Kṛṣṅa In The Bhagavad-Gītā

The Start of an Exploration of Meaning

By Hridayānanda Dāsa Goswami

This paper, originally presented to the Committee on the Study of Religion, at the University of California at Los Angeles, examines five topics in the Bhagavad-gītā. The first two of these topics—the strong monotheism of the Gītā, and the distinction between Kṛṣṅa and the individual souls—appeared in Part 1. Now the paper continues.

PART 2

3. God Is The Controller

BECAUSE GOD, Kṛṣṅa, is one, and eternally separate from the individual soul, it follows that He is the Lord and controller of all that be. Lord Kṛṣṅa delineates a bipartite notion of causality in which material nature is the cause of the physical workings of the world whereas the living being is the cause of his own enjoyment and suffering.** Nature responds to the soul’s attempts to exploit the illusory material world by entangling the soul in the web of māyā. Perhaps the greatest illusion is the soul’s false perception that he is performing those physical events, such as moving of the body, that in fact are done by nature.** Nature in turn is directly under the control of the Supreme Lord, and the entire cosmos turns by His command.** Thus the causal chain originates in Kṛṣṅa, who states: “I am the Lord of all beings, and I stay in their hearts, causing all beings, who are mounted on the machine (of the body), to wander in this world in illusion.”**

Kṛṣṅa is a living God who orders, punishes, and reclaims the fallen souls, who are eternally part and parcel of Him. Thus Kṛṣṅa declares, “Those who always faithfully abide by My injunction, without envy, are freed from all karmic acts. But those who are envious and do not abide by My injunction you should know to be mindless and lost, for they are confused about all that is knowledge.”**

This same point is driven home at the end of the Gītā: “If then because of false ego you will not hear, then you will perish.”** We will understand Kṛṣṅa without doubt and fully, Kṛṣṅa declares, by hearing from Him.**

One achieves real peace by recognizing that Lord Kṛṣṅa is the great Lord of all the worlds.** Similarly, one who knows that Kṛṣṅa is the great lord of the worlds, and that He is unborn and beginningless, is himself unbewildered among mortal beings and is freed of all sins.** Arjuna acknowledges Lord Kṛṣṅa to be the “controller of all beings” and the “Lord of the universe.”**

Finally, the entire eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā demonstrates in an unforgettable way that the whole universe can be devoured in an instant by Lord Kṛṣṅa. His control is absolute, for all beings exist within Him: “When you have thus learned the truth you will never again fall into illusion, for by that knowledge you will see that all living beings are in the Soul—that is, they are in Me.”**

4. Kṛṣṅa Is Everything

Lord Kṛṣṅa strongly and repeatedly declares in the Bhagavad-gītā that He is the source of all that be. It follows that God is not only distinct from His creative energies but is also one with them, since they are eternally resting on Him. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu thus stated that the philosophy of the Gītā is acintya-bhedābheda-tattva, which means that God is inconceivably one with, and simultaneously different from, His creation. We shall survey Kṛṣṅa's statements that He is the source of everything, and then see how this claim is logically linked to the claim that “all things are Kṛṣṅa.”

Śrī Kṛṣṅa declares in the Bhagavad-gītā: “I am the source of everything; from Me everything emanates.”** Similarly, He states: “I am the origin and the annihilation of the entire cosmos.”** Kṛṣṅa goes on to say, “There is nothing else beyond Me, O Dhanañjaya. All this world rests on Me like pearls strung on a thread.”** And as previously quoted, “Neither the hosts of gods nor the great sages know My origin, for in all respects I am the origin of the gods and great sages.”** Kṛṣṅa is the source not only of the living beings, but of their qualities as well: “Intelligence, knowledge, freedom from confusion [and ten other qualities], in their various types, are states of being of the living entities, and they all come from Me.”** “The seven primordial sages and the four Manus owe their existence to Me for they are born of My mind.”

Let us now examine the tenth chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā, wherein Lord Kṛṣṅa claims (Bg. 10.20–38) to be the superlative exemplar in seventy categories. Here is a sample verse from that section: “Of the Ādityas I am Viṣṅu; of lights I am the radiant sun; of the Maruts I am Marīci; of stars I am the moon.”**18 To read monism into all of this would be a transparent misreading of the text, for a serious look at the entire chapter makes abundantly clear what Kṛṣṅa is actually saying.

First, we notice that most of Kṛṣṅa's statements, cited above, to the effect that He is the source of everything come from this same tenth chapter, namely verses Bg. 10.2, Bg. 10.4–5, Bg. 10.6, and Bg. 10.8. Kṛṣṅa precedes, then, His identification of Himself with the greatest items of this world by emphasizing that He is the source of all these things. Recall that in the seventh chapter Kṛṣṅa stated that all the things of this world are His energy, or prakṛti (Bg. 7.4–6) and that He is therefore the source of all that be.

That Kṛṣṅa is referring to the same ontological state of affairs becomes clear when we notice the repeated use here of the word vibhūti, which indicates the following: glory, expansion, great power, manifestation of might, etc. Arjuna introduces this term when he says to Kṛṣṅa: “You should speak about Your own divine glories, those by which You pervade these worlds and abide in them.”** The word for “glories” here is vibhūtayaḥ, the plural form of vibhūti. But that is just the beginning of this word’s career in the tenth chapter of the Gītā. Arjuna then says,“O Janārdana [Kṛṣṅa], please describe again, and extensively, Your mystic power and might, for as I listen to this ambrosia, I find no satiation.”** Again, the word for “might” is vibhūtim. Lord Kṛṣṅa then answers, agreeing to explain His own divine opulences, and again the word used (Bg. 10.19) is vibhūtayaḥ, the plural of vibhūti. In the very next śloka, the Lord begins His identification of Himself with the seventy categories mentioned above. At the end of the narration, Kṛṣṅa says, “O burner of the foe, there is no end to My divine powers, and so I have given some example of the extension of My glory.”** Predictably the word vibhūti is used twice in this verse, and it is repeated in the following verse, where-in Lord Kṛṣṅa says: “Whatever glorious, beautiful, or mighty being there may be, understand that it is born of but a spark of My splendor.** Here the word vibhūtimat means “that which possesses vibhūti—that is: power, glory, etc.

By using the word vibhūti no less than six times, Lord Kṛṣṅa makes clear that He is talking about His powers, His properties, His opulences, etc. In the seventh chapter, there are three “identification verses” (Bg. 7.9–11) which exactly resemble in meter, language, and content the “identification verses” of the tenth chapter (Bg. 10.20–38). These three verses, as in the tenth chapter, are preceded by an elaborate analysis of how Lord Kṛṣṅa is the source of all, matter and spirit being His superior and inferior potencies. At the conclusion of Bg. 7.9–11, Kṛṣṅa declares that all these opulences with which He has identified Himself come in fact from Him, and are resting in Him, but He is not in them.**

It also bears mentioning that one who rightly understands the sense in which Kṛṣṅa is the source of everything does not then consider all beings to be God, but rather worships the real God with wholehearted devotion: “I am the source of all. From Me all proceeds. Knowing this, the wise worship Me with all their being.”

The purpose of the identification verses is to nourish the devoted theists, as Kṛṣṅa explains in the verse that follows the one cited above: “Their minds in Me, their lives dedicated to Me, the devotees enlighten one another, always speaking about Me, and thus they are satisfied and rejoice.”25Further, Arjuna explicitly states that it is just to help such meditation on the Lord that he is requesting Kṛṣṅa to describe His glories: “Always thinking of You, O Yogin, how can I know You? In which various forms, my Lord, am I to think about You? Describe to me at length Your glories … etc.”** There is hardly a doctrine of pantheism in the Bhagavad-gītā. The real message is quite clear: surrender to Kṛṣṅa.

Lord Kṛṣṅa says that after many births, one in knowledge surrenders to the Lord, realizing that “Vāsudeva (Kṛṣṅa) is everything.”** Arjuna tells Kṛṣṅa, “You cover everything and thus You are everything.”**These verses offer devastating evidence against the impersonal, monistic interpretation.

In the first instance, Lord Kṛṣṅa's statement comes in the midst of a discussion of four types of people who do not surrender to God, and four types who do. Kṛṣṅa's point in the verse we have cited (Bg. 7.19) is that surrender to Kṛṣṅa is the sign that one is actually in knowledge, after many lifetimes of seeking the truth. In fact, the learned one who realizes that Kṛṣṅa is everything belongs to one of the four classes of men who surrender to the Lord.

We have already explained at length the many verses in chapter seven, preceding Bg. 7.19, which claim that Kṛṣṅa is the source of everything, and that He is identical with the opulent features of this world in the sense that such items, composed of the inferior modes of nature (sattva, rajas, tamas), are but expansions of the Lord’s power. And the verses following Bg. 7.19 emphasize that it is Kṛṣṅa alone who is to be worshiped, and not other gods. In other words, the topic under discussion is nothing but surrender to Kṛsṅa, and an elaborate ontological explanation in this very chapter has clarified that Kṛṣṅa is to be identified with the wonderful things of this world only in the sense that such items rest on Him. It was explicitly stated that Kṛṣṅa is simultaneously aloof, that He is “not in them.”**

Similarly, Arjuna declares to Kṛṣṅa: “You are everything because You entirely possess everything.”** Arjuna’s statement is in response to the cosmic vision of God, in which Kṛṣṅa devours all the universe, and all beings are subdued by the Lord’s omnipotent feature of time. That is, it is in the context of God’s absolute domination of the subordinate living beings that Arjuna utters His prayer, “You are everything!”

Still, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at the somewhat complex ontology operating here, and Kṛṣṅa Himself provides us such a focused metaphysical analysis in the ninth chapter (Bg. 4–10), where He intentionally speaks in apparently contradictory language: “By Me in My unmanifested form, this whole universe is pervaded. All beings are situated in Me, but I am not situated in them. The beings are also not situated in Me. Behold My mystic power. I am the maintainer of all beings; I am also not situated in them. My self is the source of the beings. Understand that just as the great wind, which goes everywhere, is situated in the sky, so all beings are situated in Me.”

Lord Kṛṣṅa here makes several ontological distinctions between Himself, God, and the many living beings like us:

1. Kṛṣṅa states that He individually pervades the entire universe. There is no similar claim for any of the individual living beings. (Bg. 9.4)

2. All beings are situated in Kṛṣṅa, but He is not in them. (Bg. 9.4)

3. Kṛṣṅa is the maintainer of all beings, but not they of Him. (Bg. 9.5)

4. Kṛṣṅa is the source (bhāvana) of all beings, but not they of Him. (Bg. 9.5)

5. Lord Kṛṣṅa compares Himself to the sky, and the living beings to the air, which moves within the sky but does not mix with it. (Bg. 9.6) This metaphor is further developed at Bg. 13.33, wherein Kṛṣṅa compares the sky to the soul, which does not mix with the body. Kṛṣṅa states at Bg. 13.33 that although the sky extends everywhere (sarva-gatam), because of its subtlety (saukṣmyāt) it does not mix with anything, and hence nothing can taint it (nopalipyate).

At Bg. 9.6, then, Kṛṣṅa means to state that although the great winds blow throughout space or the sky, the sky is never covered by the air. By analogy, then, although God contains all living beings within His existence, because of His being superior He cannot be affected by the inferior qualities of the beings He contains. Indeed, Kṛṣṅa states that in an unmanifest form (avyakta-mūrtinā) He pervades the universe. Here the term avyakta, “unmanifest,” is clearly related to the concept of subtlety in Bg. 13.33. This sense of subtlety as a cause or condition of imperceptibility is explicitly given at Bg. 13.16, where it is said that the Absolute “is incomprehensible because of its subtlety.”**32 This very word sūkṣmatvāt is given at Bg. 13.33 to mean “because of its subtlety.”

Thus the analogy of the sky and the air (Bg. 9.6) is meant to explicate the same message given at Bg. 9.4–5: Although Kṛṣṅa is all-pervading, and although all beings live and exist within His existence, He is always distinct and superior, and is never affected by the inferior qualities of the living beings He contains. Thus it is very difficult to mount anything like a serious argument for monism from the statements of the Bhagavad-gītā.

(continued in the next issue.)