194 Is the Gita religious or spiritual – The Monk’s Podcast with Garuda Prabhu

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Hare Krishna, Guruji. Welcome back to the Monks Podcast. Hare Krishna.

Always good to be here with you, Chaitanya Charanjee. Yes, so it's such a joy to have you. You know, we discuss so many different topics, but I think one of the topics we connect on the most is the Gita and the various dimensions of the Gita.

So, today I thought that we could discuss on two related themes centered on the Gita. You know, across the world, especially you could say in the postmodern youth, there is a tendency to identify oneself as spiritual but not religious. That's, there's an individual trend like that, because people say they don't want to be affiliated with a particular religion or a particular, especially religious institution.

And there is also the tendency, we could say at a governmental level, the governments are secular, so they don't want to affiliate with the religion. So, sometimes devotees position the Gita as a spiritual book, but not a religious book. So, in one sense, when we use the word, when people use the word religion with its negative connotations that they have, that is, we could say that identification is understandable.

There is also the concern that in India, there are some state governments, Gujarat and Karnataka, they are planning to teach the Gita and teach the Gita officially in the school syllabus. Now, there is some opposition to that the Gita is a religious book and people say it's not a religious book, but actually saying it is a not religious book is also a very strong statement. So, I don't want to get into the politics of the situation, but that was the context in which I thought we could have this discussion of is the Gita a spiritual book or a religious book? So, would you like to start with maybe your understanding of these two terms or however you would like to start? Yes.

You know, the word religion, perhaps we could just start with the word religion. This is not an easy term to understand, negotiate, and each human that uses the word religion has some preconception, some prior experience of what it is, what it is not, positively, negatively, etc., etc. But the word religion itself has its derivations from the Latin religare, which means to again connect.

So, in the very word, in the very morphology of the word, is a key to understanding what essentially religion is, which is we've become disconnected from reality. We've become disconnected from ourselves. We've been disconnected to the divine.

So, religion is about to reconnect, religare, to reconnect. So, at the simplest level, Chaitanya Chalangi, religion is something quite universal. We find ourselves in the conditioned existence of our lives, and we're trying to find something higher, more real, more essential, more transcendental.

Human beings are those, is the one species that really seeks something greater than themselves. Beautiful. I've never seen a bunch of chipmunks get together and say, let's try to be more than just chipmunks.

Chipmunks don't say that. Chipmunks are being chipmunks. Eagles are being eagles.

Seals are being seals. Lions are being lions. Humans? No.

Humans want to be more human at the very least, and even more than that. They love something transcendent. They love to reach other worlds, whether it be science fiction or whether it be science, trying to go to other planets, you know, the Olympics, trying to, you know, beat the last, you know, achievement in the 100-yard dash.

We're always trying to do more. Trying to go beyond what is normal, whether it be in the material domain or in the non-material domain. In one sense, the longing is the same.

Exactly. At least the longing is the same, yeah. Exactly.

It's this desire to go beyond. It's the desire for levity, you know. Beautiful, levity.

Nice word, yeah. Levity, you know, just to, it's built into the human spirit, Chaitanya Charanjee, and that's why the human birth is a blessed birth, because that's where one can actually be elevated to a state of liberation and eternality. So, in one sense, if I'm not mistaken, the way you are explaining religion is actually not much different from the way most people conceive spirituality.

Right. This is my point. Spirit longs for something bigger.

So, we could say maybe that spirituality and religion, at least in terms of their essential purpose, are the same. But the way they are understood, the way they are maybe demonstrated in the world, they may be different. Yes.

Yeah, go ahead. It's one thought I had here. When I study language, in English, for example, there is always this tension between the descriptive and the prescriptive dimensions of vocabulary.

That is this what is a word, this is what it's supposed to mean, but this is how people use it. So, quite often meanings of words change over time because people use it in a different sense from what is in the dictionary. And then eventually, you could say the descriptive dimension quite often wins over.

That's how language evolves. So, if I understand right, presently, when you are using the word religion, we could say you are using it in a prescriptive sense, that this is what religion was meant to mean. Yes.

Essentially, yes. Yes. So, just to continue this theme, even in Einstein's quotes, he uses the word religion quite often.

You know, the religious urge can be fulfilled when we see the harmony within the universe or things like that. So, the negative connotation of the word religion seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon, maybe last 50, 60 years or something like that. Is that true? Yeah.

I mean, look, what we've got out there right now in the world are people saying either I am very religious, I'm devout, or some people say I'm not religious at all, but I'm very spiritual. And then the third category is I'm neither religious nor am I spiritual. Now, the SBNR, spiritual but not religious, this came out in a book by Robert Fuller in 2001.

I've read that book. Yes, it's quite a good analysis. Right.

Spiritual but not religious. So, that's where this SBNR comes from. Although it's been a trend of people seeking the spiritual to avoid the impersonalism of the institutionalization of religion.

It's a reaction to people personally feeling neglected by an institution that promotes its doctrines despite its effects on their followers. Okay. See, the religious invokes these kinds of images.

Doctrinally driven practices, traditional ways, scriptural literalism, prescriptive expression, membership-oriented, submission to authority, guided thinking, self-sacrificing for the sake of the institution. The institution is more important than persons. Doctrine and institution above or more important than persons, etc.

These are the sort of images conjured up when we say religious. That is true, yeah. So, if we could say broadly speaking that religion has two aspects, something like what people believe and what people practice.

So, it becomes too dogmatic in terms of beliefs and too ritualistic in terms of practices. Then people are put off by it. Yes, that's right.

Yeah. So, now, of course, you could say in the 21st century the book came about, but the trend itself seems to have started from the 1970s or something, where I think from the counterculture time itself, because people were more interested in Eastern spirituality than Eastern religion. Isn't it? When ISKCON also started, that time also the differentiation between spiritual and religion had started or not.

Any thoughts about that? Yeah. You know, the struggle between the individual person and the institution has been going on for a very long time. And there's always this tension.

You know, now, with the start of Christianity, there were these church houses. You know, there were no cathedrals, there were no churches, but they had church houses. And the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter and the other apostles would travel around like sannyasins to the different houses.

And it's interesting because Paul, whose epistles, of course, are there in the New Testament and make up much of the New Testament, we learn from the epistles of Paul, the Apostle Paul, that he did not favor any church house because they had more people or more money, but apparently the other apostles did. That's fascinating. Okay.

And that's why Paul never took any money from a congregation, and he had his own business. He had a tent business. He made tents and he sold them.

And that's how he was supported in going around to each congregation equally without being influenced by famous people or wealthy people or influential people. He was willing to take up the austerities of self-support and be able to serve his congregants equally. Okay.

So that's why I think even now some Christians, like the Amish, they don't have church houses. That could be one reason, of course. So are you saying that this danger of religion becoming ritualistic or externalized, that is anticipated right at the dawn of Christianity itself? The danger? Yes.

Yes. And again, humans have a hard time getting along with each other. And of course, the institution is what really tests that.

And individuals, that's one thing what an individual can do, but what an institution could do can be quite extraordinary. I mean, look at the cathedrals that have been constructed. I mean, Notre Dame in Paris took 700 years to build.

Most people that worked on the building never saw the building completed. Now that's an institution. That's not an individual, right? So there are advantages of institutional religion.

This is when people come together to work together. And then, but there are also advantages to individuals really, how should I say, making sure that the spirit of religion does not die in institutional kinds of things. So, for example, Francis of Assisi, he was a simple Catholic monk, but he had his own following.

And they were, you know, nomadic, they were, you know, they didn't really have a place so much, or church so much. And yet the Catholic Church in Rome was so grand and so big, and at the time, extremely powerful. So you see, there's always this tension between the institution and the individual.

And I think you need both. I think you need both. I think you need people who will strive even beyond institutional norms.

And yet you also need the institution so you can bring people together. Beautifully put. Okay.

So, we could also, this has almost become like a discussion on the need for institutionalization, whether it is important or not. And that could be an important topic, and we have addressed it briefly also earlier. So, overall, what you're saying is that, if we consider religion at its core, it was meant to be an expression for the spirit, innate spiritual longing of humanity.

But as it becomes formalized in some terms, either in terms of certain dogmas, or in terms of certain rituals, or in terms of certain institutional structures, then there is a possibility that it can become too externalized. Although at the same time, all these are also required. So, in that sense, we could say religion and the negative connotation of religion is there because either religion itself has become too externalized, or people who are observing religion are focusing too much on its externals and are not perceiving the spiritual essence.

It could be both ways. Yes. And that's the tension that individuals may not be appreciating and supporting the advantages of the institution, and the institution may not be appreciating the personalist approach to its congregants.

And we live in a world of duality, you know, this is, we're always going to go on one side or the other side. And so, it's a matter of a very careful, you know, back and forth balance. And, you know, we see this in ISKCON as well, you know, we see the… How are you using the word duality over here? Can you talk about duality in terms of heat and cold or something like that? So, yeah, duality here, I'm meaning that there's always the attention of doing too much for the institution, or too much for the individual.

And, you know, to bring a balance between the two, that's just right, is very hard to achieve. Okay, that makes sense. Duality, a pull from one area to the, you know, a kind of pull from one extreme to the other extreme, the pendulum problem, you know.

Okay, that makes sense. So, now, this itself could be a big subject to discuss. Can we focus on the Gita, or you would like to continue this from a broader perspective? Yes, let's focus on the Gita.

Yeah, always wonderful to focus on the Gita. So, just my quick thoughts are that the Gita itself deals with issues that are centered on the right thing to do, and how we can aspire for it. Ultimately, how the longing for love can be channeled to do the right thing in the world.

So, in one sense, the Gita's message is spiritual. At the same time, it also talks about particular paths, and it also, the sixth chapter mentions about the yoga practices. The ninth chapter also talks about certain bhakti practices.

So, we can say it is, there are also some religious practices mentioned in the book. Of course, we can say that there's no religious institution mentioned in the book, unless we want to consider the parampara to be an institution. Any thoughts on this? Yes.

I mean, one of the, I mean, and I think I've spoken to you about this before in other podcasts, but it bears repeating. The genius of the Gita, unlike the Quran, and the New Testament, and the Hebrew Bible, the genius of the Gita is it begins with something more universal than a particular theological doctrine, the human condition. That speaks universally.

Look, I mean, when you open up the Hebrew Bible, and you start with Genesis 1.1, I mean, it's like, wow, you know, God created the heavens and the earth. Beautiful. Sounds like a scripture, right? The arrival of Jesus Christ, you know, Son of God.

He was predicted in the book of Isaiah, blah, blah, blah, and so on, you know. The Quran, all the all merciful Allah, you know, all compassion, all merciful Allah, you know, and he has given us a path to humankind, and humankind is to serve him and submit itself to him, and so on. And so, every scripture in the West begins with this allegiance and acknowledgement of the existence of a particular divinity, a particular nomenclature, and so on.

The Gita begins, what's going on on the battlefield? Hmm. I mean, a battlefield, you know, the struggle in human existence, the torment of the human condition, the way we are in conflict within ourselves and outside of ourselves between each other. This is where the Gita begins, with the human condition.

It's powerful. Later on, it presents the divinity of Krishna, barely in chapter four, more in chapter seven, with the I am declarations, and chapter nine with the I am declarations and, and, you know, you know, yet, but oh, she did not, you know, do whatever you do, do as an offering to me, well, that, that, that objective pronoun me refers to divinity. But the Bhagavad Gita can be read as great literature, the Bhagavad Gita can be read as a self-improvement book, the Bhagavad can be read as sacred scripture, the Bhagavad Gita can be read as a love call from the divine.

So what we bring is what we bring to it, Chaitanya Charanjee, you know, what do we bring to a text? So there's the world of the text. There's the world in front of the text, the world in which we reside. And there's the world behind the text, three worlds, the world of the text, the world in front of the text, and the world behind the text.

Can you, so world behind means the world we are bringing in, and the world in front means after we read the text, how we, how it changes our vision of the world? Is that what you're referring to? Not quite. So the world in front of the text is our encounter of this ancient text and the world of the text. The world of the text is the war, the Kauravas and the Pandavas, they're coming together, you know, Samaveda, Yoyotsavaha, right? They come together desiring to fight, okay? So that's the world of the text.

And the world behind the text is seen in verses like in the beginning of chapter four, you know, where Krishna says to Arjuna, I have, I know all my, you know, previous, you know, lives, you don't know yours, you know, or I'm sorry, I know all your previous lives, you don't know yours. And, and so in other words, that's the world, there's a whole, you know, world of divinity behind the Bhagavad Gita. But you know, so much of that is let in.

Of course, in chapter 11, there's a little glimpse of the universal form, the Virata Rupa, which is, of course, behind the text, or even Arjuna wanted to find out. So what, you know, what is behind you? You know, what are you made of? So Krishna gives them special eyes to see. So that's the world behind the text, so much about the divine, but the world of the text is what's happening right there in the Gita, the world in front of the text is where we're coming from.

We're in the 21st century, as you mentioned, you know, we have, we come from different cultures, the Bhagavad Gita has reached pretty much every major, even minor culture of the world now. What do we bring to the Gita? So if I'm a spiritual but not religious person, I'm going to look, my world then is going to interact with the world of the Gita as a book that solves, you know, some modern problems, modern social challenges. Is that okay? Well, sure, that's okay.

Is that the ultimate point of the Gita? No. Is it okay? Yes. That's a very good analysis.

So that means, you know, there will be an essential message of the Gita, which will be universal. At the same time, the Gita will speak to different contexts. And the way it speaks to each context is also important.

But the contextual application should not be equated with the essential message. That's right. Yes, that's nice.

So how are we connecting with this, this with the topic of a spiritual but not religious, you said the Gita can be understood at different levels, as I say, addressing the human condition as a call for duty as a loving exchange. Yes. Remember the that South Indian Brahmana and the Chaitanya Charanjee.

Yes. Who behaves in the Gita and he wept because of this sweet, sweet relationship between Arjuna and Krishna. And that is the message of the Gita is the love between divinity and humanity.

But we can't all get there yet. No. So quickly, Chaitanya Charanjee, we may we may need a teacher, we may need to find someone who actually realizes that and is lifted up by that.

And then because he or she is lifted up by that, he or she can lift up others into that. That is Guru. You are lifted up, and then you can lift others up.

That is Guru. Yeah, that's beautiful. So, so you're saying that ultimately the Gita is meant to raise us towards spiritual consciousness.

And the Guru is an important part in that. Is that where you are? Absolutely. You know what, I should relate to you a little story, Chaitanya Charanjee.

I should tell you about a conference that I was invited to. It was a world conference. And this was from a group without naming them.

It was in a Dwighton group. And the leader is a sannyasin, who at the time was 85 years old. By now he must be 91.

He was sharp as a tack. He had his sannyasin, a few sannyasin disciples there, who would also speak. I was one of the keynote speakers, because they had found my Bhagavad Gita translation, and were very impressed by it.

So they, they asked me to present and they left it open. Well, I was, there were places in the audience, right up in the chairs, the audience in the front, they had my name on the chair, the other names of other speakers. And the speaker, one of the initiates, disciples of this head swami, they placed me next to him because he was to speak next.

First, the head swami speaks, this swami would speak and then Garuda Das. Or they presented me as, you know, Dr. Graham Schweig. Okay.

His name, the sannyasin I sat next to, somewhat humorously, is named Nirvishesha Nanda. Now, I took that as a very, as Krishna's humor, because I don't know how many times a day I say Nirvishesha Shunyavadi, Paschatya Dei Shatalane. Yeah, okay.

So here I am next to Nirvishesha Nanda swami, who is going to get up and speak. Now what, now the point of the story is this, the head guru got up and said that the Bhagavad Gita is the best book for reducing stress in the modern world. He presented the book as a book that could be consulted to reduce stress.

Then his disciple Nirvishesha Nanda got up and talked about how the Bhagavad Gita could be a very helpful book in the workplace. Okay, at this point, at this point, Chaitanya Charanjee, I am feeling totally out of place. I'm about to get up and explain.

I'm going to, I think my talk was something like eight universal principles that one could understand from the Bhagavad Gita. And the six through eight was drenched in bhakti and then the necessary precondition for whether it be karma, jnana, or even bhakti, there is a necessary precondition for any of these to be valid yogas. And that is divinity's call to us, his love call.

And that ultimately his teachings deliver this love call. And that yoga is about the divine yoga that already embraces us from without, from within and from everywhere around us. Yoga on our side is about the embrace.

Krishna's already embracing us with his Brahman manifestation. That's an embrace. He's already embracing us from within.

We are sandwiched in by divinity. He's outside. He's insta.

I call that a sandwich. He's even got some condiment to put on us. That's everywhere.

He's everywhere around us. All we have to do is return the embrace. The Maha Mantra, of course, is that return embrace.

We have discussed all these themes. We had a podcast on the universal principles of the Gita once and this idea of embrace is very beautiful. It's nice.

So what happened was, I'm giving this presentation and feeling totally out of place because the first two presentations were on stress. The Gita talks about how to deal with stress. The second one, how to deal with the workplace and here I am talking about, you know, love of God and love from God.

There were people in the audience. There were a thousand people there easily, probably a little more in this big auditorium. I actually was able to see some of the people in the front area and tears were going down on their cheeks.

They were so moved by the presentation that all 100 books that were up in the lobby sold out like this and the head Swami that was sort of not really introducing himself to me. He came up to me afterwards and there are pictures of me with him and, you know, he just thanked me over and over and over for that presentation. So here's the thing.

People need to hear things at different levels. People have different needs. You know, look at Arjuna.

When Arjuna had his breakdown, I mean he had a major meltdown as we know. What Krishna teaches at first in the second chapter is different what he teaches toward the end of the 18th chapter. You know this well.

The first thing Arjuna needed to hear was, hey, do you know you're eternal? You are eternal. Never was there a time when you did not exist nor will there ever be a time when all these kings will ever not exist or ever cease to be and same with myself. We are eternal.

We are everlasting forevermore. This is the first teaching. Now is that the be all and end all of the Bhagavad Gita? No, but that's what he needed at that time.

Then the dialogue progresses and Krishna saw now he's ready to hear this. Hmm, the laws of action, right? Then he's ready to hear. And then of course, it's not strictly about karma yoga.

It's, you know, weaving yoga in, you know, weaving in his own relationship with Krishna, I mean with Arjuna, Krishna weaving in his own relationship with Arjuna. And, you know, it's not, you know, monolithic. It's a weave of different things.

But each weave has a dominant color and action. Jnana is that dominant feature in the first several chapters. And then, you know, he's moving now into more and more, you know, Vasudeva Sarvam.

Vasudeva Sarvam. Beautiful. How beautiful is that? Vasudeva Krishna is everywhere.

Vasudeva Krishna is my all, is my all. What a wonderful mantra. Just that, Chaitanya Charanjee.

Vasudeva Sarvam. You know, that verse also is so beautiful because it brings about like a union of bhakti and jnana. Krishna says the most evolved bhakta is a jnanavan.

And then Vasudeva Sarvamiti. So bhakti is not just sentiment, but it's like, what you say, if the universe, the Lord embracing us and we embracing the Lord back. He's everything.

He's all of existence through all of existence. He's embracing us. Yes.

But the secret here is, as you well know, the secret is that jnana ultimately doesn't become a mere sort of flow of the cognitive faculties. But jnana is also ultimately a faculty of the heart. Okay.

It's about, then you can know the Shamasundaram Gunaswaroop, what is it? Shamasundaram Achintya You can then know what is not knowable. Achintya is a future passive participle. This is not knowable.

But you can know the unknowable through a special jnana that comes from the heart, not the head. It's beautiful, beautiful stuff. It's nice.

In one sense, this itself could be a big subject of discussion, that there is jnana, which is an aspect of the intellect and this jnana, which comes from the heart. Yes. In the Bhakti Sutra, it says that the jnana, the fruits of jnana, the fruits of karma, the fruits of yoga, they're all contained in bhakti.

How is that? Because bhakti has to do with the heart. And we know that the jivatman is situated in the heart. The paramatman is situated in the heart.

It's about the heart. That's the ultimate knowing, the ultimate acting, and the ultimate uniting. Sorry to interrupt.

I was interrupting you. No, this is beautiful. So again, if we bring this all back to our topic of religious and spiritual, if I understand right, what you're saying is that the Gita has a core message that is very strongly spiritual, that is channeling the human heart's longing for eternity.

So in one sense, by telling that at our core, we are eternal, and there is an object for our love that is also eternal. So the central core is at one sense spiritual of the Gita. Yes.

I mean, take a bird, take a bird, a birdling, a little baby bird in a nest. Hmm. That bird just needs to learn how to just deal within the nest.

I mean, that, you know, that's the first kshetra, the first sphere, very narrow sphere, the child, right, the bird. And then the bird can go beyond the nest. And it may flop around a little bit, but then has to learn how to use its wings to fly from the nest, but only maybe very limitedly, only maybe to the next branch and then fly back.

And then eventually the bird can really know how to fly way beyond its place of origin, its original condition. So the Gita can nourish the baby bird, the bird that's growing up and the bird that's maturing and the ultimate flight. So, you know, these are expansions of our kshetras, our sphere of awareness.

What is our frame of reference? Our frame of reference is the kshetra. We are all kshetra This is right out of the 13th chapter of the Gita, right? 13th, 14th chapters, right? The kshetra, 13th chapter, mainly, right? The knower of the field, but that knowing is not merely cognitive. It's the way things feel.

It's a sensing of what is in our realm, our sphere, our worlds. That's the world in front of the text. That's beautiful.

In front of the text. Yeah. That's the world in front of the text.

Why is Krishna explaining this? After the 12th chapter, where he's talking about these beautiful levels of offering the heart and how much he dearly loves the soul that relates to him at all kinds of levels. So, there are different levels of loving Krishna and he loves them all, remember? And then he explains how this is, how these different levels are. Well, we have these different kshetras.

So, I'm again trying to connect this, you know, the concept of kshetra and kshetra itself is a fascinating concept. So, are you trying to say that depending on the kshetra of a person, they will also pursue the Gita accordingly? That means somebody will perceive it as a spiritual book. Somebody will see it as a religious book or how is the kshetra concept connected with our discussion? Exactly.

Exactly. If we are not ready to fly much beyond the nest, if we're still very conditioned by our individual nests, which is our immediate conditioning, then the Gita can nourish one there, that way. Now, what's interesting is when someone has found this ability to be nourished beyond the nest and has found a teacher to lift us up to levels of liberation, but then sort of backtrack a little bit possibly, because in the process of learning how to fly so high, one can feel the resistances that one is still yet carrying from the conditioning that we've had.

So, then one may go to, not the Bhagavad Gita anymore, but one may go to some self-help books. Okay. Because you see, when the Gita is treated as a self-help book, then one may say, well, that's good enough for me for the Gita, let me go to another self-help book.

There are even some self-help gurus out there who have actually utilized the Bhagavad Gita in their self-help methods. Just sorry to come back to this point that I'm just trying to understand. So, quite often spirituality is associated also with self-help.

So, is that the case with the spiritual but not religious? So, earlier when you were giving the example of you being at the conference, so the other speaker was speaking, you could say, at a lower level where the world in front of the text, they were addressing that, whereas you were addressing more the text itself, but of course, still presenting it in a way that relevant and appealing. Exactly. So, I was trying to connect those two worlds, the world of the text.

Well, they were also connecting it, but not the ultimate message of the text. They were trying to connect some of the basic tools. You know, many scholars even think that the Gita's ultimate teaching is Palatiyaga.

I think that's the all-in-all teaching of the Gita, Palatiyaga. What? The Gita is so much more than Palatiyaga, or they don't understand the essence of Palatiyaga. When one is in love with the divine, of course, the Tiaga, the relinquishment of anything else is easy.

It's natural, but they will look at Palatiyaga as something that you have to practice. You know, it's a difference between a bicycle. Have you ever seen those bicycles that you bicycle in place, right? Yeah.

So, you have the benefit of strengthening your body, but you don't get anywhere. You take the bike off the stand and do the same cycling, and then you go somewhere. Some people reading the Gita don't necessarily want to go anywhere, but they want to strengthen where they are.

That's beautifully put. You know, sometimes I put it this way that like sometimes people want the Gita to simply be like a shock absorber for the journey of life where they want to go. Very similar.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Then we can say that the Gita is not just like a shock absorber, although it can be that, but it is more like a, you could say a gold transformer.

It gives a higher purpose for life. Right. Very good.

Yeah. Very good. Thank you.

And, you know, it's not that I'm putting these things down and nor are you, Chaitanya Charanjee. I know you well. We can appreciate that people have different points of access.

And honestly, Chaitanya Charanjee, even though I've been studying the Bhagavad Gita for 55 years, reading the Gita for 55 years, each of those, you know, decades and a decade and a half at one point, I guess, I have reached different depths of the Gita. And even though I think in each time, I think I've reached the ultimate depth for me, I still reach some greater depth that I could never have anticipated. And that's what's exciting about spiritual life.

So, if I come back to a topic of spiritual but not religious, we can say that the Gita is definitely a spiritual book and even spiritual in the many different meanings of the word. So, if somebody thinks of spiritual as self-help, it is there. If somebody thinks of spiritual as the ultimate expression of love, that is also there.

Spiritual as the aspiration of the human spirit for something higher, that is also there. So, now, if we come back to the religious part, in more, you can say, in a descriptive sense. So, is the Gita a religious book in terms of the way the word religion is understood today? Yeah.

I mean, if you want to discuss something more. Yes. No, maybe, you know, what I like, you know, I remember living in India and this is where the, you know, the kind of, you know, motion of the head, you know, I learned, I said, you know, in the West, we're very binary, you know, something is yes or no.

It's black or white, but this head wobble, you know, is beautiful because the head wobble says, yes, it says no, it says maybe, maybe not, all of the above, and none of the above, all at the same time. And that drives, you know, Westerners crazy. You know, we like a black and white answer.

So, of course, the Gita is a spiritual book, it is a religious book. It is also a book of great literature. It has great literary value.

It is a classic for the human race. It is a, it will remain forever a classic piece of literature for the human race. And it is a self-help book for those who need that.

Yeah, it's all of those. It's multivalent in what it can address. Okay.

So, let's put it a little more specific, as a question. So, could we call the Gita a secular book? In the sense that, see, in India, in the West, secular is often used as an opposite of religious or spiritual. In India, of course, that same connotation is there, but secular is used also in the sense of, you could say neutral toward religion, although it is applied in different ways.

So, could we call the Gita a secular book in any sense? If it is various things for various people, but does it go far enough to say that it's also a secular book without denying or downplaying its core message? I think, you know, you can't call the Bhagavad Gita anything other than the song of the Divine. And all that that can include, which is, you know, it has enormous potential to contribute to secular issues and humanistic issues. I mean, it's a book of psychology, for heaven's sake.

We haven't even mentioned psychology. It's an amazing book of psychology. In fact, the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna is like a therapist to a patient.

In fact, it may be the first recorded counseling session in the history of the human race. Okay. I mean, we've got an open therapy session going on here between, you know, Arjuna, who has a major breakdown.

He literally has an emotional breakdown. He collapses. This is not just a light depression of some kind.

This is a state of despair and hopelessness. And this is counseling. This is a psychological process.

It also makes an enormous statement about interpersonal dealings and loving relationships. The Gita is a colossal and multi-layered, rich text from which practically any human could draw some meaning. Hmm.

So, I refuse to call it a secular text or a religious text or, you know, a self-improvement text, because it can accommodate all of these. So, do you accept my refusal? Do you accept my refusal? No, I accept it. I'm just trying to re-articulate it.

So, you're saying that we could even derive some secular wisdom from the Gita, but that is different from calling the Gita a secular book. That's right. There you go.

That's as far as I'm willing to go. Okay. Yeah, it makes sense.

I think, you know, to call the Gita a self-help book is, yeah, it is much more than that. Yeah. But for each individual, it may not be more than that at that time.

And that is fine. And that is fine. That is their frame of reference.

So, now, coming to the Indian context a little bit, we could say that in India, the Gita is considered one of the most important texts for the broad Hindu tradition. Although it is, from what I've seen historically, just like the Bible and the Quran, were central texts for Christianity and Islam, the Hindu tradition didn't have like one defining text. But to some extent, the Gita has taken that position, at least in recent history.

Maybe you could say the pre-independence times, the last 200, 300 years. So, in that sense, for us, is the Gita, if you want to put it specifically, can we call the Gita a Hindu book? How would you put it that way? Well, of course. Now, yes, it's certainly gained more and more importance over the past few hundred years, but it's always been important in terms of within the Hindu complex.

It is one of three prasthanatrayi, that is to say the foundational texts. So, if one wants to start a school of thought or religious practice or both, one has to write commentary on the principle of Upanishads, the Vedanta Sutra, and of course, Bhagavad Gita. Those are the three of the prasthanatrayi.

So, this, of course, Shankaracharya, the first Vedantist, really, he wrote on all three. I read his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, and also the Shariraka Amimamsabhasya of the Vedanta Sutra, Brahma Sutras. And then there's the Upanishads.

So, in the Vaishnava line, he was the first one to write a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedanta Sutra and the Upanishads. And each of the major Acharyas would do this. This is what they do.

Just to clarify this, even within what we call as Hinduism or the broad Vedic tradition, these were the six schools of philosophy. And the prasthanatrayi is considered important for one of the six schools, Vedanta. From what I know from Nyaya and Vaisheshika and Yoga, they didn't consider the prasthanatrayi as their three core books.

And in that sense, for them, the Gita was also not unimportant, but it was not of central importance. Am I right in that understanding? That's right. That's right.

There's a shifting of what are the most prominent important texts, depending upon the particular tradition within the Hindu complex. That is right. But if you're a Vedantic, if you're Vedantic, you have to write about the Upanishads, you have to write on the Brahma Sutra, and you have to write about Gita, Gita Upanishad.

It's often taken on the status of a Upanishad. So it's often, as you know, it's often referred to as Gita Upanishad. Yes.

True. Which is Shruti, Shruti. See, by saying Gita Upanishad, you're saying Bhagavad Gita is not merely Smriti, but it is Shruti.

And Vedanta Sutra is the interpretation, it's the distillation of the interpretation of the Shruti. Okay. And the Bhagavad Gita, as you said, I mean, the reason why it's often called the Bible of Hinduism, which is a little, that can be a little misleading, but it's certainly that one text to which more commentaries have been written than any other single text in Hindu history.

I think it's something like 88 or 90 commentaries, formal commentaries, and probably more than that, informally and so on. It's powerful. Now, you know, when Gandhi came along, Gandhi needed to see the Gita as a kind of inner struggle.

That is true. He didn't want to see it. And, you know, for his purposes, that was for him, the truth he derived from the Gita.

And that's fine. But is that the complete Gita? Well, no, but that's fine. He what he did with it was powerful.

And it aided him. He read from it every day. And then you've got Henry David Thoreau, you know, over in the north, he read from the Bhagavad Gita while he's out camping out at Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days.

Okay. And then you've got, you know, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a professor at Harvard University, right, who read incessantly from the Upanishads in the Bhagavad Gita. They each take from it something, some jewel, you know, something valuable.

That's true. So the way you're answering this is that if different people and from different areas can draw some wisdom, so even within the Indian national context, also some wisdom can be drawn from the Gita. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So if somebody has an objection, so there are two, with respect to at least the world in Indian context, there are some people who would like to have the Gita taught as a matter of national religious pride. It is, India is prominently Hindu country, probably the only Hindu majority country in the world.

There are Bhutan and Nepal, but they have become increasingly coming under the influence of China. They're becoming more and more left-wing. So one would like to have the Gita taught as a Hindu book.

And there is other group who will say that, no, this is a Hindu book, and that's why India is a secular country, you cannot teach it over here. So in that context, which dimensions of the Gita or which teachings of the Gita could be integrated into, say, mainstream education in a way that is at one level, at least some level faithful to the Gita, at the same time respectful to the secular spirit of the mainstream society today? Yeah. Well, you know, this is where one can take the Bhagavad Gita and give a kind of allegorical interpretation to the Gita.

Now, is that respectful to the original intent of the Gita? Not so much, you know. But look, you know, if that's the only way they can accept the Gita into their curriculum, then I say, why not? You know, I mean, you know part of me, you know, you know one side of me. If you like that side of me, you might want to get to know another side of me.

But right now, you're not ready to, okay? I just like Garuda on the podcast, I don't want to sit down and take prasadam with them, you know. But later, you might say, you know what, I wouldn't like, next time I'm on the east coast of America, maybe I will like to sit down with Garuda and take prasadam with him, right? So then you're going to get to know Garuda more on this side, a more personal side. So, you know, formally, you may accept a person, one side of that person, but is that the whole person? Hardly.

So the Gita is like that. So we may approach the Gita at first, more superficially, then we get like, like we would with anyone, we get to, you know, we get to know them more, and then we go deeper. But then we may stop, hey, that's enough.

It's nice knowing Garuda on the podcast, maybe occasional prasadam, but that's it. I don't want to meet his kids, you know, you know, I don't want to meet his grandmother, which you wouldn't be able to, because she's passed away, but you know, whatever. So in one sense, we could almost apply, like in the Bhakti, we say that somehow or other fix the mind on Krishna.

So similarly, we could say that somehow or other connect with the Gita. So at least that basic introduction comes in. And then gradually, some, some people will get, some people will become more, at least somewhere in the background of their consciousness, and maybe at the right time, they'll explore further.

Yes. Sometimes when I speak to like general Indian college audiences, sometimes I'm dismayed at the level of unawareness of India's spiritual tradition. Like if I quote from the Bhagavad Gita, and then I quote from the Bhagavatam, one of the most common questions is, what is the difference between the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam? Wow.

Okay. Okay. Hey, you got to start somewhere, right? Yeah.

Of course, you know, I feel dismayed. But then I think back at it. In although I grew up in India, in a Brahmin family, I'd heard about the Bhagavad Gita, I'd heard about the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

And I'd heard many of the stories from the Bhagavatam. But actually, I never heard about the Bhagavatam. Oh, there you go, which is interesting.

So yeah. And not just interesting, just disappointing, we can say also. But yeah, the point is that, so somewhere we have to start.

Yes. So when you say the allegorical, can you give some, some further elaboration of what you mean by some allegorical meaning? Okay. So, so for example, I mean, clearly Krishna presents himself as the divine.

Yes. I mean, you know, I mean, there are many, many verses, revealing this, declaring it, extolling it, etc. Okay.

But if that's that, that theological dimension is not compatible with secular purposes, then one can simply say, reality, this Krishna is the voice of reality. And you don't have to say God, you don't have to say Bhagavan, despite the fact that the book is known by the title, Bhagavat Gita, right? You can, you can, in other words, you can kind of dilute the theological dimension of it, and secularize it more, you know, by, by, you know, Krishna is the same, this is the voice of all existence. This is the voice of, in some sense, reality, at its complete level, or something like that.

So you can kind of translate, you know, or, you know, this, this is the nature of reality speaking to us. You know, you can de-theologize, you can de-theologize Krishna, because you have a need for a secular context, which doesn't really allow for a serious theological reading of the Gita. Okay, it sounds cruel, it sounds cruel to the work itself.

But you know what, the Gita is strong enough to handle it. Just out of curiosity, do you know if something similar has been done with respect to the Bible or something like that? I know many, with respect to the Quran, probably there are many countries that are like openly Islamist, so they can teach the Quran directly. But much of the Western world where Christianity is in a majority is secular.

Yeah. So is the Bible taught in any of the Christian majority countries? And how is it taught? Any idea about this? Okay, so the world in front of the text for a 19th and 20th century, early 20th century theologian in Germany, by the name of Rudolf Bultmann. I happened to study with a student of Rudolf Bultmann at Harvard.

But his teacher Rudolf Bultmann engaged in a process called demythologization. He went through the New Testament and he said, what would the New Testament messages be if you took out all of the miraculous stuff? So in other words, we're living in an age of science. We know that you cannot walk on water.

I mean, Chetan Acharn is as magical a person as you clearly are. Can you walk on water? True, that makes sense. You cannot do.

Okay, so we've established that you cannot walk on water and neither can I. And we've never met anyone who can walk on water. Jesus is said to have walked on water. Is that necessary for the message of the New Testament? Rudolf Bultmann comes along with his demythologization process and says, no, it is not necessary.

So he takes that out. The fish that feeds 40 people, he takes one fish and is able to make meals of 40 people, right? And or something like that. Anyway, he comes to the conclusion and says that the teachings of the New Testament are not harmed by removing those things, by demythologizing the New Testament, and then we get its essential message.

So there could be a way, you might say, to de-theologize, to de-theologize the Bhagavad Gita. Okay, it's interesting you're using the word specifically de-theologize. We can't de-spiritualize because spirituality is at a very basic level, the essence of the Gita.

You know, if you de-spiritualize it, I mean, you're boiling it down to a kind of a conversation of friends who just have a problem in the middle of the battlefield. Yeah, that's true. I mean, but that itself is kind of a, it's a great narrative, you know, Arjuna freaks out in the battlefield.

I mean, that itself is quite a narrative. You could secularize that, you know. That's interesting.

But then, so I think that means we'll have to be sensitive with respect to the context and then decide what level of the teaching of the Gita would be acceptable for a particular audience. Yes, and that's always a little difficult because, you know, an audience has many people in it, and each person has their own Kshetra. But Kshetras are also heavily shaped by the culture, the environs, the sort of dominant culture within that environs.

So, one can kind of generally assess the world in front of the text that you are addressing in relation to the Gita. So, how to bring their world that's in front of the text to the world of the text. That is your task as a lecturer and teacher of the Gita.

Beautiful. So, now just to elaborate this in a couple of points, like Prabhupada says in the Gita introduction that Jiva, Ishvara, Kala, Karma, Prakriti. These are the five essential themes of the Gita.

That's right. From Madhva. It's from Madhva.

Madhva. Okay. Now, in one sense, if I look at exactly how many verses talk about each of these, is that like we can talk about Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga to be the core messages.

Yoga is a very important part of the Gita's teachings. So, is this the only approach? These are the five essential themes of the Gita. Is this like a non-negotiable truth or that is these are five essential elements from one perspective of studying the Gita? There are specifically Madhva categories who wanted to talk about the five eternal truths of the Gita.

Wait a minute. I think four are eternal. One is not.

Do I have that right? Yeah. Karma is not eternal. Remaining four are eternal.

Right. Okay. So, there you go.

Okay. So, this is a Madhva observation, his philosophical observation of what's happening in the Gita. But that's one way to slice it.

Let me put it this way. There are many facets of a jewel. Okay.

So, to really appreciate a jewel, you have to turn the thing and let all the facets catch the light as much as possible. At the same time, you can focus on just one facet. Stop turning the jewel and just like, oh, let it shine just at that level.

But then, if you're ready to turn it, you'll see other facets. So, these categories of Madhva are perfectly valid. But there are other ways to have this jewel of the Gita shine through other facets.

Okay. So, why I brought these five things is, if we are going to look at the Gita from a particular perspective, are there some aspects of the Gita that are non-negotiable? So, we could, like once they could de-theologize the Gita, that means Krishna and Bhakti to Krishna, some people might see it as sectarian. So, that might be downplayed.

And the idea of karma and karma yoga and equanimity, detachment, steadiness, those are virtues which can be appreciated by almost everyone in one sense. So, karma can be, we could say is universal. Even to the some extent Jiva, although not everybody may accept that there is a soul, but the concept is not as objectionable as say God for many people.

So, and then Kala and Prakriti. I'm not sure whether we can elaborately speak on those topics as core teachings of the Gita. But so, my point is that when we are presenting the Gita to a specific audience, is there anything which is non-negotiable and this has to be presented or whichever aspect of the Gita that audience can relate with, we can only present that much and let them explore further? You know, that's a really good question.

And it's complex. It's complicated because in certain contexts, there are certain things that are non-negotiable that you cannot really ignore. But in other contexts, you can ignore them.

Ultimately, how does the text itself want to be understood? And we have talked about this, and you've also read my textual illuminations in my Bhagavad Gita. In fact, that's when we first met. You proved to me, you read the book, and I rarely hear that someone's really read the book carefully.

But you understood what my presentation was saying, which was claiming that the ultimate message of the Gita is a divine longing for souls to come to the divine. This is at the heart of the whole Gita. It's the reason why Krishna generously presents teachings on karma, on yoga, on jnana, on bhakti.

But behind all of those, beyond the polemics of arguing which is more important in the Gita, karma or jnana, jnana or bhakti, behind all those polemics, all those polemics are ridiculous, because there is a necessary precondition for any of those things to be activated, and that is the divine longing, the divine love call. Krishna says in his last words to Arjuna, he presents a rhetorical question in 1872, have you heard this whole teaching with thought focused on the single highest point, ekagra, ekagra, eka, agra, the summit, the single highest, have you heard all of these teachings with thought focused on the single highest point? What is that single highest point? As you know, it's in 1864, beautiful, the greatest secret of all, my supreme message, you are so much loved by me. That is behind the whole thing.

Now anything that comes short of that, well, you know, Chittendra Charanjee, I used to read the Gita without realizing that that was behind everything. Sorry, come again, I used to? I used to read the Gita without realizing that single highest point that ekagra, that sarvabhuyatamambuya, that ishtosimidrttamitti, that guhyam param yogam, the supreme secret of yoga. What is that? It's this divine longing.

And then we can act, and we can think and contemplate, we can meditate, and we can love with our hearts the divine. all of that is offered to the divine all of that is in response to a divine longing and to a divine embrace and that is one of the most beautiful teachings of the Gita that love is an embrace in an embrace we express two things a total acceptance of the other and yet a desire to more deeply know the beloved so one embraces the beloved enough in a realm in a mood of total acceptance but yet total insatiability at the same time the more dimension that we started about in our talk today the more I want more I want to know you more this is love this is love and Krishna demonstrates that to us in the Gita that's beautiful so so okay so if I just going back to the subject what you're saying is that that different people may come to that a cagra level at different times so if somehow where whichever point they connect with him gradually by that that thirst comes and they keep rising rising higher till they come to climbing that mountain yes yes okay beautiful yes yes I'm thinking of this mountain metaphor so let's you know let's get people to at least become aware that there is this wonderful mountain with beautiful view from the top and everything and then whichever part of the mountain they find that appealing accessible that is what we can present to them yes the 18th chapter is the mountain the first 49 verses okay is the great secret addressing karma the outer world the next 14 verses the middle of the mountain is the greater secret Guhyatra okay go yes first Guhyatra second has to do with Brahman and Paramatman this realm of greater transcendence and purity of self and then the tip of the mountain the a cagra is only three verses so 49 14 and 3 okay you see there's the mountain and three so the greater the greater preponderance of the mountain is is all this stuff that can be used in secular ways hmm about Dharma karma diana these are all you know it could be 49 verses of the 18th chapter which summarizes the teachings and then you've got the 14 about transcendence and Paramatman and Brahman then three three verses hmm come to me for you are dearly loved by me 1865 right relinquish now you can relinquish all forms of Dharma at the bottom of the mountain I'm talking to you about Dharma all over the place now at this stage what matter does Dharma have mmm this stage of love what does what what does what meaning does Dharma have at that point he's not saying to relinquish it everywhere he's staying at that level of the mountain you relinquish Dharma but you can't have the tip without having the bottom of the mountain no tip of a mountain is floating in the air Chaitanya Charanjee you know you have to have the middle you have to have the base but at that level when you've reached the peak of that mountain I'm sure mountain climbers have this feeling like wow nothing else matters this kind of height that's been reached hmm this is the Gita this is the Gita it's beautiful and so this is amazing just one last point here before we keep it a little shorter this time yes so maybe this will sell you a big discussion sometimes Prabhupada says that if we are not talking about Krishna in the Gita then that is an offense to the Gita because Krishna is the essence of the Gita so so is so is it that Prabhupada is talking more about somebody removing Krishna from the Gita he's not really opposing if somebody takes a part of the Gita and presents it but if somebody is saying that this is the Gita and then they're removing Krishna from it is that what he's saying or because we are talking about yeah taking one aspect of the Gita and presenting it that's why I thought yes because this yes you know you and I as authors and writers and teachers I mean you and I know what it's like to be quoted and not credited beautifully put yeah I mean a very prominent wonderful Vaishnavi has written a book wonderful book she takes an idea of mine that she never could have thought herself and she puts it in the book and she doesn't she doesn't credit me fine but you know what it's more powerful if she had credited me because I know Sanskrit and she doesn't so it validates it more and it also acknowledges her relationship with me by removing that credit she's ignored her relationship with me and she stated something that she could not have stated without me so it's it there is something a bit violating in that I mean violating maybe that's a bit strong you are dismissive you're dismissing the source and the authority from which that idea came so you're ultimately weakening yourself perhaps with the intention of giving the impression that this is something I came up with so it's it's not exactly stealing you know it's not exactly plagiarizing but it's not the right thing to do okay oh so you're connecting that with if somebody Krishna being removed yeah removing Krishna from his own ideas and his own words that never feels good to anyone including divinity okay now there are three aspects to this this one is like Krishna is the source of the wisdom then Krishna is the you could say the purpose of the wisdom because the Krishna is both way they should survive how my way the ultimately the Gita says surrender to me and then we could also have Krishna as the I don't know maybe the essence of the wisdom essence and similar but there is a difference between the two in one sense so I don't think anybody is going to remove Krishna as the source of course some people do that Krishna himself like pro I think in the sometimes people say who spoke the Gita doesn't matter we are concerned only with the wisdom that is in the Gita that that's right objectionable so you are saying that Prabhupada strongly concerned about that that somebody just removes Krishna makes Krishna himself irrelevant and then focuses on the wisdom but it's right Krishna is the essence or Krishna as the purpose that need not come in the first presentation of the Gita that's right okay that's me that's beautiful yeah makes sense yeah hmm so so when you're talking a detheologizing it is not like a copyright violation because we are still acknowledge that this is the wisdom spoken by Krishna but they're just not the Krishna is the purpose of the Gita right okay makes sense yeah this is a very good framework through so should I try to summarize a little bit over all please okay so we today we discussed is the Gita religious or a spiritual book started by how religion itself is or it comes with a legare which means to connect and humans have a longing for something more beyond the normal and that may be expressed to extreme sports through movies through various things and ultimately to express to spirituality to go beyond the normal so religion I can essentially was meant to direct that human search toward the transcendental but when religion gets when religion is seen negatively we talk about the prescriptive and descriptive meanings of the words and religiously negative it is often because it is it sometimes becomes too dogmatic it sometimes comes to ritualistic to institutionalized you mentioned how even at the dawn of Christianity Paul did not talk about organized church house church church structures so when that happens then it can become a problem and that's when people start feeling I don't want to be religious I want to be spiritual so then we discussed about with respect to the Gita is it religious or is it spiritual so in one sense we discuss many different meanings of the word spiritual if we consider the human condition and how to address the challenges that confront the human condition which is what the Gita begins with and which is what often people think of a spirituality then definitely the Gita addresses that the Gita contains self-help wisdom which is also one and one dimension of spirituality the Gita also talks about our essential spiritual identity talks about our longing for love being fulfilled through the embrace with the divine these are also we could say core spiritual concepts so in that sense the Gita does Gita is a spiritual book very much and depending on the Kshetra the level of consciousness the perspective which a person is approaching they may take particular dimensions from particular things from the Gita and yes that is acceptable because at least they are getting connected with the Gita so then we discussed about of course the many other points also we came in this came along but with respect is the Gita a religious book well yes you could say that in the West it is often binary yes or no but it is yes no maybe all of those could apply over here so if we take the opposite question in the Gita secular book well secular wisdom can be drawn from it but to apply any label apart from Bhagavad Gita the song of God to the Gita would be like reducing the Gita so in that sense the Gita is a central book within what is now called the Hindu tradition and it has been for several centuries so of course different even Hindu thinkers drew out different aspects of the Gita so some focused on making it allegorical some focus on Nishkama Karma and other things like that so with respect to the Gita itself if some if for teaching in particular contexts like if the Gita needs to be de-theologized like then the de-mythologizing of the Bible was done so the theologizing can be done so that is just so that people can accept at their level and then they can learn more as and when they feel eager to learn at least that curious that awareness is coming and then further excuriosities up to them so now when Prabhupada talks about misinterpreting the Gita he's more talking about denying Krishna as the source of the Gita that itself is that is itself quite objectionable that's like taking the idea from author and not attributing it to the author but overall it's important that we understand so there is a three concepts of you know the world before the text the world of the text and the world after the text was it before and after yeah behind behind and in front behind and in front so it is in one sense for each generation or each each generation of teachers to actually understand the world that they are encountering and then present the relevant teachings on the Gita for that world and that way create curiosity for people to explore the core teachings also so so in that sense the Gita has everything has wisdom for everyone and if there is opportunity to teach it in mainstream education then that has that can be expertly utilized so that we don't put off so so we can address secular concerns at the same time give access to the spiritual wisdom of the Gita and rather than saying that any particular aspect of the Gita is non-negotiable no it depends on the context there are different frameworks from which different elements may be considered central but rather than focusing on what is non-negotiable we can focus on what is accessible and get people towards the core message gradually yes beautiful thank you anything else you like to add Prabhu this is amazing discussion thank you I always enjoy our discussions Chetan and Charanji always do always enjoy so thank you for the opportunity I thank you for the opportunity am I thanks to you it's always so stimulating having the discussion with you Hare Krishna.