
Devote Yourself
Arjuna wants to know which is the best form of yoga, personal devotion or worship of an abstract God. Krishna says that both ways can attain him, but the pursuit of an abstract understanding is harder.
In fact, Krishna is interested in making it as easy as possible. He offers a descending scale of difficulty: steady mental focus, the practice of yoga, working for holy causes, or merely taking refuge in his power and exerting self-control.
Krishna goes on to describe the serene impartiality of the devotee.
Arjuna said,
Who knows yoga best—
Devotees perpetually
Yoked to you, or worshippers
Of the eternal Unmanifest?
{1}
The Blessed Lord said,
Worshippers who fix their minds on me,
Continually yoked to me,
Initiated in the highest faith:
I think of them as yoked the closest.
{2}
But those who honor
Changeless unmanifest mystery,
Unthought-of, all-pervading,
The fixed, immovable pinnacle,
{3}
The mob of their senses quelled,
On all sides evenhanded: They
Attain me, too, rejoicing
In the betterment of every creature.
{4}
The strain is greater on those minds
That fix on the Unmanifest.
To get to the Unmanifest,
A body goes through pain.
{5}
But those who lay down all their works
In me, exalting me,
Whose yogic focus does not wander
When they worship me—
{6}
Such people, Arjuna,
I salvage soon enough
From the ocean of death and rebirth.
I absorb their thought.
{7}
Keep your mind on me alone,
Have me absorb your intellect,
And from then on, without a doubt,
You will reside in me.
{8}
Or, if you just can’t keep on
Thinking steadily of me,
Then practice yoga, Arjuna,
To seek and reach me.
{9}
If you cannot even practice that,
Make my works your highest goal.
Merely doing work for me,
You will reach perfection.
{10}
If even this is something that you can’t
Quite do, take refuge in my power.
Let go of all the fruits of action
And act with self-control.
{11}
Better than practice: knowledge. Better
Than knowledge: meditation. Better
Than meditation: letting go the fruits
Of action. Once you’ve let go—instant peace.
{12}
With malice toward none,
Friendly and compassionate,
Neither selfish nor self-serving,
The same in pain and pleasure, patient,
{13}
A yogi constantly content
Is self-controlled and rooted in resolve.
His mind and intellect to me entrusted,
My devotee is dear to me.
{14}
The world does not repulse him,
And he does not repulse the world.
Freed of glee and pique, of fright
And worry, he is dear to me.
{15}
Expecting nothing, pure, adroit,
Sitting apart, his trembling gone
And all initiatives relinquished,
My devotee is dear to me.
{16}
He doesn’t rejoice, he doesn’t hate,
He doesn’t mourn, he doesn’t yearn.
Letting go of good and bad,
Full of devotion, he is dear to me.
{17}
The same to enemy and friend,
The same in honor and dishonor,
In heat and cold and pain and pleasure
The same, free of attachment,
{18}
Alike when praised or censured, silent,
Content with anything at all, at home
Anywhere, steady-minded: Such a man,
Full of devotion, is dear to me.
{19}
I speak this sweet, immortalizing
Dharma. Those who honor it,
Offering faith, exalting me—
They are extremely dear to me.
{20}
SESSION 13
The Field and the Knower of the Field
Arjuna asks about sentience and substance, as well as “the Field” and “the Knower of the Field.”
Krishna explains that the Field is the body, and he goes into detail about its components. He describes the qualities of the Knower, and then he describes what the Knower knows, Brahman. So the Knower knows the Field, or his own body, by getting to know Brahman.
The other part of Arjuna’s question, concerning sentience and substance, receives its answer as well: Krishna locates sentience (Purusha—see the Listener’s Guide to this session) inside the material body. Through the body, sentience experiences the three gunas, which are also born of substance or material nature.
This way of understanding experience keeps the atman at a remove from physical action. This, in turn, keeps it from being “smeared” by physical actions—including, though Krishna never makes this explicit, warfare.
Arjuna said,
Substance and Sentience, the Field
And Knower of the Field,
Knowledge, and what is known:
I want to learn of these.
{1}
The Blessed Lord said,
This body, Arjuna,
Is called the Field. Someone
Who knows this is the Knower of
The Field. So say the experts on this.
{2}
Know me for the Knower of the Field
In every Field. To know the Field
And know the Knower of the Field:
That’s what I consider knowledge.
{3}
Hear me out about the Field now,
Briefly—what it is and what it’s like,
What its adaptations are and why,
Who its Knower is, and what his powers are.
{4}
Seers have sung it many ways
In many different hymns
And lines from Brahmin sutras
Unquestionably reasoned out.
{5}
The major elements, the sense
Of self, the intellect, the Unmanifest,
The ten sense organs and the mind,
The five fields where the senses graze,
{6}
Desire, hatred, pleasure, pain,
Constitution, courage, consciousness:
This is, in summary, the Field
Described with adaptations.
{7}
No pride, no affectation,
Ahimsa, patience, honesty,
Service to your teacher, purity,
Steadiness and self-restraint,
{8}
Disinterest in the objects
Of the senses, selflessness,
Perceiving the evils of birth, death,
Old age, disease, and pain,
{9}
Detachment (none of this clinging
To a son, house, wife, and all that),
Constant equanimity about
Events desired or undesired,
{10}
Devotedness to me that never
Strays, no other yoga,
Secluded places your resort, with no
Excitement in a mass of people,
{11}
Knowledge your goal, kept constantly in sight,
Knowledge of metaself, of what is real—
This, I say, is knowledge.
Ignorance is what isn’t this.
{12}
I will proclaim what must be known.
Knowing it, you take on deathlessness,
Beginningless Brahman, the highest.
They say it neither is nor isn’t.
{13}
Everywhere its hands and feet,
Everywhere its eyes, heads, faces,
Everywhere its ears, worldwide,
Everything-enveloping it stands,
{14}
Illuminating gunas with all the senses
Yet free of all the senses,
Unattached yet buttressing it all,
Devoid of gunas, yet enjoying gunas,
{15}
Outside and inside beings,
Those that move and those that don’t….
Subtlety makes this hard to know!
It stands far off and close by.
{16}
Though in all creatures undivided,
The Vishnu who nourishes species,
Known as their devourer and evolution,
Dwells in them as if divided.
{17}
They say this is the light of lights as well,
Beyond the darkness—knowledge,
What there is to know, the goal of knowing,
Seated in the hearts of everyone.
{18}
So that is how they’re summarized: the Field,
Knowledge, and what there is to know.
My devotee, by understanding this,
Can take a step toward my state of being.
{19}
Know that Sentience and Substance
Are both beginningless as well.
Know that the adaptations, and the gunas,
Come to be in Substance.
{20}
It’s said the work, the tool, and the worker
Have their cause in Substance.
It’s said that Sentience is the reason
Pain and pleasure are experienced.
{21}
Sentience, in Substance stationed,
Enjoys the gunas born of nature.
Attachment to the gunas causes
Births in good or evil wombs.
{22}
Inside the body, the Highest Spirit
Is called the witness, buttress,
Authorizer, enjoyer,
Great Lord and highest atman.
{23}
Knowing Sentience and Substance this way,
Together with the gunas,
No matter how a man may live
He will not be reborn.
{24}
Some by meditation, others
By Samkhya yoga, others
Still by active yoga see
The atman, in the atman, by the atman.
{25}
Some, not knowing this, may hear
From others how to worship. Holding
What they hear to be their highest goal,
They, too, transcend their deaths.
{26}
Bull of the Bharatas, know this:
Whatever takes birth, moving
Or rooted, takes birth from the Field
Uniting with the Knower of the Field.
{27}
In all the species stands
The one same highest Lord
Who, when they perish, does not perish.
Whoever sees this, sees.
{28}
Seeing the one same Lord
Established everywhere,
He does his atman no self-harm.
From there he goes along t
he highest path.
{29}
Substance alone
Does every kind of doing.
Whoever sees this—that the atman
Is not the doer—sees.
{30}
When he sees that being’s
Multiplicity stays all one
And then expands from there,
He will attain Brahman.
{31}
No beginning to it. No gunas.
This imperishable highest atman,
Arjuna, seated in the body
Does not act and is not smeared.
{32}
Just as the ether, pervasive
And subtle, can’t be smeared,
The atman that sits in every
Body can’t be smeared.
{33}
As the one sun, Arjuna,
Brightens the whole world,
The owner of the Field
Brightens the whole Field.
{34}
A knowing eye distinguishes
Between the Field and Knower of the Field.
Whoever knows how beings can be freed
From Substance goes on to the zenith.
{35}
SESSION 14
Tell Apart the Three Gunas
Krishna describes the three gunas, Purity, Power, and Darkness. Everyone possesses all three to varying degrees; usually one predominates over the other two, and Krishna describes how each one manifests. Each individual perceives his or her predominant guna, and its manifestations, as the good. The ultimate good, according to Krishna, is to transcend the three gunas entirely.
Arjuna wonders how such a transcendent person behaves, and how he pulls off that transcendence in the first place. Krishna describes the detachment and equanimity familiar from earlier descriptions of the yogi.
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