Bhagavad Gita Overview Chapter 2

So we continue with the Bhagavad Gita discussion and we move to the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.
In the first chapter, broadly, Arjuna, after observing the armies on the battlefield, becomes overwhelmed, fighting manushya and confusion. He is torn apart between two duties: his duty as a kshatriya and his duty as a kurnandana. And he is thinking, “This is not even worth it. It is mere blood if it is at the cost of blood. I don’t want it.”
And in the first chapter, Krishna has spoken only once, “Udhvā chapārtha paśyaitān,” just see, you wanted to see, Arjuna—see the opposite, see Bhishma and Drona prominently over there.

So now the second chapter begins with Krishna speaking, and Krishna responds in the second verse.
So Krishna says, “Uttasva kaśmala minam,” from where has this kaśmala—kaśmala is this contamination—come upon you, this weakness come upon you? Uttasva kaśmala minam, viśame. Viśame means at a time of great challenge, at a time of great test.
So when the times become tough, as they say, “tough people get going.” At that time, your real character, your toughness is shown in tough times. So Krishna is saying, “How is it that when you need to be tough, you are becoming weak? From where has this weakness come upon you? Viśame saṁ upasthitam, saṁ upasthitam. It has come up, and not only upasthitam—it has come so forcefully, it has almost taken you over. Viśame saṁ upasthitam, viśame saṁ upasthitam.

So it’s subtle how Krishna is saying. Krishna is not saying, “You are weak.” Krishna is saying, “Where has this weakness come upon you from? This does not become you.” It’s a subtle way to help Arjuna distance himself from that weakness.
So if you say to somebody who is very heroic, “You are a coward, you are weak, you are a coward,” that would be a direct assault on that person. But you say to that person, “Where has this cowardice come upon you?” That is still an attack; it’s still a criticism, but you are reminding that person that you are not this. You are not like this.

Where has this bitterness come from? Like if somebody suddenly gets angry, is having a normal discussion, and suddenly that person starts yelling or starts expressing bitterness—”Where is this coming from?” “Where is this coming from?” means, “This is not you. This doesn’t seem to be coming from you; this seems to be coming from somewhere else.”

So now, why? What is wrong with it?
This is not worthy of an Arya. Arya is a person who knows the spiritual values of private robots [Note: this term seems unclear—possibly a typo]. Aswargyam, and this—this will bring you neither honor in this life nor an honorable destination in heaven in the next life.
Not only will it not bring honor, it will bring you dishonor, Arjuna. Therefore, don’t act in this way.

So, normally a discussion occurs if a person, if two people are discussing, so for the discussion to be meaningful, both people need to be discussing at the same level. Otherwise, there is a saying, “you talk past each other.” Talk past each other means what? One person is talking like this, and the other person is talking like this. So it’s almost as if what they are speaking is not directed towards the other person.

So two people are talking in different directions or at different levels. Talking past can also happen like this: if one person is talking at one level, another person is talking at another level. Both of these are examples of talking past. This is not talking fast; yes, you can talk fast also, but you talk past each other—the message doesn’t reach the other person.

So Arjuna is expressing concerns, and he’s saying that “Oh, I’ll destroy,” and Krishna is telling him, “You are caught in your head, all this, but what is the reality?” He said the reality is that if you are acting out of weakness—now what is Krishna doing over here? Krishna, in one sense, knows what is going on in Arjuna’s heart, but Krishna is echoing how the world is going to see his actions.

If suddenly a big war is about to happen and a soldier who has come there to fight suddenly wants to leave the battlefield and go away, then most people are not going to think that, “Oh, this soldier suddenly got an attack of conscience and decided, ‘I don’t want to fight.'” He got an attack, but that was an attack of power, not conscience. That’s what people are going to think.

So a soldier hesitating to fight—the general inference will be this: in war, there are two big crimes. One is to be a traitor. Traitor means you go to the battlefield and suddenly you fight for the opposite side, and that is the worst crime. But another crime, which is just nearly as bad, is to be a deserter. Deserter means you abandon—you don’t fight for the other side, but you don’t fight for your side also. You just give up.

And deserters can be court-martialed, they can face big prison sentences, they can even be shot. Because what happens? Everybody on the battlefield sooner or later feels fear, and if everybody, given that fear, starts going away, then there will be no one left to fight. And if soldiers on a battlefield cannot count on each other, then they cannot have a strategy; they cannot fight as a unit.

So to be able to count on each other, it is important that nobody eludes their boots, nobody is just vulnerable. So Arjuna—Krishna is saying here—will be seen as what? Will he be seen as a traitor? Will he be seen as a deserter? So Krishna is saying here: “Arjuna, this is how you will be seen.”

Soldiers’ *misdeeds—*so a soldier in the fight—is it because of conscience? Maybe it is, but the world’s conception will be: it is because of cowardice. So Krishna is echoing the world’s vision. He is saying, “Don’t act in such a cowardly way.”

Now when he speaks this, Arjuna becomes indignant. Indignant means that it is anger, but anger from injustice—that if we are misunderstood, if we are mistreated, then we feel angry.

Say, at night, maybe some guest has come to our place, and you know, they have been hungry, and they go to the kitchen and search for some food. And somebody comes and says, “You have no control over your senses! At night, you are stealing food? You are complaining? Such a big preacher!” Say, “I am not asking for myself, I am taking for someone else!”

It is like when we are misunderstood, we feel angry. So Arjuna feels angry over this. He says, “I am not resisting because of me. I am not hesitating because of weakness.” He says it is because of thoughtfulness. He says, “How is it reasonable, how is it honorable to fight against my teacher and my grandfather?”

Chakravarti commentator, he implies that Arjuna is telling Krishna, “It wouldn’t be easy for you to shoot arrows at your Guru Satyapani Muni. Wouldn’t it be easy for you to shoot arrows at your grandfather, who was saying?” He is seething with indignation, and that’s what he says: “Whatever we get will be contaminated by the blood. What is the use of it?”

So—but what happens is there is a strong emotion. So especially in verses 2.4 and 2.5, there is strong emotion—that is indignation. He feels, “I am being misunderstood.” He doesn’t want to be misunderstood, but then he still acknowledges that there is confusion.

He says, “What am I to do? If I fight, I am going to kill my relatives. If I don’t fight, then they will probably kill me. Even if I am ready to die, they are going to kill my relatives on this side. And if we just leave this world, we will have to live in poverty, we will have to live in infamy.”

So whatever I do, it all seems to be like a lose-lose-lose situation. Basically, Arjuna has three options over here:

1. Don’t fight and kill.
2. *Don’t fight and be killed—*not just he, but his family, likely his allies, his supporters also. Those whom he is meant to protect—they will all be killed.
3. Don’t fight and live in poverty.

You say, “That may be okay,” but you will have to live with infamy. Is that okay? And then not only that—there will still be fear because the Kauravas may keep doing wrong things again and again.

So all the options are—basically they are terrible options.

And Arjuna says that this is the situation. He says, “Even if I win the war, even if I get heaven, you don’t do any use for me. What is the point?” And that is the point when Arjuna turns to his wisdom and he asks, “I want to know what is dharma, what is the right thing?”

The Kauravas is that—whenever we do any action, there is some motivation for the action, and the motivations can be twofold: either it can be pleasure or it can be value. Value means meaning.

So, for example, we do a job because we get a lot of money out of it. Okay, that’s my money, I get some pleasure. But okay, I do a job—I do a job because I like the job. Of course, I want money, but I like the job. Or say, if we are doing something for some relative, we do it for that relative because we like that person, or we do it because it’s a duty to the relative.

So basically, we can have multiple motivations for doing something. Say, we may not like the job, but if it pays well, we do the job. The job may not pay well, but we may do the job if we like doing it.

Like some people—they get into some professions like teaching where the salary might not be as lucrative as in some software or some corporate jobs, but for them, it might be meaningful. So basically, when we do work, it would be best if it gives us some pleasure as well as some meaning.

Sometimes people say, “Okay, I’m just typing some codes, what is the value of it all? What is the meaning of it all?” Now imagine if we are doing a job which we neither like to do, nor does it pay well. “Why am I here at all?”

So Arjuna feels—Arjuna’s predicament is here. He feels that the kingdom—what is the value of the kingdom? Having that kingdom will give you no pleasure. And he says, “What is this terrible duty of a warrior where, because of this duty, I have to kill? I can’t do this.”

This is—sometimes things may not give us pleasure. But when I use the word meaning, we could also use the word value. But we understand that this is of some value, then we are ready to do it.

Like studies—we do not enjoy doing the studies, but we understand this is of value. It’s going to give me a bright career in the future. So we could say when we have the Gita, we talk about these themes repeatedly—that there is inside us our mind, which is driven by emotion. Emotion means it looks for pleasure. And then there is our intelligence, and our intelligence is driven by reason, logic.

So ideally, the best situation is where we are here: we are doing something which our mind finds pleasure in, and our intelligence sees value in. If we can have that, that is the best.

But this is the worst: “Why am I even here? What is the point of being here?”

Earlier, Arjuna has voiced this predicament. So Arjuna has said this in 1.30. Now he’s echoing this in 2.6.

He says, “Everything that I see ahead is going to be bad.”

And this is where—you know—all the options are bad. This leads to an existential crisis. Existential crisis means a person starts thinking, “Why am I even existing? What am I living for?”

So this is what Arjuna is feeling, and it is a very difficult situation to live in when one sees no way ahead. So there is no pleasure in this victory. There is no value in this victory.

And that time, Arjuna asks—so the word dharma, when it is used, has many meanings. But here Arjuna is using it in the sense of “the right thing to do.”

And when he’s asking for the right thing to do, it is in both senses: at one level, from a moral sense—what is the right thing? But also in the sense of *meaning—*what is the meaningful thing to do in life?

And for many young people in the Western world nowadays, this is a big existential crisis. Because many of the pleasures that people seek—people may seek the pleasure of wealth, people may seek the pleasure of sex.

Now, because the Western countries are relatively quite prosperous, people already have money. Kids are born—not everyone—but many of them are born with wealth.

And because literally the culture is a free, licentious culture—you know, by the time they are 17 or 20, every kind of sexual pleasure that a person can have—most people have already had.

And then people can keep trying to go from homosexuality to heterosexuality, bisexuality, this, that—all that. But most people become cheated.

And then, “After that, what is there to live for?”

It is—it’s nothing. Of course, you have to do a lot of hard work. Because even in the West, if you have to—you have to work hard.

But if you want to do something valuable in life, in the West, the definition of poverty is different from India.

So I was doing one program, and one person said, “I’m in great poverty right now.” But even then, people don’t directly say that they are in poverty. Instead, they say, “I’m in big financial trouble.” They don’t say, “I’m jobless.” Instead, they say, “I’m between jobs,” which is the polite way of putting it.

But this person explained, “I’m in such great financial difficulty that I have to live in my car.” Basically, he couldn’t afford a home, so he had to live in his car. Good people, people who were once stable, sometimes end up living in their cars.

The point here is that everyone needs something to look forward to in life. If materialism is all that you have to look forward to, then what happens when the material pleasures of the world have already been enjoyed?

You might try to find more attractive people to enjoy those pleasures with or chase new experiences, but ultimately, the pleasure remains the same. Sooner or later, people start realizing, “Is there nothing more to look forward to in life?” And that’s when people start seeking more and more distorted kinds of pleasures—just to find something. Somehow, they want to get pleasure from somewhere, but this is a terrible situation to be in—when there’s nothing to look forward to and everything ahead seems dark.

It is at that time that Krishna speaks.

When Krishna speaks, it is a study in contrast. A study in contrast means it’s a very striking comparison. On one side, it is described that Arjuna is in tears, and yet, Krishna is described as smiling.

Now, you know, if somebody comes to us in tears and we start smiling, or if we are in tears and go to someone, and they start smiling, we may wonder, “What kind of person are you? Are you a sadist? Are you enjoying my suffering?”

But actually, Krishna’s smile is not because He is laughing at Arjuna. Krishna is not mocking him. He is not saying, “Oh, you think you are such a great warrior, and now you are crying like this?” Not at all. Krishna’s smile is one of appreciation.

Appreciation in the sense that Krishna sees how dramatically the situation has changed. Three significant changes have happened:

1. The friend has become a student.
2. The charioteer will now become a counselor and a teacher.
3. The battlefield is going to become a classroom.

It is Krishna’s presence and His presentation that will raise Arjuna’s consciousness far beyond the battlefield.

You see, while Arjuna is overwhelmed by emotions, he is not simply looking for consolation. Arjuna, though emotional at this point, is actually seeking education.

For example, if somebody is very emotional—maybe they’ve lost someone or missed a significant opportunity—and they are crying, we may have to offer them consolation. We may say, “Things will be all right. Don’t worry. Ultimately, everyone is on their journey towards God.” We try to offer reassurance.

But Arjuna is not seeking consolation. Arjuna is asking a very specific question: “I want to know what is the right thing to do.”

When such a question arises, it depends on the context. Sometimes, a question is merely a way for someone to vent their emotions. For example, when someone asks, “Why is this happening to me?” they are not necessarily looking for an answer. They are upset, angry, and just expressing their frustration.

But Arjuna is not venting emotions. Though emotional, his question is genuine, relevant, and required.

At this point, Jiva Goswami explains—let’s examine what is happening here in Chapter 2. Born out of weakness, Arjuna’s hesitation comes from humane considerations. He asks, “How can I shoot my grandfather or my teacher in this fatal confrontation?” Arjuna is confused about his duty, torn asunder by emotions, and eventually decides to surrender to Krishna.

And amidst the armies, Krishna smiles. Smiling, Krishna begins His divine instruction—not just to free Arjuna, but to free the whole world from emotional entanglement and confusion.

This is where we have come till 2.10. Arjuna’s surrender marks a turning point.

Jiva Goswami, one of the prominent acharyas in our tradition and a highly analytical scholar, explains an important concept here. If you want to understand the purpose of a book, there are various ways to do so. However, one time-honored way is to look at the beginning and the end of the book—especially if it is a structured text.

For example, if a speaker is structured, they will say at the beginning, “Today, we will discuss this topic,” and at the end, they will summarize, “This is what we discussed.” Even if you miss the middle portion, you can understand the topic by looking at the start and the end.

Similarly, to understand the Bhagavad Gita, we can look at the start and the end of it.

The Bhagavad Gita—what does the word Bhagavad Gita literally mean?
It means “The Song of God.” The Gita is a poetic work that comes from God, presenting profound philosophical teachings in the form of poetry.

Now, is it Krishna who speaks throughout the Gita? No. There are three other characters who speak as well: Sanjay, Dhritarashtra, and Arjuna.

If that is the case, why is it called the Bhagavad Gita? The answer is that the words spoken by the other characters provide a broader context for Krishna’s teachings.

For example, suppose a traveling speaker is invited for a program. The program might have an emcee who makes announcements, a dignitary who introduces the speaker, and perhaps someone else who gives closing remarks. Although multiple people speak, the program is still considered the speaker’s program. Similarly, the words of others in the Gita—like Sanjay, Dhritarashtra, and Arjuna—provide the setting and context for Krishna’s teachings.

For instance, a dignitary may explain why the subject is important or highlight the speaker’s qualifications to establish credibility with the audience. This gives the broader context. However, the actual speech starts when the speaker begins speaking.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the actual instructive words of Krishna begin at 2.11 and continue until 18.66. Before this, Krishna’s words in 1.25 and 2.2–2.3 are more conversational. For instance, in 1.25, Krishna simply directs Arjuna to observe the battlefield. Similarly, in 2.2–2.3, Krishna asks Arjuna, “Where has this weakness come from?” These are introductory, conversational remarks.

Krishna’s actual teachings begin at 2.11, where He says:
“Those who are wise do not lament for the living or the dead.”
And they conclude at 18.66, where Krishna says:
“Do not grieve.”

If we look closely at Krishna’s first and last instructive words, we can see the clear purpose of the Gita.

• The first word: “Not worth lamenting.”
• The last word: “Do not lament.”

Thus, the purpose of the Bhagavad Gita is to free us from lamentation, grief, and fear.

Lamentation can arise for various reasons—fear of the future, loss of a loved one, pain, or distress. Krishna’s role is to console Arjuna and educate him so that he can rise above his emotions.

To illustrate, consider a patient who visits a doctor with a large swelling on their chest. The patient might panic and say, “I had a relative who had something similar. It was cancer, and they were at stage four. I’m going to die!”

The first thing the doctor says is, “Calm down. Do not fear. Do not lament.” Then, the doctor explains, “Yes, there’s a swelling, but it’s not cancer—it’s just a benign tumor. Don’t worry; it’s treatable.”

The doctor is not simply offering hollow reassurance. The doctor’s goal is not just to pacify but to educate the patient about their condition and the solution. Similarly, Krishna is not just consoling Arjuna by saying, “Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” Instead, He educates Arjuna to help him rise above his grief.

So, how does Krishna free Arjuna from lamentation?

In the previous chapter, Arjuna presented his arguments and his dilemma: “How can I fight and kill my relatives—especially Bhishma and Drona?”

Here, we can observe a strategy. When two opponents fight, there are two ways to attack:

1. Attack the opponent at their weakest point.
2. Attack the opponent at their strongest point.

Both are valid strategies, depending on the situation. For example, in cricket, if a batsman struggles with short-pitched balls, the bowler will bowl a bouncer to exploit that weakness and dismiss the batsman.

Similarly, Krishna addresses Arjuna’s predicament by tackling the core of his arguments—not his weakest points but his strongest ones. Arjuna is not an ordinary person with petty concerns. His concerns are based on moral, emotional, and spiritual reasoning. Krishna systematically addresses these concerns to elevate Arjuna’s understanding and free him from lamentation.

Thus, the Bhagavad Gita begins with Krishna telling Arjuna “Do not lament,” and it concludes with the same message: “Do not grieve.” The entire Gita is an education to help Arjuna—and all of us—overcome grief, fear, and confusion by understanding the deeper purpose of life.

You get one person out, you can get the second person out, but he says the other batsman—they star batsman, the strongest batsman—and you attack the strongest batsman. If you get the strongest batsman out, then everybody’s morale will collapse. So, in war, both of these strategies can be used. Sometimes you attack the opponent at the weakest point, and sometimes you attack the opponent at the strongest point.

Now, if the person who is attacking is confident, then they will attack at the strongest point. If they are not very sure whether they can win or not, then they will try to attack at the weakest point. So now, Krishna will challenge Arjuna’s argument at its strongest point.

What Krishna does is Krishna challenges Arjuna’s strongest argument. And what is the strongest argument? He says, “How can I kill Bhishma and Drona?” All the other conceptions are there—that this team will be destroyed, the future will be dark, I may go to hell—and all those things have been overcome to a degree. But what is causing Arjuna the greatest agony is, “How can you kill Bhishma and Drona?”

So what Krishna says is that you don’t want to kill them because they are souls—they are eternal beings. That’s why the first thing Krishna says, after “Till you are not…”, is:
“Neither you, nor me, nor any of these kings over here will ever cease to exist.”

So that is Krishna telling Arjuna that what he is thinking of lamenting is not worth lamenting. The body is basically like a dress—it’s like clothes. And when some clothes become torn, what happens is we get new clothes. So Bhishma and Drona are going to get new clothes, and they have lived virtuously, so they’ll get better clothes in the future. So what is there to lament for?

Krishna speaks philosophy not just because He likes to speak philosophy. He is speaking philosophy because He is addressing Arjuna’s specific concerns. He’s saying that if you’re wise, a wise person will not get disturbed. Since death is unavoidable, anyone who is born is going to die, and what is there to lament about?

This point about the existence of the soul—see, when Krishna talks about the soul, He does three things:

1. He first talks about the existence of the soul. That means He says, “Inside the body, there is a soul.”
2. After talking about the existence of the soul, He talks about its resilience. Resilience means the capacity to not be destroyed. Something that is resilient means you knock it down, but it will not be destroyed—it will bounce back. That’s resilience.

So the resilience of the soul means that the soul exists, it is eternal, but it is also indestructible. That’s why He says:
“Weapons may cut the body, but they won’t cut the soul. Fire may burn the body, but it won’t burn the soul.”

Arjuna, you’re thinking there are many weapons that you may have to use for fighting, but none of those will affect the soul.

But then the question might come up: “Okay, even if I agree, isn’t this soul idea something Arjuna already knows?”

It’s not that the idea of the soul is unheard of for Arjuna. Arjuna has lived in a culture where the understanding of the soul is there to some extent. But the Gita does something more about the soul.

See, in Chapter 1, verse 44, Arjuna himself says that those who destroy the dynasty will go to hell. And that means—now who is going to go to hell? It’s not the body that will go. In one sense, the soul is going to go to hell, isn’t it?

So, in one sense, if you say somebody is going to go to hell, does Arjuna know about the soul? Well, he does. He knows about the soul, but Krishna’s emphasis is something different.

Especially from 2.16 to 2.25, you see that people can have the idea that there’s the body and there’s the soul. That is a widespread idea. But many people live at the level of karmakāṇḍa.

What does karmakāṇḍa mean? It means religiosity. They are religious, but it is materialistic religiosity. It’s not spiritually religious.

Materialistic religiosity means what? Like somebody—they may worship God very nicely, but their worshipping of God is not for God’s sake. It is for their own material well-being’s sake.

Many years ago, when I first came here to RMSC, I saw a Hanumanji temple. Someone said: “You are a brahmachari, so you don’t need any movement. Give me one movement, please!” Like that. So, the idea is—this is materialistic religiosity.

Now, within this, what happens is—quite often—the idea is: “I am the body, and I have a soul.” So, there is some small part of religion that survives after death.

In the Christian tradition, for example, they have the idea that there is some kind of soul which exists. But then, if you see their idea of heaven—heaven is like a perpetual family reunion. It’s like you will meet your grandfather, you’ll meet your cousin who died when you were small, you’ll meet this person, and you’ll meet that person. And all of them will have the same body as when you knew them.

So, it’s like this: there are two ideas. There is:

1. Reincarnation – It means to come again in flesh, to be born again, but with a different body.
2. Resurrection – In Christianity, the idea is resurrection, where Christ was resurrected. Resurrection means the same body.

Reincarnation is clearly a different one.

So what happens is, some people may accept the idea of a soul, but their idea of the selfhood or personhood may be very materialistic. That is one reason why they say the body has to be cremated because their idea is that the same body will be resurrected by God. Now, of course, even if they cremate the body—you know what “cremate” means, right? Okay—so, in their tradition, the body is not cremated; the body is buried. In our tradition, the body is cremated. Cremated means it’s burnt.

The body is buried because they say the body will be restored. Now, of course, even if you put it in a nice, expensive coffin and bury it, still, it’s going to be broken down in a short while. But their idea is that the same body will be restored ultimately.

Now, of course, this leads to some practical problems. For example, somebody dies at the age of 75, and their body is buried at the age of 75. Will they be in heaven eternally at the age of 75? Okay, but what if a baby dies at six months? The baby never had a full body, so which body would they have? And then the further problem that comes up is this:

In heaven, all the relationships from this world are said to be restored. So, if a man and a woman get married and the woman dies, and then the man remarries, in heaven, he will be with which wife? And if two wives in heaven have to share the same man, would that be heavenly for them? Isn’t it?

This is one reason why the Catholic Church, especially, is strongly against divorce. Because apart from sociological problems, they have theological problems with it.

So, this idea of, “I am the body, and I have a soul,”—although the idea of the soul is present in many traditions, everyone’s idea of the soul is not the same. People have very different ideas about the soul. Thomas Aquinas, a prominent theologian of the Christian tradition, had this idea that while the soul and the body are different, still, they cannot be completely separated; they are inseparable.

Now, in our tradition, when the Britishers first came to India and saw the bodies being cremated, there are reports of them saying, “How heartless are these Indians! The same person you loved, you actually watch so passively as that body is burnt. Do you have any sense of affection, any sense of decency? How do you just set the body aflame like that?”

But the point of burning the body is to bring closure—primarily for the soul. It is said the soul may often hover around the body because the soul has lived in that body, and the soul is quite attached to the body. The soul is still hoping, “Maybe I can re-enter this world,” even though the body is now completely incapable of functioning.

But when the body is burnt, the soul hovering around sees, “This is gone; this is finished.” The soul becomes anxious—“There is no way I can re-enter this body.” Then, the soul gets closure and reluctantly becomes ready to move ahead.

Similarly, for the survivors—because what happens is that people can remain emotionally fixated: “Oh, this person was so wonderful. Why did I lose this person?” But the fact is, everyone has to die. And if we are going to get attached to the body, the description of the body is that it is going to be reduced to ashes.

There is a form of meditation where people go to the Manikarnika Ghat, and some yogis sit and watch the body burn. Now, that is not the most pleasant form of meditation, but the idea is that it gives a sense of detachment: “This is the body.”

But the point is—the body and the soul are different, and this understanding is meant to bring peace. The body may be destroyed, and it will be destroyed, but the soul will not be destroyed.

You will see this theme again and again—the same idea of “mā śucah” (do not lament). Krishna emphasizes this point repeatedly. From verses 2.12 to 2.30, Krishna speaks about the spiritual identity of the person.

For example, the 25th verse says: “The soul is indestructible; no weapon can cut it, no fire can burn it.”

Now, sometimes the same word is used for emphasis, but sometimes synonyms are used to emphasize the point. The last line of this section is:

“It does not behoove you to lament.”

Now, of course, philosophy can be studied and used for whatever purpose one wants. Somebody sent me a few months ago a clip from a Bollywood movie where it was like a vendetta film. Vendetta means revenge—taking revenge against criminals and injustices. There are corrupt politicians and corrupt police officers, and some hero decides, “They’re all corrupt. I’m going to destroy all of them one by one.”

In the movie, the hero goes and kills each of them in cold blood. And each time he kills someone, he recites a line from the Gita, “The soul is eternal; the body will perish.”

Now, that is the misuse of the Gita. See, although the Gita says, “We are the souls, and we are not the body,” that does not mean it gives a license to kill. If that were the message of the Gita—that since the soul will not die, you can kill anyone—then the Gita itself would be contradictory.

The first point Arjuna raises is: “How can I kill Bhishma and Drona?” Krishna tells Arjuna, “Okay, let us discuss what the right thing to do is.” One by one, the different arguments are addressed.

Krishna says, “If you understand that the soul is eternal, that means they are not going to die. So killing them is not as disastrous as you think because they are souls.”

But just because they are eternal souls does not mean killing them is right. The question is: What is the right thing to do?

Krishna addresses this by saying:

“If you are killed, you will attain heaven. If you win, you will enjoy the earth.”

For Arjuna, Krishna says, “Your determination has become weak. Strengthen your determination and fight!”

Krishna is serving Arjuna by telling him:

“The death of your loved ones, O Partha, will not mean their destruction. They will get better bodily clothes and move toward liberation. Seeing yourself only as their relative reduces you to just one role. You are capable of playing many roles. In this moment, you are a warrior. You are also an eternal soul. Why, O Arjuna, do you hesitate to fight? In victory or defeat, you will be right. If victorious, you will rule the world with no opposition. If you lose, you will rise to power in the next life, free from lamentation.”

Krishna emphasizes that Arjuna is going wrong by focusing on winning or losing. Krishna tells Arjuna that either way, he will gain.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna. So we are moving forward in our journey in the Bhagavad Gita. Today we come to the chapter 9, which is one of the most devotional chapters in the Gita.

And this begins with Krishna spontaneously speaking on that, just like at the end of the sixth chapter, when Krishna says the topmost yogi is a devotee. Now, when somebody makes a statement like that, which is making a significant claim, in one sense, that statement needs to be backed up by something substantial. Generally, when we speak.

So in the past, both in India and the West, there was a field of studies that was called rhetoric. Rhetoric is basically the way to speak most effectively. And what that means is that whenever we speak, generally speech, it needs to be at least in some sense linear.

A speech can be spontaneous, but it has to be linear to be logical. That means what? One point of thought should follow another point of thought. That's why often the word that uses train of thought.

Like how is a train? There may be multiple bogeys, multiple coaches might be there. In America, they don't use the word bogeys because bogey is considered bogus. So coaches are there, but the coaches have to be linked together.

So train of thought means, OK, we might express one unit of thought. It has been followed by another unit of thought, another unit of thought. Now, of course, the whole talk need not be one single train.

A talk can be structured in different ways. Normally it would be one single train, but this is just one way of doing it. Another way could be you have a central point and we arrive at that point from different ways.

Say, for example, if there's a talk on the existence of God. So we have four arguments for the existence of God. So then these are basically four different ways in which we are arriving at the same point.

But when I am speaking, this point is no point in going over here and then trying to come back over. When we are having one point being made, that point has to be a train of thought. And generally speaking, so the trains of thought can be different in the sense that there can be, say, four trains of thought within one session, but they all are moving in particular directions.

Another could be that, say, one train of thought goes in one direction. Another train of thought goes in another direction. And then there's a third train of thought, which brings about a cohesion between the two.

So this is technically called as thesis, antithesis and then synthesis. So this is often used for reconciling. So reconciling opposites.

So this is for multiple perspective persuasion. And persuasion can be done as, here it's more like linear persuasion. Straight linear, it is single pointed linear persuasion.

It does not mean there is only one point over here, but there is one direction of thought over here. So talks can be persuasive, talks can be argumentative, but here it is more of conciliatory persuasion. Conciliatory means two people have some differences or two thoughts are different.

We try to bring them together. So thoughts can, speech involves thoughts going in different ways. Now, generally, while we can have a chain of thought like this.

Most of the times for speech to be truly interesting, it has to keep alternating between universals and specifics. Universal and specifics. So what do I mean? At the universal level, there are concepts.

There are principles. At the specific levels, there are examples. Examples could be analogies.

There could be anecdotes. Now anecdotes could be real anecdotes. Generally the word anecdotes is for real, but basically you could say there are stories.

There could be also fictional narratives, there could be scriptural narratives. But the idea is that there are these two things. So, for example, if somebody is telling a point that say we should be sensitive in our speech.

That's a principle. So a principle needs to be illustrated by some example. Sometimes some examples may be self-evident.

Now in different sessions, things may work differently. So, for example, a past time centered class may primarily have specifics with some universals coming in intermittently. So this would be more like a Leela centered class.

So, for example, we may take the story of Mantra and Kaikeyi and how Mantra was. Mantra misled Kaikeyi. And there we could talk about the effect of bad association.

So there the specific story is going on for a longer time. And then the principle comes occasionally. On the other hand, there could be talks that are principle centered.

And then there are stories that come out, specifics come out occasionally. So these you could say philosophy centered talks. Now it's not just philosophy, it could be any intellectual content.

So here the majority of content is concepts. And occasionally there are examples. Now these are in general more demanding intellectually.

So these you could say are more for the masses. Because most people either have the inclination for nor the capacity for too much conceptual understanding. These are generally for the classes.

So the class is for the classes. So what that means is that there are some people who want to understand the concepts. So the idea is that stories are nice, everybody likes stories.

But sometimes it's like okay, I heard the right story, what did I really learn from it? Was it just entertainment? Now if you see even something like movies. Movies often tell values. There are some values you convey to it.

Sometimes it may be directly through a discussion among people. But it could be also through choices that the characters make. And maybe they deliberate on the choices or we may deliberate on their choices.

So generally when it is a story centered thing, then it depends on the individual, how deep you go into it. Some people may just watch the story and enjoy it and end it. Some people watch the story and they may deliberate.

Hey, what is this? What is this? How is this related to my life? What does this choice mean? We just have some instinctive things. If you're watching a movie or reading a novel, then hey, I don't like this character. Now we may say, why don't we like this character? Maybe some of their personality qualities we don't like.

But it's also that maybe they're making some bad choices. And that's why we don't like them. So basically, how deep one goes into a story, that's up to the individual.

And on the other hand, with respect to concepts, when the concepts are the primary focus, then the story is, it depends entirely on the speaker, how many stories to tell. So if you see among these two, if you consider two books, the Gita and the Bhagavatam, which falls in which category? Yes, the Bhagavatam falls more in the pastime centered and the Gita is philosophy centered. Now, in fact, the Gita has no stories, although Gita itself comes in the middle of a story.

Gita has no story specifically, although the Gita does have some metaphors. So quite a few metaphors are there actually in the Gita. But why are we talking about this? That when a talk is to be structured, at that time, there has to be a train of thought.

And when there is a train of thought, so now for the train to move, there are rails below. And each rail has to be linked with the next train, that is a link. So what happens is that when certain statements are made, if a speaker is thoughtful and say the audience is also thoughtful.

So what happens is with each statement, there is a statement and we could say this is the speaker's statements. So I'm going back a little into the psychology before I go into the Gita, teaching psychology, because why I mean this? To appreciate what King Krishna is doing in the Gita. Now, if you consider the audience reaction.

Now reaction, we could talk in many terms, but let us focus more on one particular point here, that is credibility. How, not the speaker's credibility, how credible, credible means how believable, how logical, how acceptable they consider the statement to be. So let's pick an acceptability.

So each statement that comes up, if the statement makes sense, acceptability goes up. The next statement also makes sense and the acceptability goes up further. And the next statement also makes sense and the acceptability goes up further.

So now, if we find that the speaker is making more and more acceptable statements, then after that, even if the speaker makes a statement which is normally unacceptable, we become more open to consider it because what happens, some credibility has been built. But still, say if this is a, if all these are say acceptable statements, but after an acceptable statements, say now our statement becomes a little questionable. I can't really accept this.

So then what happens is this acceptability at least has a question mark or sometimes it goes down. And then the speaker has to intuitively first know and also observe and recognize that certain statements require a certain amount of explanation, elaboration, illustration, justification. So various things we can talk about.

Say, for example, if we are talking about Indian spirituality. Now, everybody who has come here would expect that we will glorify Indian culture. And the concomitant of that, we will bash Western culture.

But say yesterday I made a point that Indians are good in some way. The best is good about, say, financial ethics. Then I give an example of that.

What was the example? E-commerce. If you give books, e-commerce as a general example. For our example, I give the example of books.

We just give books and people give money and we don't charge a price for it. It doesn't work like that. So now that statement would have seemed questionable unless I give some example for it.

Now, if to an American audience I say Indians are very clueless conscious. I don't see that in the streets of India. Then you say, OK, you know, Indians are clueless conscious at the sense of their individual homes, not a public civic consciousness.

Say that if you go to Indian homes, they will be very clean and tidy. OK, maybe that's true. So every statement we evaluate in terms of what we have heard or what we experienced.

And then the subsequent statement, if it doesn't relate with that statement at all, then what happens is the speaker is going ahead, but our head is caught in that statement. How could I have said that? This doesn't make sense to me. And then we miss out on many things.

So that's why it's important for a speaker to not make statements which will be speaker needs to make at least some statements, which will which will stay with the audience. Cannot expect that everything will stay with the audience. So some statements are memorable.

So there should be some statement to stay with the audience, but there should not be any statements that the audience stays with them. The audience stays stuck over there and doesn't go ahead. So there are these called sticky statements.

Sticky statements means that they stick with the audience. So if there is some some quotable statement, hey, that was a nice point. Remember that.

But that the audience sticks with them in the sense that stays stuck in them. Now, that is unhealthy. So when Krishna has made this point that among all the paths that are there, the last words ended with Vedeshu, Yajneshu, Tapasu, Chaiva, Daneshu, Punyapalam, Pradeshnam, Yajna, Dhan, Tapai that is there, whatever Punyapala you get from that, that and more you will get by the practice of yoga.

Yogi Paramsthanam Upaiticharyam. But Yogi will get much more than that. Now, this is a significantly strong statement to make.

If an ad, suppose, makes a statement that our medicine is the best medicine for curing cancer. OK, who says so? I say so. Well, if you are the bad maker, that's what you're going to say.

I'm not going to believe you. So somebody else has to, some neutral reviewers have to say that. Some doctors have to say that.

Some patients who have actually been cured have to say that. So now Krishna will basically elaborate on this statement. Now, in one sense, Krishna has made a similar statement earlier.

Chapter seven and chapter nine have many similarities. And in one sense, 647 and I believe it's 830. The last verse of the 8th chapter? 28 or 30? So the last verse of the 8th chapter? 28.

Yeah. Thank you. So the last verse of the 8th chapter.

What are the last verse of the 6th chapter? Among all yogis, the topmost is those who remember. Now, Krishna is saying something similar, but slightly different is that the yogi attains the highest destination among all other paths. So it's a strong statement to make.

Previously, Krishna has said 7.1. Now I will tell you a process by which you can come to this level of making your mind attached to. So there it's slightly different. There the focus is Krishna is telling how you can become the highest yogi.

But here Krishna is telling why this is the highest yoga. They are two different things, although they are very related, but they are different. Now, how to how to become the highest yogi? Krishna has already outlined in that.

And he says, bahunam janmanamante, you'll come to the highest level. And also he has said that this is the easiest path. Tasyaham sulabha path.

But now he will elaborate on why this is the highest yoga. So how to be the highest yogi? That was the discussion over here. And here the discussion is why this this is bhakti yoga is the highest yoga.

So having said this, now, when we move forward in the discussion, let's see what Krishna does in this chapter. So before he can move ahead in describing how bhakti yoga is the highest yoga, for more than half of the chapter, he in one sense has to re-establish or re-emphasize his own position because it's he who is the object of devotion. It is the he who is actually uplifts people through devotion.

So now who can appreciate something that is spoken with love? That is somebody who is non-envious. Now, see, what happens is now there is a very, let's look at this from a common sense perspective. Normally, if we think love, what is the opposite of love? Sorry, there can be many opposites of love, but let's look at it.

Love and its antonyms. Synonyms are saying say many words. The opposite of love could be what? Hatred.

I love you. I hate you. Any other opposite? Indifference or apathy.

You know, I don't care for you. Sometimes people say I don't care for you in such a way that they show that they care. I don't care for you.

But apathy means I don't love you. I don't hate you. There's no emotion involved.

Now, what could be another opposite of love? Any other opposites of love? Lust. OK, that's OK. Broadly, we could say love is selfless, lust is selfish.

Love and lust, what is the key difference between them is? So basically hate means that I want to destroy. Love means I want to protect you. I will care for you.

I will support you. Hate means I want to destroy you. I want to hurt you.

So love, hate, this dynamic is between. It's more like what we want to do to the other person. It's associated more with.

Let's try to understand the dynamic over here. How we deal with the other person. How we want to deal with or how we deal with.

That's associated with hate. Apathy is associated with the emotional investment that. There is a lot of emotional investment.

There is no emotional investment. Now, love and lust, they're often associated with the reason for the connection. So love and lust, the difference is, say, generally love would mean and start with lust.

So I need you. So I care for you. That is lust.

I care for you. So I need you. That is the broad difference between lust and love.

That I care for you and I cannot care for you if you're not in my life. Therefore, I need you. I need you.

I need you in the sense that I need you to gratify my desires. Therefore, say, when there is lust, unless there is completely Tamasic lust, where a person just exploits and abuses another person and just abandons them. That's Tamasic.

But when there is normal Rajasic lust, it is that I care for you. But why do I care for you? Only because I need you to gratify my desires. And that's why if now, biologically speaking, that Krishna also says Prajanas Chasmi Kandarpa, that among the causes for reproduction, I am the God of love, Cupid.

That means the male-female attraction has a biological aspect to it. And that biological aspect that that eventually leads to reproduction. If a male-female don't feel attracted to each other, then there is no stimulation eventually for reproduction.

So that is so the male-female relationship may have a component of lust. But that is all that is there. So it's like the Bhagavatam talks about this.

This is a going off tangent, but since you brought it up about lust, we should many times, especially the male-female relationship, the love-lust difference, it may not be that clear. And sometimes in trying to avoid lust, one may not be able to experience any love and one may mistake lust for love. All those complexities are there.

But the way to differentiate is that in the male-female relationship, there are, especially in the reproductive act that is there, there are three aspects to it. There is pleasure. There is procreation.

And there is pair bonding. Now, pair bonding is a biological term. But what does pair bonding mean? I am talking about from not a spiritual perspective, simply from a biological perspective.

See, pair bonding means that the male and the female bond together. And pair bonding is vital for humans because among all the species in nature, no other species newborn requires as much care for as long as do human babies. Cows need some care.

Other species also need, baby birds need some care. But none of them need as much care for as long as do humans. And that's why the pair bonding is very important.

That's why if the male and the female are not together, then the progeny can't be taken care of. So even from a biological perspective, there is some pleasure in the reproductive act, in sex. But then it is, it is meant for procreation and procreation or after procreation.

After procreation, there has to be some pair bonding because it's not just OK, you procreate and it's over. Take care of the child. So now the problem that comes is that among these three purposes, now even from this is these three are required even for material welfare.

If there are only these two, there is pleasure and procreation, then there is material disruption. That means we're talking about how people may become single mothers and there's no one to take care of them. Now, if there is only pleasure and no procreation, then that is even unnatural.

And it's further disruptive. Unnatural means what? That in the, in nature, it's that the birth control pill or any kind of contraception or abortion doesn't happen naturally. So we have to unnaturally intervene in the process.

Now, of course, from a spiritual perspective, there is purification through service. So when parents come together to raise a child in the mood of service to the Lord, then when all of it comes together, then this is where it becomes spiritually uplifting. So normally speaking, love would be where at least the relationship goes to the level of pair bonding.

Then, of course, spiritually centered relationship means it's beyond pair bonding, pair bonding that we come together so that we can build a home together. We can build a home for Krishna in which Krishna's children can appear and grow to be Krishna's devotees. That's the purpose.

But when only pleasure is sought without the purpose of procreation, without the purpose of pair bonding, without the purpose of purification through service, then that is just, you could say, raw lust, nothing more. And that kind of lust is opposed to love. So that is based on the reason for relationship.

Now, we were discussing a different point. The point we're discussing is what is the difference between love? What is the opposite of love? Now, one opposite of love, which is often not thought of that way, is envy. It is.

Why is it envy? Basically, it's how we view others' glories. When there is love, the other's glory brings happiness. When there is envy, the other's glory brings unhappiness, anger.

So Krishna, when he says repeatedly that Arjuna, I'm speaking to you because you are non-envious. What he means by that is that I am speaking to you because you will be not unhappy or agitated to hear my glories. You will be happy to hear my glories.

Now, say, for example, you know, we, you know, we win some award or we do something wonderful and then you want to come and tell our family. That's that's that there are people who want to share our joys with them. But if, say, in our family, we have a sibling who is very jealous of us.

Then what happens is our telling, OK, I won this, that will only trigger the jealousy. Then, of course, if we really have a bad relationship with our sibling, they will deliberately tell that to make them more jealous. But if we have a good relationship, then we would not speak about us.

Relating with this point that if we know that somebody is jealous of us and it's unfortunate if this happens in a husband wife relationship. Nowadays, with both the husband and wife pursuing careers, then either way, if the husband is successful, the wife can feel insecure. And especially if the wife earns more than the husband, then the husband cannot celebrate his wife's success.

The husband feels jealous of his wife's success. So then that can lead to a lot of problems. So here you understand how love and envy are opposite.

When there is love, the other's success brings celebration. But when there is envy, the other's success brings agitation, not celebration. So Krishna, he starts the chapter by saying that I will soon be away.

I'll speak this to you because you are non-envious. Now we may say the idea of envy towards God. This is generally we have envy towards those in our league.

Isn't it? Say we don't feel envious of those. We may feel envious of somebody who's are equal. Even Bhakti, if we are doing some service and somebody has come more or less with us as a better service, then we feel envious.

But somebody who are very senior to us, we may feel awe, we feel amazement, but we don't feel envy over them. So why is this term used? So God is completely out of our league. Unless we are out of our mind.

So why would this idea of envy towards God come? See, it's that, that envy may not exactly be similar to the kind of envy we have towards our equals. But basically, if hearing our glories, sorry, hearing God's glories, hearing God's glories makes us agitated and skeptical and cynical, then that is an indication that there is some emotion similar to envy. That envy may not exactly be in the sense.

So what happens is when we hear God's glory, generally when we hear God's glories, you want to challenge it, not so that, okay, this doesn't make sense to me. I want to understand it. But no, this is not right and I'll prove it is not right.

So when somebody wants to repeatedly look for reasons to falsify God's glories, to counter God's glories, that is a sign of envy. Say, for example, somebody who is equal to us. They give a very good class and everybody is praising them.

And then you say, what a wonderful class he gave. Have you seen how much prasad he eats? So the idea is, I can't deny that he gave a good class. Don't think he's a pure devotee.

He has no control over his senses. So we try to pull the person down. So what happens when envy is there? So envy, in one sense, it might seem unnatural because God is out of our league.

Unless, as I said, we are mad. Unless we are out of our mind. But still, that envy is possible in the sense that we want to challenge or counter God's glories.

Challenge and counter, sometimes we challenge so that we can better understand. Arjuna shows how to do that kind of challenge is when he says, How am I to understand that you give this knowledge to Sun God? So that is enquiry, but it is a submissive enquiry. It is not a, hey, who do you think you are kidding? You can speak nonsense and you think you can get away with it.

I'm not a fool. He's not dismissing Krishna. So it is basically challenge and counter God's glories to try to falsify them, to pull God down, to deny God his position.

So if we don't want, if that is our attitude, we want to challenge and counter God's glories, then it is best. Krishna says, I won't speak my glory. That will only agitate you.

That will only alienate you from me. So then Krishna doesn't speak his glories. But Krishna is saying, Arjuna, to you, I speak my glories because you are non-envious.

Now, Krishna speaks many things, but I'll focus on one particular theme in Krishna's analysis over here. That is, does God control everything? What do you think? Does God control everything? OK. Yes.

How many of you say yes? OK. How many of you say no? How many of you say I don't know? OK. How many of you say none of the above? OK.

Now you can say, of course, one of the definitions of God is that he is the supreme controller, Parameshwar. So, yes, we could say because he is the supreme controller. But then we could say no, because we all have free will.

Isn't it? So you see, God is the supreme controller. But the question is, is he the sole controller? Among various hierarchies of controls, he is the supreme controller. But is he the only controller of everything that happens? If this difference between this supreme controller, it's not the same as the sole controller.

So now if you see, if we say God is the sole controller, then there is no possibility for free will. And if we say there is another problem, if we say God is the supreme controller, then is he controlling our actions? Is he controlling our choices? Then when he says controlling, is he, when we do bad things, why are we held responsible for those bad things? If it is he who is controlling us and making us do those bad things. Like say if some crime has happened, some murder has happened and the police can't find anyone.

So they find some innocent person, they arrest that person and they take that person to where the corpse is. The police place a gun in that person's hand and they wear a glove and they press the button. So what happens is the bullet is shot from that gun and the fingers of this innocent person come over.

The police say you are the murderer and they frame. Now you consider this to be barbaric? This could be horrible abuse of power. So basically if we say we have no free will, then we are saying God is like this kind of police person.

God makes us do bad things and then punishes us for doing bad things. Isn't it? So basically the denial of free will makes God evil. Denial of free will.

So the denial of free will makes God evil. So free will and evil. So it's important to understand that while God controls everything, that does not necessarily mean that he is the cause of every single action that happens in the world.

He is obviously the cause. Sarva Karana Karanam. You have heard that, isn't it? He is the cause of all causes.

Yes, he is the cause of all causes, but is he the cause of all effects? Now, what is the difference between the cause of all causes and the cause of all effects? Let's try to understand this difference. Say, for example, now Draupadi was disrobed by whom? Dushyasan. Now, when Draupadi was disrobed by Dushyasan, Krishna intervened and made her robe unlimited.

And that's why the disrober got exhausted, but the robe didn't get exhausted. That was the extraordinary miracle that happened. So Krishna intervened to protect Draupadi.

But can we say that while Krishna was providing Draupadi robe from other side, it was Krishna who was taking off Draupadi's robe through Dushyasan's means? Obviously not. Isn't it? It was Dushyasan who was doing that horrendous thing. Now, Dushyasan's strength came from Krishna.

So, the cause of all causes is Krishna. But how he uses that strength is determined by his free will. So, he is not the cause of all effects.

So, he is the cause of all causes means Dushyasan's strength. Now, he could have used that strength for anything. Dushyasan's strength comes from Krishna, but Dushyasan's disrobing of Draupadi, that does not come from Krishna.

That comes from his own free will and his misuse of his free will. So, the scriptures give the example that the clouds are the cause of all vegetation on the earth. But which specific vegetation grows where? That is not determined by the clouds.

That is determined by the specific kind of seeds that are there on the earth. So, the rain, the clouds or the rain, you could say, the rain is the cause of all causes. But not the cause of all effects.

The rain is what enables through the ground for vegetation to grow. But the specific vegetation that grows where depends on what is sown over there in the past. So, now let's look at this differentiation.

This differentiation makes one contradiction in the Gita. So, or apparent contradiction. In 9.4 Krishna is saying, Matsthani sarva bhutani.

Matsthani, you can say, all living beings are situated in me. And then in the next line, next chapter, just two lines later, you know, what does Krishna say? Exactly opposite. Nachamatsthani bhutari.

Normally, if somebody contradicts themselves, they say, oh, I'm sorry, it was a slip of tongue. So, okay, from here I'm going to Mumbai. Oh, actually, no, I'm going to Delhi.

So, that's a slip of tongue we corrected. And we are a little embarrassed if we make a mistake. But from Krishna, after he contradicts himself, there is no embarrassment.

What he says is, Pashyame yogam aishwaram. Pashyame. It's like behold this.

Normally, if we make a mistake and contradict ourselves, we hope that nobody noticed it. But Krishna is highlighting it. See this.

So, Krishna is not embarrassed. Krishna is saying, see it. And what is this? This is yogam aishwaram.

So, aishwara is what? Opulence. Yogam. What does yoga mean? Connection.

The magnificence of my connection. The word yoga in the Gita has many different meanings as we discussed earlier. But now let's consider a fundamentally different category of meaning.

Yoga essentially means connection. Normally, we use that to refer to, say, the soul's connection with God. And then there are various ways to connect with God.

That is Karma Yoga, Gyan Yoga, Dhyan Yoga, Bhakti Yoga. How the soul connects with God. But yoga, if it means connection, it can mean something else also.

It can also refer to God's connection with the world. How God connects with the world. And Krishna is using that over here.

He is using the word, word in that sense. Pashyame yogam aishwaram. Just behold the magnificent, the mystical nature of my connection with the world.

That I sustain the world. The world is in me and yet the world is not in me. Matsthani.

The world is in me. The world is not in me. Now, what does it mean? In the next words, Krishna will give an example of that.

So how God connects with the world. That is the meaning of yoga in this particular context in 9.5. Krishna is using yogam aishwaram. So let's look at the next words which will explain this or reconcile this contradiction.

So Krishna is giving a metaphor. Like I said, whenever the principles are given, especially the principles are difficult to understand and some examples need to be given to illustrate the principles. So yatha aakash.

Aakash is the sky. Sthito nityam is situated always. What? Vayu.

Vayu is wind. Vayu sarvatrago mahaan. Sarvatrago means the Vayu can go in, the wind can go in various directions.

Yet it is situated inside the sky. Yatha aakash sthito nityam. Vayu sarvatrago mahaan.

Tatha. So generally in Sanskrit there are these couples. So there is yatha and tatha.

So just as similarly, tatha sarvani bhutani. Similarly, all living beings. Matsthanitya upadharya.

All living beings are situated in me. Tatha sarvani bhutani. Matsthanitya upadharya.

So let's try to understand this metaphor. But before that let's recite the words together once again. Yatha aakash sthito nityam.

Vayu sarvatrago mahaan. Tatha sarvani bhutani. Matsthanitya upadharya.

So here Krishna is saying that if we consider the sky to be like an upside down bowl and within that there is say a gust of wind. The wind, the sky and the wind. The wind can itself move upward.

It can move downward. It can move leftward. It can move rightward.

It can move laterally in various directions. The wind is free to move in various directions. But it cannot move beyond the upside down bowl of the sky.

Now, of course, you can say there is no such thing as the sky in this endless space. But Krishna is using a metaphor drawn from our conventional understanding of things. That if you consider the sky to be like upside down bowl.

So this is basically the domain of the sky. That is the domain of our free will. And the sky is the domain of God's control.

So everybody by their past karma gets some power, gets some position. Another word for this is Kshetra. We have a sphere of influence.

Now, within that sphere of influence, we can do what we want. So Dushyasan had a particular position and within that position he could do whatever he wanted. But that position won't last for long.

That position will be there for some time. And during that time, he can do whatever he wants. In that scope, he can do whatever he wants.

If a police person abuses their power. Now, within their police station, within their jurisdiction, maybe nobody can challenge them. But if their boss comes to inquire, then it's a problem.

Now imagine somebody is a dictator, head of a country. They have no boss above them. But maybe that person can terrorize their citizens.

But only till if another country attacks or till that person themselves die. If they try to go and similarly terrorize somebody in any other country, it won't work. So this Kshetra is in terms of both space and time.

That is the limitation. Now within this Kshetra, what we do is up to us. So when bad people do bad things, it is not Krishna making them do bad things.

It is they doing bad things by misusing their power. And Krishna would later say that Udasina. I stay as if detached.

I observe. And when their karma runs out, they get their punishment. So now this Kshetra that is there, different people may in the same lifetime, say, if somebody is born in a royal family, then maybe as a child they have a certain level of influence.

Now as that person becomes a prince, maybe their influence increases. As this person becomes a king, that person's influence increases more and more. And as that person starts becoming older, maybe their influence starts decreasing.

Maybe that person becomes bedridden. Their influence becomes lesser still. And then when they die, there is zero influence.

So a person's influence may increase or decrease over a lifetime. But at the same time, we could say, so this is the Kshetra changing with time. But it's also possible that in the same place, there could be different people with different degrees of influence.

Say in a school, a student may have a certain level of influence. Maybe the class monitor, do they use the word monitor or what is the word used nowadays? Monitor. So the monitor may have a certain level of influence.

The teacher may have a certain level of influence. The principal may have the principal influence, the maximum influence. So each person will have a different degree of Kshetra.

And within that Kshetra, now sometimes in some schools, the principal may be even dictatorial. The principal may not only abuse the students, the principal may abuse the teachers also. But they can do it only as long as they are the principal.

That power is going to be temporary. So when Krishna is saying all living beings are situated in me, but they are not situated. What that means is they are situated within my ultimate controllership.

But their specific actions are not controlled by me. Now, this is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is that, that any action that we want to do, we cannot do it without Krishna's will.

Right now I want to speak. I don't even know how my voice box works. So I just desire to speak and the appropriate sound is coming out.

So in one sense, we can do nothing without Krishna's sanction. But still there is a difference again when we talk about God's role in human actions. So that role can range from what we are doing is God's intention.

And what we are doing is God's permission. Now, permission means you want to do it and I'll let you do it. So the permission can sometimes even be a concession.

This is not good, but you want to do it, I'll let you do it. Nothing happens without God having a role in the action. But everything that happens is not God's intention.

When bad people do bad things, that's not God's intention. That is God letting the person do the bad thing. So, for example, Krishna's intention was to have a peace plan with Duryodhana.

Now, what is Krishna's permission or concession? Rejection of that peace plan. That proposal or plan, Duryodhana wanted to reject that. Krishna came with the plan and Duryodhana rejected that.

So when Krishna comes in the material world, Krishna may not always act as if he is God, as a supreme person. So he may let people do something which they want. That's what they want to do.

But then if he rejects the peace proposal, then there has to be a consequence. There will be a war and the war eventually perishes. So there is this range, this spectrum of what God's role is in our life.

Now, in the context of the Gita, what it immediately means is the Pandavas, really bad things have happened to them. The worst for them, probably the disrobing of Draupadi and the defrauding of their entire kingdom from them. But really bad things have happened.

So now it's important to recognize that there is a common saying, everything that happens is good. There is this, in many places in India, we have this Gita Saar. Jo hua, wo achha hua.

Jo hoda hai, wo achha hoda hai. Jo hone wala hai, wo achha hi hoga. Now, they say it is the Saar of the Gita, par saare Gita mein yeh nahi hai.

In the entire Gita, you know, I have read the Gita dozens and dozens of times. I have recited the Gita hundreds of times. I have friends who have recited it.

I talk with Gita scholars from other traditions also. No one has found any shloka which comes anywhere near this. What to speak of saying this? It is a nice sounding sentiment.

But it's not the teaching of the Gita. And it's not only not the teaching of the Gita, it is also not philosophically correct. In fact, bad things happen in life.

It's a horrendous thing to tell someone. Krishna, when he met Draupadi, after she had been attempted to be disrobed and then they were in the forest in exile, Krishna went there to meet Draupadi. At that time, Krishna didn't tell Panchali, jo hua, achha hua.

You know, if something like that has happened to a person, it's a horrendous thing to have happened. So what does it mean? See, there is a difference between everything that happens is good versus everything is for good. Now, is for good means what? It is meant for a good purpose.

Or you can qualify it even more. Everything that happens can be for good. Can be for good means if we see something positive in it, if we respond in a positive way to it, then it can be for good.

But what happens, it can sometimes be bad. And many things can be bad. Terrible.

So it is, if everything that happens is good, we say, then again, that means there is no room for bad people to do bad things. That's a denial of freedom. And it also goes against human experience.

In some religious tradition, this idea that everything that happens is good. Now, not, when I say some religious traditions, I'm not saying a particular religion because each religion is complex. Say, for example, let's say Hindus say like this.

Hindus have so many denominations. Christians have so many denominations. Muslims have so many denominations.

And sometimes what, of course, all Christians, all Muslims, each religion will have some common beliefs. But within those common beliefs, there are a wide variety of different beliefs. But in UK, there was a court case against God, not against God particularly.

And you expect God that there was this movie OMG in which the protagonist tried to challenge God. I wrote a book about that called OMG, re-answering the questions. So, but this was more against the very idea of God.

So this petitioner, he said that the idea of God, the idea of a good God should be declared by the government to be immoral and illegal. The idea of good God. This is why? This is considering the gravity and severity of human suffering.

The very idea of a good God is an insult to human intelligence and human dignity. When you see so much suffering, how can there be a good God? And so now the point is that if we consider, if we claim that every single thing that happens is God's will. Now we can say not a blade of grass moves without God's will, we say that.

But will has different meanings. The will can mean intention, will can also mean permission. So not everything that happens is what God wants to happen.

It is what also God allows to happen at times. So when Duryodhana, for example, insulted Vidura, at that time, when did Duryodhana insult Vidura? Just before the war was about to start, Vidura tried, repeatedly tried to make Duryodhana see sense. And when Duryodhana wouldn't see sense, he finally spoke to Dhritarashtra.

O King, if you want to save your kingdom, you should reject your son. Otherwise, he will cause the destruction of all your children and your entire dynasty. Now this was a desperate last-ditch attempt by Vidura.

And Duryodhana could bear it no more. Duryodhana slashed out Vidura and said, get out! Who asked you to come here? Who do you think you are? You are a traitor. Now when Vidura spoke this, Duryodhana's words hurt Vidura.

But what hurt him much more was Dhritarashtra's silence. When we are criticized, the words of our critics hurt us. But what hurts us even more is the silence of our friends.

And that's when Vidura decided, I can't stay here. So now when Vidura left, what did he think? Duryodhana's words were spoken by his own misuse of freedom. But Vidura thought, here is an opportunity for me to go away and not have to fight on the side of Duryodhana and Dhritarashtra against the Pandavas.

And that's how he left. So the idea is, he saw that this is an opportunity for me to go on pilgrimage, to meet with the sages, to gain more wisdom, to gain more purification. He could have joined the side of the Pandavas.

But he was confident that the Pandavas didn't need him. They would destroy Duryodhana and his brothers. He still had hope that Dhritarashtra could be saved.

And he, rather than blaming Dhritarashtra to be so attached, he thought that maybe I need more wisdom and purification so that I will be able to communicate with Dhritarashtra in a way that he will understand. So he decided to go to the sages and hear from them. So everything that happens is, it's not, we can't really say what Duryodhana did was good.

Duryodhana had a bad intention and did a bad thing. Disrespect and publicly insulting someone who was from his father's generation. But by Vidura's choice of how he responded to it, good came out of it.

So after talking about this principle, about how Krishna relates with various things in the world, then Krishna will say there are different kinds of people. Something similar to the third chapter where he says there is a spectrum of humanity. So how people approach him.

Now we have talked till now in terms of specific actions. Somebody may do something which is in harmony with Krishna's will. That's what Krishna wants us to do, intention.

Somebody will do something which is, which is what Krishna allows to do. So range of humanity. So Krishna will talk about how there are different people and these different people, they will act in different ways.

So first he starts at the bottom. Level 12 he talks about are the demoniac. Now in this particular category, he also puts the impersonalist.

Those who consider his form to be, to be what? To be Maya. Now we say how can impersonalist be called demoniac? They are also renounced people. They are also spiritual people.

They are also evolved. So that's why the word impersonalist has to be understood carefully. There are two categories of impersonalists.

There are Brahmavadis and there are Mayavadis. Now what is the Brahmavadis idea? This is a major, very important concept. That there is the impersonal side and there is the personal side.

It is just that I am attracted to the impersonal. This is my preference. Now the personal may exist.

Some people will be attracted to it. I don't care about that. So this is the notion of the Brahmavadis.

And many people today who seem to be impersonal, I want to merge. Most of them are either Brahmavadis, almost Brahmavadis. So what are Mayavadis? Mayavadis say that the impersonal is not just the highest reality.

They go on to say this is the only reality. And then they say the personal is what? It is a convenient fiction. What do you mean by convenient fiction? Actually, in your condition stage, you can't think of that ultimate reality without any qualities, without any form, without any activities.

So for such less intelligent people like you, you can worship the person. But as long as you are less intelligent, as long as people are less intelligent, they worship the person. But once they become more intelligent, what happens is they recognize the whole personal is Maya.

And this is the only reality. So basically, somebody wanting to merge in the Brahman doesn't make them a Mayavadi. And that is not offensive to Krishna.

So in the 12th chapter, when there was a discussion, some of you were there. 12.1 to 7, we discussed this. There Krishna also had Brahmavadis.

They will also come to me. They will attain my impersonal effulgence. But the Mayavadis, they deny the reality of Krishna's form at all.

Entirely. In fact, some of them, it's not just a philosophical conception for them. It's also like a practical reality.

So, for example, you sit in front of your favorite deity, whichever you want, whatever it is. You just meditate on that. Sit and meditate.

And then what is the success of your meditation? By the power of your meditation, that deity will crumble into power. And that is when you will go beyond the form to the formless. So it's like the very object you are worshipping, you are longing when the object of worship will be destroyed.

And that is the success of my meditation. And of course, if there is a solitary meditation, then what happens? Unfortunately, some seekers. Again, I'm not generalizing that all Mayavadis will ever do like this.

But there are cases where some impersonalists, some Mayavadis specifically, and what they do is everybody wants cheap success. They sit for solitary meditation and they smash the deity to powder. And they say, oh, this deity crumbled to powder by my meditation.

I have realized, I have become enlightened now. So this becomes quite diabolical. So it is this condemnation of Krishna's personal form as Maya that is the defining characteristic of a Mayavadi that Krishna considers demoniac.

So the demons may try to kill Krishna. So demons may try to destroy Krishna and these Advaitavadis, these specific Advaitavadis, they try to destroy Krishna's personal form. And that's why it becomes toxic.

Now, having said this, most people who even go to Advaitic Mayavadi organizations, they don't even know about this kind of place. Just go there because it feels good and there is some nice atmosphere is there. And many other reasons.

Are there toxic Mayavadis? Of course, there are. But they are a small minority. And even among the Mayavadis, many of them are actually, they have this idea that everybody has to naturally evolve according to their paths.

So they say that, OK, if you are on the path of worshipping Vishnu or Krishna, you continue on that path. They don't really, their ideas, not all Mayavadis are like this, but they say, OK, just continue on your path. So this, we have to understand, there is a difference between Mayavad philosophy and specific people who have Mayavadi conceptions or who are like ruled or defined by those Mayavadi conceptions.

But this is what Krishna is very strongly reproaching. Now, after that, Krishna goes to the other extreme. And in 13-14, he talks about the pure devotees.

Then he will talk about three different categories of people. ekatvena, pruthatvena, bahudhavishvatomukham. So these three categories Krishna mentions in the 15th verse.

Vishvatomukham. So what does this mean basically? Ekatvena is those who seek oneness. So it's in this very chapter Krishna is differentiating between the Mayavadis and those who seek oneness.

So these who seek oneness, Krishna will talk about them in Chapter 12. Pruthatvena. Ekatvena, pruthatvena, bahudhavishvatomukham.

Actually, there is a slight mistake. Bahudha, pruthatvena, bahudha is one category. Pruthatvena means that differentiated into many.

So this is the demata worship. This is what Krishna will talk about soon after this. He will talk about this from 23-25.

Basically he talks about this from 9-16 onwards to 25. But primarily here, he has also earlier talked about it from 7-20 to 23. And then Vishvatomukham.

Vishvatomukham refers to the universal form, the Viratrupa. And this is going to be talked about in Chapter 11. Chapter 11 and 12 we already discussed.

So Krishna is giving the spectrum of humanity over here. There are many different living beings who have different characteristics. And Krishna is not condemning any of them over here.

Ekatvena, those who seek oneness. Those who worship the one absolute truth in many different forms. And those who worship the universe itself.

Now, many scientists, if they are not aggressively atheists, they can broadly be considered to be nature worshippers. Because they basically consider the laws of nature to be supreme. So in some ways, this is similar to the Shakta system of worship.

Shakta is associated with the word Shakti. Specifically, they worship the goddess and they do the puja. Scientists don't do a puja like that.

But if we go beyond the specific rituals of worship to the underlying world view, the world view is that nature itself is sacred. So the idea is that Vishvatomukham, scientists, can fall in this category. Not all of them.

Some or many scientists may fall in this category where they consider nature itself to be the object of worship. So Einstein's God falls somewhere between this nature worship and Deism. So this nature worship is often called as Pantheism.

Pantheism is basically, Pan is everything. Like a Pan-India initiative. That means it's an initiative that's spread all over India.

So Pantheism is everything is God. Everything refers to everything in nature that is God. So Polytheism is, what? There are many Gods.

So many scientists, when there are whole books written about what exactly was Einstein's conception of God. Einstein didn't believe in God. He made many different statements.

So he was certainly not a theist in the normal sense of the word. You can use theist generically as one who believes in God. So he definitely believed in God, so you can call him a theist.

But if you consider theist as God as the creator and the controller. So his idea of God was somewhere between Deism and Pantheism. Pantheism in nature is God and Deism is God is the creator but not the controller.

So now of course we may take some quotes of Einstein and we talk about him as believing in God. And that's fair enough. He did make those statements.

But if we overuse or over rely on those statements then in the West people are quite sceptical. And we have to be prepared as India has also become westernized. That one devotee, he recently wrote to me saying that he talked about this quote about how Einstein believed in God and immediately one student, he brought out four or five quotes where Einstein said, I don't believe in God.

So I asked him, you know, I didn't know about all this. I said, yes, it's true. Einstein made both kinds of statements.

You know, it's not that belief in God is necessarily a static thing. It's because you believe in God one time does not necessarily mean that you will believe in God throughout your life. He went through phases in his life and especially he was a Jew and the Jews were horrendously persecuted and the Holocaust happened.

Well, that also had a left a psychological scar on him. So he survived. He got sanctuary in America.

But then he also had a guilty conscience that he was the person who gave the idea to the American government to make the atom bomb. And when it was used, he was shocked at the amount of destruction that it caused. So his life was also quite traumatic.

So has he made those statements, he believed in God? Of course, he's made those statements. Has he made the other kind of statements? He has made those kind of statements. So now what was his defining characteristic throughout his life? He was a scientist, he was an enquirer.

He went through different phases. So it's like the scientists have believed in God. Does that mean that they have believed in God the same way as a devotee who does Maa Manusmaran teacher? No, not necessarily.

So these statements can be used, but people's conception of God changes. It can evolve. It can devolve.

With time. So moving forward now, we have, I'd like to discuss three concepts. Each of them I'll try to discuss briefly.

So I talk about, I talk about Advaita Vaad. We have talked about Vishwaroop already. Let's talk about polytheism.

Polytheism is the worship of the Devatas. So basically, if you consider the conception of the divine, now when the, I'll start from outside framework today. And then we'll come to the inside framework.

Outside framework means, when the Europeans colonialists came to India, they came from the Abrahamic religions, mostly Christianity. And these are monotheistic. They are proudly monotheistic.

They said we believe only in one God and no God except that one God. Abrahamic religions. And now, before these Abrahamic religions took hold in Europe and the Middle East, before that there was, especially in Europe, there was the Greco-Roman conceptions.

Now they were polytheistic. There was Zeus and Aphrodite and all these different kinds of Gods were there. This is the Greco-Roman tradition.

Polytheism means there are many Gods. And in the Greco-Roman tradition, all these different Gods are fighting for turf. Each is trying to prove that I am better than others and trying to become supreme.

So now when they came to India, initially they saw so many temples. And so many images. It's obvious, it's polytheism.

So one western scholar, he said that Hinduism is not a religion. It is a museum of religions. There is a popular book on Hinduism.

Its popularity is good, its content is not so good. So there, an American is asking the Indian, why do you people worship so many Gods? He said, we believe in keeping backups. So the idea of multiple Gods is bewildering.

But then there were some western thinkers also who observed a little bit more carefully and they saw one thing very strange. That is whichever temple you used to go to, it is almost as if that God is worshipped as the supreme. And then nominally we say this God is in charge of this or that.

It is almost as if each God is worshipped as if it is the supreme. So it is found very difficult to fit this idea into their conceptions. So actually speaking, this monotheism and polytheism are western categories and the Vedic tradition doesn't actually fit into this so easily.

So it's like, if at all we want to use a western categorization to describe it, it is like polymorphic, multilevel, bi-monotheism. Why bi-monotheism? Why? Because in our tradition God is not just one person. God is a couple.

Radha Krishna, Sita Ram, Lakshmi Narayan. It's a divine couple. And both of them are considered supreme.

Both of them are considered divine. Although there is a relationship of Shakti and Shaktiman, worship and worship, but still both of them are considered worshipable. So it's not just monotheism.

It's bi-monotheism. And then polymorphic. Morphic means what? Forms.

Many forms. So polymorphic is that there are many forms. So Ram, Krishna, Narayan, Narasimha, Vamana.

All the Vishnu tattva, they are Vishnu. Advaitam, Achyutam, Anadil, Anantarupam. So that Anantarupam is polymorphic.

And the divine male-female, Sita Ram, that's what it talks about. Actually it's Ram, Sita, Sita Ram, whatever. Normally Sita is referred to first.

But that is bi-monotheism. Now what is this idea, this multilevel? In the western tradition, so the western idea of polytheism was that there is one true God. There is one true God.

That's only one. And there are all other false gods. And the idea is for the glorification of this one true God, all other false gods, not only have to be put down, they have to be destroyed.

And this idea is very central. The idea is in the Old Testament, your God is a jealous God. Jealous God means your God does not like it if you worship anyone else.

And because of this, right from the Old Testament itself, the idea that the worshipping of false gods should not only be given up, but it should be just completely stopped, given by force. That is very much a central part of these religious traditions. At least in terms of their historical, textual narrative.

So in the Old Testament, whenever any Old Testament king conquers a particular kingdom, they will go and they will destroy the temples of the false gods. Now Jesus did not conquer anything. Jesus was more like a brahminical preacher than a ruler.

But Christians did not. Later on they got forwarded the same thing. And this idea of establishing the glory of the one true God by destroying all other false gods is what was taken to its maximum in terms of political action by Islam.

Now Muhammad lived in Mecca, then he went to Medina, then he came back to Mecca, up with force. When he conquered that place, the first thing that he did was he destroyed all the idols over there. And that set up a tradition.

Now for them, now we may say, okay, all those might have been idols, what we worship are deities. But in their tradition, you remember I talked about transcendence and immanence, that God existing beyond nature and God existing within nature. So in their tradition, there is no conception of God existing within nature, especially in terms of God manifesting in some form.

So their idea is any form that you worship, it is a false god. Now we may say, no, no, this is Pranapratishtha has been done and this has been, this is based on scripture description. But further it's not our scripture, anyway, a scripture is false.

So all the other descriptions of God is also false. So the idea of destroying and stopping the worship of false gods is intrinsic to their tradition. Because their idea is all false gods, they are just manifestations of the devil, of the shaitaan, Satan.

And they say stopping satanic worship is integral to worshipping the one true God. And that's why, say now, in Islamic rule, all Muslims are definitely not extremists. But destroying the temples of false gods is not an extremist Islamic teaching.

It is very much a central part of the very conception of the divine within Islam. In fact, among all sins, which Allah they say will never forgive. You can rape, you can murder, Allah will forgive all that.

But the one sin that Allah will not forgive is if you do idolatry. If you, that's called shirk. That if you associate anything material with Allah, with God, you equate Allah with anything material, that is the greatest insult to Allah.

So now, is this what everyday Muslims believe? Rarely. It's like most Hindus don't know Hindu philosophy. So similarly, most Muslims don't know Muslim philosophy.

And you know, when you say Muslim philosophy also, there is something in the Quran, but there are so many scholars, there is a whole tradition of Islamic scholars. And they all have emphasized different things at different times. So what I'm talking about is two different things over here.

One is in terms of Islamic ideology, this is not a fringe teaching. That the worship of the false god needs to be stopped. And if you have political power, use that political power to stop that.

But does that mean that that's what Muslims will do today? Not necessarily. Most likely not, unless they get majority power. But even then, it's not necessary that they will do it.

Like we will see that even in the place where in the Middle East, Muslims have practically unquestioned power. But recently even in, I think, UAE, a Hindu temple was built and Modi went there to inaugurate the temple. So there is a difference between how people live in today's world and what is taught in scripture.

Now of course, in scripture also lots of things are taught. Which things people take up, that depends on them. The point I'm making over here is not to talk about Islam and its conception of deity.

Because deity worship is a whole different subject. I have written a whole book on this topic called Idol Worship or Ideal Worship. But the point I'm making over here is that this categorical difference between the true God and the false gods.

Now this is the polytheistic religion. Now Vedic tradition is there is Bhagawan and then there are Devatas. And if you see how it is, the Bhagawan is like the PM and the Devatas are like the ministers.

So it is not that for the glorification of the Prime Minister, the ministers have to be destroyed. So this is a completely different vision. It's a completely different vision.

Now we generally focus on this particular metaphor of the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister. And how the Devatas are assisting the Supreme Lord. Now can sometimes the Devatas get some ego issues by which they think I am the greatest? That's always possible.

But that does not mean that is how they are intrinsically situated. Those roles are not like that. So now the Devatas have two roles.

One is an administrative role where they assist Krishna. Now along with an administrative role, they also have a role in cosmic administration. But they also have a role in terms of worship that Krishna arranges for the Devatas to be worshipped.

I'll explain why he does that shortly. In the Abrahamic religion, the Old Testament, there is a story of the prodigal son. Has any of you heard the story? Yes, I think all of you have heard it.

Prodigal son. And the idea is that there is the kingdom or the village or whatever you want to say in which the father is staying and the son goes away from there. The son goes far away, suffers and then returns and the father welcomes him back.

And this is shown as a sign of God's great love that even if we abandon him, when we turn back to him, he welcomes us back. And that's definitely a sign of God's love. But in the Vedic tradition, God is not, is waiting.

But God is not just waiting for us to return. God is working for us to return. And what does working mean? Let me say if this, let me separate these two here.

So if this is the father's kingdom and the prince, the son has gone out of this kingdom, then what happens is the father sends an assistant, a minister. And that minister says, you know, you are suffering over here, you are not getting a good job, you are not being paid well, you come and work for me. And now if the father himself goes back, the son is not yet in good terms with the father.

The son will not come back. So what does the father as the king do? He sends a minister. And he doesn't tell the minister to tell that, you know, I am working for this king.

He says, you know, just you tell about your power, your position, how you can reward him. And then by that what happens is the son comes back. Now the son comes back into the father's kingdom.

And here there's the prince. And then here there is the minister. So the prince is not yet back home, but the prince is in the father's kingdom.

So these ministers are like the devatas. So for those who are not able to worship Krishna, Krishna doesn't say you worship me or you go to hell. If you can't worship me, I am not concerned about my glorification.

My primary concern is your protection, your elevation. So if you can't worship me, at least worship a representative of me and come closer to me. So if we consider this is Krishna and say this is the Jiva, this is the soul.

Then this is the devata. So the best is that the soul worships Krishna and Krishna reward the soul. So this is bhakti.

So this is bhakti and this is the best. But for those who are not ready for this, what Krishna does is the soul worships the devata and the devata gives the result. But the important thing is, this is what we can call as the devata worship.

Now in this worship of the devatas, the important thing to understand is that Krishna is not just a bystander. What Krishna does is, actually it is Krishna who gives power to the devatas to fulfill the desires of the worshippers. And it is Krishna who gives shraddha.

It is Krishna who gives faith to the individual, to the worship of the devatas. So this is, see Krishna tells us don't be envious. Krishna is saying don't be non-envious.

Krishna is also showing how much I am non-envious. If I am the boss in a company and somebody comes in the same company and works and calls somebody else the boss. How ignorant can you be? You don't know my position? But Krishna is like, I am happy you are unemployed, at least you are gainfully employed.

So Krishna's concern is primarily our elevation, not his own glorification. Now of course, in this particular point, if we go back to the 7th chapter of the Gita, this is what Krishna is saying. So as I mentioned there are similarities in the 7th and the 9th chapter.

So it's interesting, I will talk about two verses which broadly illustrate this point. So let's look at this verse. Yo-yo, yo-yo is typical, yad-ya, yad-a, yad-yad, yad-yad, like that.

Whoever, yam-yam, whichever, tanu is form. Bhaktaha, with devotion. Shraddhaya, with faith.

Architum, ichchati, one who desires to worship. Yo-yo, yam-yam, tanu, bhaktaha. Shraddhaya, architum, ichchati.

So to form the desire to worship, tasya, tasya. And to that person, achalam, shraddham. Shraddha is faith, achala is strong, not shaky.

Tam eva, it is to that person I give, viddham yam. It is I who give that faith. So Krishna is saying I give faith even to the worshipper of the devotees.

Tasya, tasya, achalam, shraddham. Tam eva viddham yam. Tam eva viddham yam.

So this is the kindness of Krishna. Now I'll take one more verse and you'll see how depending on perspective things can be explained in opposite ways. So this is from the, this is the 9th chapter which we are discussing.

Yepya anya devata bhakta. Those who worship other devatas. Those who are the worshippers of other devatas.

Yajante shraddhaya mitaha. They worship with faith. Te pimameva kaunteya.

They are also worshipping. Yajantya avidhipurvakam. Avidhipurvakam means improperly.

Vidhi is scripture. Vidhipurvakam means properly according to scripture. Avidhipurvakam means not properly, improper understanding.

Yepya anya devata bhakta. Yajante shraddhaya mitaha. Te pimameva kaunteya.

Yajantya avidhipurvakam. Yajantya avidhipurvakam. So now, I was once asked a question at, you know, somebody sent me a, why do you people criticize the devatas so much? Gita says those who are worshipping Krishna, they worship me only.

And then they sent me a translation of this verse. And in that translation this last line avidhipurvakam was completely missing. They said those who worship the devatas, other devatas they are also worshipping me.

That's all. Then I asked them where do you get this from? Because I showed them that this is clearly that verse, what is that avidhipurvakam. So they pointed me to prominent Hindu website which had that.

Then I wrote to the editor of that Hindu website. I told him this is the translation clearly. So then the translator was, the editor was, he was a reasonable person.

But he said, you know, religion is very complicated. Scripture is very complicated. Different people have different translations.

So he said that, you know, we look at eight most popular translations of the Gita. And then we looked at what is the translations used by those eight prominent translations. And based on that, we decided which translation we are going to put on our website.

I know Swami Prabhupada has in his translation avidhipurvakam. He says all the other translators, they don't have that. So, therefore, we decided not to put it.

We want to, on our website, present the Bhagavad Gita as it is understood by the majority of the Hindus. I said truth, I said scripture is not a product of majority opinion. But the point is that many of the people who have translated the Gita, if you look at them, or whose Gita translations have become influential, many of them were, they might have had some spiritual inclinations, but their often agenda or their intent, agenda has a slightly negative connotation.

Let's be neutral and say that their intent, their intent was not really spiritual. Their intent was often nationalistic. It's almost like in the Indian independence struggle, several of the independence fighters, they are noble and respected, they got independence for India, that's glorious.

But many of them, it is when they were arrested by the British government, put in jail. In jail you have nothing to do, write a Gita commentary. It's an oversimplification, but largely that's what happened.

And many of them actually proudly say that we didn't read any Gita commentary, any traditional commentary on the Gita. They say that this is what the Gita means to me, this is what the Gita means to India right now as I see it. Okay, can the Gita be read like that? Fine, you read it like that, if that's what you want to do.

But then, like Prabhupada would say, is that Bhagavad Gita as it is, is that Bhagavad Gita as you are? So this is unfortunate. Now Krishna does say, take me Mahameva Kaunti, they also come to me. It's like the prince is back in the king's kingdom and that is good.

But still, is that the best thing? It's not the same thing. So many of these Gita commentators, their purpose is more on unifying Hindus rather than teaching the Gita. For them, the Gita is a tool for Hindu unification.

And that is one of the reasons also that Mayavad had a resurgence. Now after all the Vaishno commentators, starting from Ramacharya, Shankaracharya was immensely influential. But Ramacharya, Madhvacharya, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, all the Bhakti saints, through all of them what happened was, actually the influence of Advaita Vata started diminishing substantially.

But when India's independence struggle started coming up, at that time those who were seeking independence, they realized that religion is a very powerful galvanizing force in India. Now if you want to use religion to unify Indians, Indians means primarily Hindus in this case, at one level. And how do we do that? Hindus are divided into so many sects and so many kinds of worship and so many objects of worship.

So they decided from a perspective of political expediency, expediency is convenience, a perspective of political convenience that if that one Brahman is the ultimate reality and all the Devatas are subordinate to that, then the Brahman can be unifying. If you worship the various Devatas, that can be divisive. So if you consider any particular Devata to be the supreme, that will divide India.

Now, will it? We don't know. But the point is, this is not based on the spiritual teaching of the tradition. This is based on political convenience.

That's how Mayavad or Impersonalism, may be not Mayavad, Ramavad also, that received a Philip, that received a big boost at the time of independence. And even now, that is a prominent strand of India, which is there in India. So now, with respect to these two emphasis, let's try to understand from an example's perspective.

So what should we emphasize? They too come to me or what they are doing is Abhidhipurva. Let's consider both of these have their utility. This is 923 or 24? 23.

Say a parent, a father has two children. In the past, I used to know a father has two sons. But in America, why father, why sons? So why so male centered? So say a parent has two children.

So say one of them is very good at studies and gets 90% marks. Say that is the highest marks you can get in that subject. And other person just scrapes through and gets 40% marks.

And now, both of them have come to the parent. So both of them have got 65% marks. And they come to the parent.

And when they come to the parent, the parent will say to this person, Shabash, well done. And this person will say, Badbash, what have you done? Now, is 65% a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on where you are coming from, isn't it? So for those who are coming from 40%, 65% is a good thing. But for somebody who can get 90%, 65% is a bad thing.

So similarly, if somebody is coming from materialism, Bhautikvar to Devata worship, that is a good thing. But somebody is coming from Bhakti, Krishna Bhakti to Devata worship. That is a bad thing.

So, if this is the emphasis, then you can say, Tepi maa meva kaunteya. That they are also worshipping me. Tepi maa meva kaunteya.

But for somebody who can worship Krishna, Nijantya avidhi uravakam. So, Krishna is saying they are worshipping me only, but in an improper way. So what is to be emphasized depends on where we are coming from.

If somebody can worship Krishna, then there is no need for them to worship Devatas. But if somebody becomes a materialist or is a materialist, they start getting worshipped by Devatas. They can come to Krishna worship, that is the greatest.

But if they can't, then they are worshipping Devatas is better than their being just materialistic. So, this is, we can be inclusive. That's why I remember I said that the Gita is inclusive.

But just because inclusive, that does not mean it is not inconclusive. It is inclusive that Devata worship is also included within the broad teachings of the Gita. And it's also, it's not exactly totally content.

Krishna says I have set up the system. I give the faith to the worshippers of Devatas so that they can grow. So, it's inclusive.

But does that mean that worship of Krishna and worship of Devatas is the same thing? No, it does not. It is not inconclusive. There is a conclusion.

And Krishna is differentiating my worship and anya devata. And previously in the 7th chapter Krishna says, Kaamai stai stai ratha jnana prapadyantyanne devata. That those whose desires are, whose intelligence, jnana is stolen by Kama.

They will worship the Devatas. Just like the prince, why does the prince have to go to anyone other than the father? It's because the prince has something wrong. There is something wrong with the relationship.

That's why the prince is going there. It's better that the prince worships the, prince comes back to the fatherhood. Like that, it's much better if somebody worships Krishna.

But if somebody is not, then we should not go to war with those people. See, our difference between the worship of Devatas and the worship of Krishna, it is not at all like the Abrahamic difference between the worship of the one true God and the worship of the false gods. The Devatas do not have to be demonized so that for Krishna to be glorified.

What we say that actually speaking, if we, we should also respect the Devatas. Now there is over respecting which is to be avoided, which is true. But there should not also be under respecting.

We have to be careful about it. So personally, I prefer the word Devata to demigod because many people in the West, what happens is, in the Western world, the word demigod does not mean the same thing which we think it means. Prabhupada used the word demigod in the sense that there is God, there are humans and there is someone in between.

That is a demigod. But in the Western tradition, demigod is used to refer to somebody who is born half from a human being and half from a God. So technically the Pandavas would be demigods because the Pandavas had an earthly mother and a celestial father.

So that is the meaning and somehow many Hindus, they associate the word demigod with a negative connotation. And it's almost like demigod and demon. It's like they consider that word to be very problematic.

So we can use that word, Prabhupada used it, certainly we use it, but it triggers certain connotations. And Devata is a clear traditional word. It's a respectful word from our tradition.

So I prefer that word. But whatever word we use, the important thing is the concept we understand. And we see how we can best elevate others.

So if in our family, Devata worship is going on, that is a part of our tradition. Now, we don't have to be disruptive about it. Now, we may not want to worship the Devata.

That's OK. We want to worship Krishna. But if say our whole family is going to a Devata temple or there is a Devata puja happening in our home, we don't have to minimize it.

We don't have to trivialize it. We certainly don't have to demonize it. That would be a terrible thing to do.

Are those who are worshipping Devata less intelligent? Yes, less intelligent is still intelligent. Isn't it? So worshipping Devata is still much better than materialism in many ways. Now, of course, I don't want to give only one side of the story.

Sometimes people can get stuck in the worship of Devatas and they never rise to anything higher. That also happens. But still that piety is not a problem.

Most people who worship a Devata, they are very rarely exclusive Devata worshippers. That means they will worship that particular Devata but they will also be ready to worship Krishna. It's like no Hindu will say Krishna is not God.

They all accept Krishna is God. Their problem is that they say only Krishna is God. That is where their problem comes.

Now, do we need to teach that? Yes, that is the teaching of the Gita. But how do we teach that? Do we teach that in a way that educates and elevates? Or do we do that in a way that agitates and alienates? That is something which is our expertise. For example, now, in India, especially in Maharashtra, there is this worship of Ganesh.

It's spreading all over Maharashtra, India also now. It's a big worship. And in Ganesh worship, what is the standard prasad that they give? Sorry? Modak.

On Ganesh Pooja day, say if there is Ganesh Pooja at our home, at our relative's home and they make modak and say, we don't take Devata's prasad. Throughout 365 days, if we are taking Krishna prasad, on one day, if we take one handful, it's not that the sky is going to fall on our head and Krishna is going to kick us to hell. No, it is okay.

Krishna, I am doing this as a service to you. I don't want to create a disruption in society. Remember what Krishna says? Don't agitate the minds of others.

A devotee is one who is not agitated by others, one who does not agitate others. There can be a time when we talk about the worship of the Devata's and their philosophical place. But at that particular time, when the whole mood is centered in worship of the Devata's, that is not the time for us to criticize the Devata's.

So just take that prasad if it's required and just move on with life. It's one morsel of food. There is one devotee, sometimes you know devotees have this pure devotee syndrome.

We call it PDS. So what happened was this devotee, he went home and he was given the prasad, he took it and he put it in the mouth and then he went out and from the window he spit it out. And one of his relatives saw it.

And suddenly the Ganesh Pooja venue became Kurukshetra. How can you spit out prasad? The more he tried to explain, the more they demanded. And then they said just stop going to Iskcon.

And it just became unnecessarily complicated. Normally spitting out any food is not good. Anna is ultimately a blessing coming from Krishna.

But spitting out something that is sanctified and offered. Now that devotee is not a bad devotee. It's just like misdirected devotion.

So what happens is that sometimes fanaticism that comes, it is not because of too much faith. It is because of too little intelligence. Faith is a good thing, but faith has to be intelligently applied.

My expression of faith, what is it going to do right now? Is it going to elevate people? Is it going to elevate me? Because of that one incident, one action, what happened was his whole family became anti-Iskcon. And his own Krishna consciousness, I think so many obstacles came in that. So what is the big deal? So we can avoid being fanatical.

We want to avoid being divisive. So fanaticism, it is not because, oh my faith is so strong, I will never compromise. Well, there is compromise which is bad, but there is common sense.

It is good, isn't it? So the two are not the same thing. Too much faith is because of too little intelligence. Somebody say, I'll no compromise.

Yeah, don't compromise. That means we don't have to say that Krishna, that the devatas are supreme. Okay, some mantras we can chant, we can chant those mantras, but after that we can chant some Brahma Samhita mantras about that particular devata or whatever.

That we can do in our mind. Doesn't matter, but it is too little intelligence, no common sense. And Prabhupada said many times Krishna consciousness, common sense.

According to time, place, circumstance, what to speak where? See when Prabhupada was studying in Scottish Church College, at that time, his professor was a Christian professor. And he said this Hindu theory of karma, it doesn't make any sense. Why? Because somebody has done something wrong.

Who is the witness to watch that wrong? Who is the witness to give evidence? And without a witness, how can somebody be punished? Now Prabhupada knew the answer, that was, there is a Parmatma in the heart. Prabhupada felt that it is the Scottish Church College, he says, that is their college. It is, I am a student there.

I cannot disrupt over there. Now Prabhupada, did he give the truth? Yes, at the right place, he did give the truth. And enlightened so many people with the truth.

But a strategic silence is not compromise. So common sense means sometimes just have a strategic silence. So one last point I'll make now.

In the ninth chapter, basically the last part of it, I said I started by where Krishna is speaking all this to glorify the path of bhakti, to qualify, establish how by practicing bhakti one can get whatever we get by other paths. But you can get that and all and more. But before he can do that, what he is establishing is that actually every, that what happens in the world, everything is not necessarily his will.

Because if we have that notion, that even bad things are done to me by God, then it is very difficult to devote ourselves to that God. Think of that God as a God of love, where that God can arbitrarily do anything to anyone. Or that God can let people do anything and God doesn't intervene.

So Krishna is clarifying that. Broadly speaking, different people have different orientations. So in that sense, if you consider this upside down bowl and say Krishna is up here.

It's an interesting shape. I don't want to intervene. So this is Krishna.

So this is Krishna above this Krishna. We are not here with Krishna right now. But, you know, in this upside down bowl, we could be as close to Krishna as possible.

We could be as far away as possible. So this 9.13.14 Krishna talks about the Mahatmas. They are so close to Krishna that they are almost as if with Krishna.

Then the offenders, the demoniac, they are here. And in between are all other devata worshippers, devata upasak and brahmavadis, and the vishwaroopasaks, vishwaroopasikas. So they are all in between.

And of course, we can say the spectrum of humanity goes down further among the demoniac, there can be atheistic, various kinds of things. But this is a spectrum of humanity. And different people are situated in different places.

But now Krishna will say that the path of bhakti can elevate everyone from everywhere. This is the glory of bhakti. So he is talking about his position and the relationship of everyone with him in this world so that this last conclusive teaching can come.

And here Krishna talks about four glories of bhakti which can be conveyed using an acronym EASE. EASE is what? It is first of all EASY. EASY is where Krishna says patram pushpam phalam toyam yo me bhaktya prayacchati.

Then it is ALL EMBRACING. ALL EMBRACING means Krishna says that anybody can practice it. That even those who are low born, they can also practice it.

This is 9.32.33. Then he says it is SAFE. SAFE means even if medicine is safe, that means even if there are some side effects, they are very marginal. So SAFE is Krishna talks about apichet sudracharo that even those who do something wrong, they don't fall away.

They are still within my purview and the results are everlasting. That is 9.22. So in this way Krishna is telling that the glory of bhakti is that it includes and elevates everyone. It's easy.

So you don't need elaborate paraphernalia. So this is in this section, Krishna is substantiating the point that he made. Whatever fruits you can get from yajna, dana, tapa, you can get it all and you can get more by the practice of bhakti.

So how does that happen? That's what he's describing over here. It's easy. You don't need elaborate paraphernalia to do yajna.

It's all embracing. Many of these activities like yajna especially, only those who are those who are at a particular level of ritual purity, they can do it. Not everyone can do it.

And in some parts, one mistake and you are destroyed. Like Uttarasur, what happened was that one mantra chanted, little intonation wrong and opposite result. So it's safe and somebody can get elevated to heavens, stay in the heavens for a long time.

But after that, they come back. So in this way, bhakti is so potent, it's so glorious that Krishna will say that, Therefore, Arjuna, anityam asukham lokam, that you are born in this world, just practice bhakti. This world is a place of distress, is a temporary world.

The same thing which Krishna has said earlier in 8.15, to Kala and Shashvatthi, he says, Yes, this world is a terrible place, but bhakti is the cure. Just practice bhakti. And Krishna concludes with, manmana bhava mad-bhakto, that famous verse where he says that you just practice bhakti and you can come to me.

So that manmana bhava verse, we will talk about it when we take the 18th chapter, contrast 9.34 with 18.65. But I'll summarize now. Some points on this acronym IS, I'll try to talk about, especially the safe part, I'll talk about this when we get time, that aham tvam sarva-paapyam yo. What does that actually mean? We discussed it that time, Krishna willing.

So let's look at what we discussed in chapter 9 today. We started by talking about how speech and the idea of train of thought. So it can be linear.

It can be multiperspective coming to the same point. It can be, it is thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It can basically be mostly at the level of principles and then some at the level of specifics or it can be mostly at the level of specifics and some at the level of principles.

But whatever it is, the key point is that in any speech, when there is a train of thought, each link, there has to be credibility established. If the credibility is not there, then people stay stuck at that particular thought. So what we said, what is required is that thoughts should stay in people's minds, but people's minds should not stay in the thoughts.

Then it becomes a problem. So that was the context for discussing it. So Krishna is going to elaborate on the last 828 elaboration is basically chapter 9. In that case, we discussed about how there are many things that are opposite of love.

Love's opposite could be hate. Love's opposite could be apathy or ignoring someone. Love's opposite could be lust.

And here we discussed about those three things or four things that are actually the whenever there is sex, there is pleasure, there is co-creation, there is pair bonding and then there is purification to the service of raising a child. So if all these come together, it's the best. But if only the first comes, then that is lust.

So these are basically sex, its purposes. And then the last difference we discussed is love will be envy. So the idea is that if we this is especially in terms of when we hear the glories, do we feel delighted or do we feel distressed, angered, agitated? So when we talk about envy of God, that is more not in terms of he is out of our league, so we won't have envy.

That's not the point over here. Yes, he is out of the league, that's true. But what is the effect of hearing his glories? When we want to challenge or counter his glories, then what happens is Krishna himself will not speak his glories.

Just like, say, if we have an insecure sibling at home, then we won't speak about our achievements because that will only increase sibling insecurity. So Krishna speaks. So Krishna speaks to the non-envious.

Because they are not agitated, they will be delighted. And then I discussed about this was an elaborate time that everything that happens. The other three points I discussed in that, that God is the God as controller, is the supreme controller, but not necessarily the sole controller.

He is the cause of all causes, not the cause of all effects. I discussed about how this difference was. Dushasan's power came from Krishna.

But the specific use of that power, say, this Roopendra Swarupati, that didn't come from Krishna. So God's role in our actions, it can range from we are doing what he wants us to do, or that's his intention, or it is his concession, his permission. We want to do and he allows us to do it.

So the metaphor was of a sky, meaning like the sky is God's will, range of God's will. So nothing happens without God's will. But that doesn't mean that whatever is happening is God's will.

So this within that is our will, where we go and what we do, the wind and its movement. So everything that happens, what was it? Is it good? Yeah, everything that happens to say is good is not good. So it is for good or more specifically, it can be for good.

It depends on how we respond. I discussed the example of Vidura's reaction. Then we discussed about the range of people from, we discussed the difference between, there are the pure devotees, we didn't discuss so much, devotees, demoniac and then in between.

So with respect to demoniac, we discussed the difference between Brahmavadis, they are not offensive to Krishna versus they are not the same as Mayavadis. Because Mayavadis, they want to say Krishna's form is Maya. Krishna's form is not my preference.

That's the difference. And then we talked about how the devata worshippers, we can see them positively that they are better than materialists. And their arrangement of worship is done by Krishna.

Negative vision would be that they are not worshipping, not Krishna devotees. So depending on what is the context, we have to decide which to focus on. Like the child who gets 65%, where is the child coming from? So definitely the devatas are not the same as the false gods in the Abrahamic religions.

And then lastly, we discussed the glory of bhakti in terms of the E's acronym. How it is easy, it is all embracing, it is safe and its results are eternal or everlasting. Once we go to Krishna, we don't come back to this world.

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any quick questions? Okay, where is the mic? That mic can go there.

When you were explaining this Vidura section, how Vidura's attitude was correct and by that he saw Vidura's action as Krishna's intention. I didn't say it was Krishna's intention. It was Krishna's arrangement.

It was Duryodhana's own intention. He saw some arrangement of Krishna in that. It is that there is an opportunity to serve Krishna here.

It is not that Duryodhana's words were spoken because Duryodhana wanted to serve Krishna. So it's when bad people do bad things, it is not Krishna making them do bad things. They are doing the bad thing.

But even within their bad actions, there is some arrangement of Krishna. So rather than saying this is Krishna's arrangement, you can say there is some arrangement of Krishna in this. So I have to find out what that arrangement is and respond appropriately.

So when Prabhupada's outreach in India was not successful. Prabhupada said this is Krishna's arrangement. Krishna doesn't want me to do any outreach.

Let me just chant Hare Krishna and be happy in Vrindavan. There is some arrangement of Krishna in this. What is the arrangement? Actually Indians are not receptive because they are infatuated by the West.

And the first instruction that my Guru had given was speak in English. He had given the instruction, speak to the Western world. You should travel across the world and share Krishna.

That is what I am going to do. Thank you. The concept of Mayavad was present before Shankaracharya or it came after him? The concept of Mayavad present before Shankaracharya.

Well, it is a little difficult to say. Gaudapad was one of his predecessor teachers. And he has also written some teachings which seem to be like Mayavad.

But see what essentially happened Shankaracharya also had a benevolent intention. Whatever be the subsequent result of that. From the 5th century BC to 5th century AD Hinduism had a serious decline in India.

Buddhism and Jainism spread big time. In fact, that is considered the classical period. So the maximum books propagating atheism in that period were written in Sanskrit.

Buddhists and Jains, we normally think of them as pious people. Actually they are atheists in the sense that they don't accept the idea of a personal God. Although eventually they incorporated the idea of the iconography of the devatas into their particular tradition.

And after that they said okay you worship all these devatas, ultimately you go into the shunyam. Or you attain the moksha, whatever there is understand moksha. But anyway the point is that it was hugely influential.

And that had to be countered. So Shankaracharya at that time took from the Vedantic teachings, teaching which seemed similar. So in one sense if you look at Shankaracharya's teaching of Brahma, it is actually an intellectual clone of the Buddhist teaching of Shunyam.

Intellectual clone means it's exactly very similar. But it's drawing from a Vedic nomenclature. And it is bringing spiritual reality into the conception of liberation.

Spiritual reality is in the Vedas. So his purpose was also benevolent to get people who have gone out of the Vedic fold to come back to the Vedic world. But then things went on thereafter.

So what did he do for that case? From the broad body of Vedic literature he took those teachings which focused on the Brahman as the ultimate reality. And there was a Buddhist teacher in the 4th of the centuries, I forget his name now. Quite a famous Buddhist teacher.

Buddhism had this problem that if there is no self, where does our sense of selfhood come from? So they propagate that there are two levels of reality. There is our daily reality which they say is ultimately false and there is actual reality. So that was the idea.

That was the way of interpreting that Adi Shankaracharya took. And what he did was there is Vyavaharika. Now these terms are perfectly fine.

And then there is Paramarthik. Now that means there is our operational reality and there is ultimate reality. This is fair enough.

But then what he did was he divided scripture. He said he took a certain number of small texts of scriptures. These are the Mahavakya.

These give us the ultimate reality. And everything else in scripture is Laghuvakya. Now I am giving a very bare bones analysis of what has happened.

The history is complex. The analysis has many layers to it. But this is what essentially he did.

So now what happened was the Ramacharya later asked this question. The basis of dividing scripture into Mahavakya and Laghuvakya. This is not given in scripture.

And it is he who decided these are the Mahavakya. Like Aham Brahmasmi, Tattvamasti and all these are Mahavakya. Now do they contain wisdom? Of course they contain wisdom.

But can we say that this is the wisdom that overrides everything else in scripture? Okay, on what basis? If you want to say that, on what basis? Now these are actually 0.1% of scripture. More than 99% of scripture is, means what it was all the Mahavakya, he said they are about non-dual reality. That means all our perception of you are here and I am here, God is up there and I am here.

Most of scripture is like that. People are worshipping the Devatas, people are worshipping the Supreme Lord. So he, if we say that all those statements are false and only these are true.

Like say, if I give a two hour class and if after the class you say, this one statement that he made in the class, that's true, everything else is false. And okay, you can say this is the most important statement. Now that also is, unless I say this is the most important point, you could, what you could say is, I found this most relevant.

I consider this to be most important. That's fair enough. But to say that even this is the most important is itself, you have to establish that in some way based on my statements.

So this is the only true statement and others are false. That is problematic. So basically, can the teachings of impersonalism be drawn from scripture? Definitely from the Upanishads.

But can the teaching that Mayavad, specifically in the sense that Brahman is the only reality and even Bhagwan is a convenient fiction, can that be drawn from scripture? That requires a considerable twisting of scripture. Now Shankaracharya, to his credit, he was a brilliant writer. Just the beauty of his writing, just like in English also some people play words and there is an elegance and majesty to the writing or speaking.

Shankaracharya's writing is brilliant. His Sanskrit was magnificent. But just because the language and the style is magnificent does not necessarily mean that the message that he has given is necessarily the highest.

So what happened was that or the interpretation that he has given is the highest. So another point is that there are definitely places where he talks about worship of the Supreme Lord as the highest. Bhajagovindam, Bhajagovindam, Moodhamati.

Those kind of prayers are very categorically there. Now he is saying that don't get caught in intellectual analysis. Why are you focusing so much on this? But the way some of his followers interpret it is these are the times when Shankaracharya went into Bhakti ecstasy and he is demonstrating how Bhakti ecstasy can make you speak a false truth.

Or Bhakti ecstasy can make you condemn the truth as untruth. And therefore the subsequent teachers go into Bhakti ecstasy, you should not be misled by them. So essentially what happened was what Shankaracharya did with the Vedic scriptures, his followers did with his words.

Okay, this is not to criticize the Shankaracharya's followers. They are all brilliant people in their own way. And their level of study of scripture is deep.

But unfortunately the interpretation that they came out, whether it's real, whether it can actually be real. Impersonalism, the Advaitavad as a philosophy, even Mayavad as a philosophy has an elegance to it. The idea that there is oneness and the world is so divided.

There is a oneness in which we all exist in. Actually none of us exist. Because you know the Brahman is the only thing that exists.

Our oneness doesn't exist. There is a certain intellectual elegance to the philosophy. There are holes in it but there are holes in every philosophy.

There is an elegance to the philosophy. But the problem is to say that this philosophy is based on the Vedas or the Vedic body of knowledge. That is very very difficult to prove unless you reject the majority of the scripture.

Over the centuries, even from Shankaracharya's time itself and his example also, while he talked of Mayavad, it was clear to him and it became increasingly clear to subsequent generations that this kind of Mayavadi oneness is something very difficult for most people to even conceive or to speak of make that as the solitary meditation. So they said that Bhakti is a path for most people. But Bhakti is like a transitional path till you get to Mukti.

So now at different times, in different places, different deities and their worship has become prominent. Now that is a whole matter of religious sociology and psychology. If you want to take it from an empirical perspective, that why a particular deity becomes more popular.

Like Ganesha Puja, that was, is Ganesha definitely a part of our Vedic tradition? But there was an independence leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He popularized Ganesha Puja as a means of unifying Indians. So that's more from a religious historical perspective why Ganesha Puja is popular.

Now another perspective you can take it is that when certain temples become very prominent, then that particular deity becomes also very prominent. So Kashi Vishwanath has a very venerable history. And while there are Vishnu temples also in this area, but that temple has had a very extraordinary history and that temple became the object of veneration.

And that's how Kashi became a place associated with Lord Shiva. Why? What is worship of Vishwa Rupa? Well, that's described in the second canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam that those who can't really, those who are not yet ready to worship the personality of Godhead or those who just having material conception very prominently while worshipping God. And for them it is recommended that they can observe the greatness of the universe and conceive and connect that greatness of the things of this world with the greatness of God.

So basically you can think of it's a conceptualization of God by connecting him with the great things in the universe. So, for example, the rivers can be considered to be the water in the navel of the Lord. The mountains can be considered to be like the bones of the Lord.

The trees can be considered to be like the hair on the body of the Lord. So it's a conceptualization or by the conceptual tool, one can while looking at the world direct one's thoughts towards God. So that is basically Vishwa Rupa.

So Aradhana, it's not so much of a puja. It's more of a contemplation. Now, of course, the idea that God has many hands and many legs that is there in many, that is there in the Purusha Sukta and other places.

That's fair enough. But the specific Upasana is more of a meditation of God's greatness by contemplating the great things in the universe. I would need to see the reference for this.

Where does he say this? And I think, you know, when such statements are made, you also have to look at the context. And my understanding, at least from what I have read about Bhaktivinoda Thakur, which is quite a bit, he also made statements while he was responding to the worship of Durga. And sometimes in the worship of, not, not, I would say not Durga, but Durga also, the goddess has many forms that does Kali worship.

And sometimes in some forms of worship when meat is offered, so that meat can't be taken. And sometimes if meat and other things are cooked at the same time and it's all offered in the same plate, you may say I'll take it, but still it's, it's that kind of, it is offered, but it is quite tamasic. So my understanding would be, it would be in that context, but I'll have to look at the specific reference to understand this.

How is Bhakti safe? Well, even if we insult Vaishnavas, even we offend Vaishnavas, what happens by that is the taste for worshipping Krishna gets covered. Taste in chanting Krishna's name, Chaitanya Govardhan Krishna, that gets covered. But covered doesn't mean it is gone forever.

It is there, but we have lost access to it. So eventually we will gain access back. So it's safe in the sense that what we have achieved, it is not taken away from us forever by wrong way.

It is there for us, but it may not be accessible for us. If we say safety means what I have done will never ever be taken away from me, then that means we are letting it override the power of our freedom. If I say Bhakti means if I turn towards Krishna, I'll never be able to turn away from Krishna.

That means, no, it's basically, it is a path of love, which will make us like a robot. That means I will never have a choice to turn away from Krishna. That is not the meaning of safety.

Safety means that even if we make mistakes, we won't be forever condemned. Sometimes Vaishnava advocates can be very problematic to some starting Bhaktas. So how to seal these etiquettes in Bhakti? Like many times our focus gets shifted more towards etiquettes and not on Bhakti itself.

Yeah, so we have to be careful what we prioritize. See, sometimes we become Mayavadis in our practice of Bhakti. What I mean by Mayavadis is that everything is one.

Every rule is equally important. No, different rules are of different importance. And we have to understand which rule is how important.

I was talking with a very intelligent American young man. He is a village man. He studied religious studies.

He came to Hinduism and through academic studies he came to explore Krishna Consciousness. Very thoughtful person and he became interested in Krishna Consciousness, came to a temple. And then he came to a temple and he was sitting and attending a class.

He was the only American in our temples in America. Mostly we are having Indians now coming. Americans come but not so often.

But in this class he was the only American. He was sitting on the floor which is also not very common. You go to American churches.

Churches also have pews where people sit comfortably on the pews. On chairs basically, chair like surfaces. He was sitting on the floor and hearing a class.

And after that he asked the question, Prabhu. And the person next to him slapped him on his thigh. Says he is not a Prabhu.

He is a Maharaj. You are committing offence. This is a person who has come for the first time to the temple.

And he is sitting and hearing a class. And he wants to ask a question also. So what difference does it make whether he refers to Prabhu or Maharaj? So there is, so it has to be very, we shouldn't be eager to correct others.

One of the characteristics of Divine nature, Krishna says, Apaishunam. Apaishunam is aversion to fault fighting. That means sometimes we have to find faults.

But we should not be eager to find faults. So in the Radha Gopinath temple it happened that, you know, nowadays all over India in our temples, lot of young people are coming. Boys and girls also come together at times.

And even if it's boy or girl comes, many people want to take selfies with the deities. They want to take selfies in the temple wherever they can and include the deities. So now turning the back towards the deities is not very good.

It's offensive. Specifically, going away will turn our back. But while deliberately turning the back and taking a photo, so the devotees asked, this was Radha Maharaj, should we tell them, no, don't do this.

So Maharaj said, yeah, turning the back to the deities is not good. But he says, once we start, let's make it a rule that they should not do it. And people start telling this.

We will not be able to control who will tell this how. And many people will tell it in a way that hurts and angry and alienates people. So he said, Krishna is Bhagavad Gita that we should not impose.

And I'm not giving this as absolute principle in all temples. But I'm just giving this point that, OK, the one point is don't turn your back to the deities. That's important.

The other point is that people who come to the temple should not go away with a bad taste. And now what is more important when somebody is coming to the temple? Is it making sure that Krishna is not offended? Or is it that people get impression which makes them want to come again? You can say both are important. You can't say that one is less important.

But relatively speaking, if we are in a movement for outreach, then making sure that we don't alienate people unnecessarily is important. And this is a sad truth that enforcing rules, it becomes like a righteous excuse. Righteous means I am right.

Righteous excuse for our controlling mentality. We all have Ishwar Bhav within us. We all want to control.

And whenever there's a rule to be implemented, forcing others to implement that rule, that just becomes our excuse for letting our controlling mentality. We may say I am doing this out of service attitude. But the way we do it is that it's like even with the best microscope, nobody will find the service attitude in the way we do it.

It might be there so deep somewhere. It's not seen in our actions. It's not seen in our word.

It's not seen in our tone. It is just not seen by the person. So we have to be careful.

So in my understanding, etiquettes, it shouldn't be that especially when people are new, it shouldn't be every single devotee telling every other devotee what is etiquette. Let the particular guide of the devotee tell that person. And if at other times some devotee is not doing something properly, there's no need to make it a big issue.

So we'll continue tomorrow. Any questions? No. So we'll continue tonight.

Tonight we will be discussing the 10th chapter. It goes straight forward. And then in the last chapter, 18th will be discussed tomorrow morning.

That will be our conclusion of the Gita. Thank you so much. For more information, please visit www.osho.com.