Bhagavad Gita Overview- Chapter 9

So, we are moving forward in our journey through the Bhagavad Gita. Today, we come to Chapter 9, which is one of the most devotional chapters in the Gita. It begins with Krishna spontaneously speaking, just like at the end of Chapter 6, when Krishna says the topmost yogi is a devotee. Now, when someone makes a statement like that—making a significant claim—such a statement needs to be backed up by something substantial.

Historically, both in India and the West, there was a field of study called rhetoric. Rhetoric is basically the art of speaking most effectively. This means that whenever we speak, our speech needs to be at least somewhat linear. A speech can be spontaneous, but it has to be structured in a way that makes sense logically. This means one point of thought should follow another. That’s why the term “train of thought” is often used. How is it a train? Well, there may be multiple bogies or coaches. In America, they don’t use the word “bogies” because “bogie” is considered slang for something fake or bogus, so they use “coaches.” But the coaches must be linked together. So, a “train of thought” means that one unit of thought is expressed and followed by another, and then another.

Of course, a talk doesn’t always have to be structured like a single train of thought. A talk can have different structures. Normally, it could follow a single “train,” but another way of structuring it might be by having a central point, and arriving at that point from different perspectives. For example, in a talk on the existence of God, we might present four different arguments to support the existence of God. These are four different ways to arrive at the same point.

However, when I am speaking about a point, there’s no value in going off-topic and then trying to come back. When we are making one point, that point must follow a logical progression of thought. Generally speaking, trains of thought can vary. For example, there could be four different trains of thought within one session, but all of them would be moving in particular directions. Alternatively, one train of thought might go in one direction, another in a different direction, and then a third might bring cohesion between the two. This is technically referred to as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This approach is often used to reconcile opposite ideas and bring about cohesion.

Now, there are various ways to approach persuasion in speech. One could argue from different perspectives, but here, it’s more of a linear, single-point persuasion. This doesn’t mean there’s only one point; it means there is one direction of thought. A talk can be persuasive or argumentative, but in this case, it’s more of a conciliatory persuasion—reconciling two differing ideas.

Speech often involves thoughts going in different directions. While a speech can follow a train of thought like this, to truly be engaging, it often needs to alternate between universals and specifics. By “universals,” I mean concepts or principles, and by “specifics,” I mean examples—whether through analogies, anecdotes, or narratives. Anecdotes are typically real stories, but they could also be fictional or scriptural narratives. The key point is that there are two elements to consider.

For instance, if someone is making a point about being sensitive in speech, that’s a universal principle. This principle needs to be illustrated with examples. Sometimes, examples may be self-evident. Depending on the session, the focus can shift. For example, a lecture centered on pastimes may primarily present specifics, with some universals interspersed. This would be more like a “leela”-centered class.

For example, we may take the story of Manthara and Kaikeyi, and how Manthara misled Kaikeyi. In this case, we could talk about the effect of bad association. So, the specific story goes on for a longer period, and then the principle comes in occasionally. On the other hand, there could be talks centered around principles, with stories or specifics coming in occasionally. These are philosophy-centered talks, but it’s not just philosophy; it could be any intellectual content.

In these talks, the majority of the content consists of concepts, and occasionally, there are examples. These types of talks are generally more intellectually demanding and are usually for a more intellectual audience. Such talks are generally aimed at the “classes,” meaning those who have the inclination and capacity for conceptual understanding.

The idea is that stories are nice—everyone enjoys them. But sometimes, one might hear a story and wonder, “What did I really learn from it? Was it just entertainment?” Even movies, for instance, often convey values. These values might be directly shown through the characters’ discussions or might come through the choices that the characters make, sometimes deliberating over these choices. Similarly, we may deliberate on their choices. When it comes to story-centered talks, it depends on the individual how deeply they engage with the story. Some people may simply watch the story and enjoy it, while others might reflect on how it relates to their own lives.

For example, if we don’t like a character in a movie, we might think about why. Maybe it’s because of their personality traits, or perhaps it’s because they are making bad choices. The depth to which an individual engages with a story depends on the person. On the other hand, when concepts are the primary focus, the speaker has more control over how many stories are included.

Now, if we consider two texts—the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam—where would each fall in this spectrum? The Bhagavatam is more “pastime-centered,” while the Gita is “philosophy-centered.” The Gita itself has no direct stories, although it comes in the middle of a narrative. It doesn’t focus on stories specifically, but it does contain many metaphors. However, we are discussing this to appreciate the way a talk is structured.

When structuring a talk, it’s important to ensure that there is a “train of thought.” For a train to move, there must be rails beneath it, and each rail must be linked to the next. In the same way, when a speaker makes a statement, there needs to be a logical connection. The psychology of the speaker and the audience plays a key role here.

Let’s focus on the audience’s reaction, specifically their sense of acceptability—how credible, believable, and logical the audience finds the speaker’s statements. If each statement makes sense, the acceptability of the talk increases. If the speaker continues to make acceptable statements, the audience becomes more open to considering statements that might have seemed unacceptable at first. This process builds credibility. However, if the speaker makes a statement that seems completely unreasonable, the acceptability will drop, and the speaker may need to provide further explanation, elaboration, or justification.

For example, if we are discussing Indian spirituality, many people may expect the speaker to glorify Indian culture and criticize Western culture. But if I say something like “Indians are very good at financial ethics,” the statement might raise questions. To clarify, I might provide an example, such as e-commerce transactions, where people trust each other to send money after receiving goods, even without prepayment. This example helps to make the statement more acceptable.

Similarly, if I were to say, “Indians are very cleanliness-conscious,” but the listener has seen dirty streets in India, they might be skeptical. However, if I explain that people in India are very cleanliness-conscious in their own homes, but public cleanliness is not emphasized in the same way, this clarification makes the statement more acceptable.

Every statement is evaluated based on what the audience has heard or experienced. If a subsequent statement doesn’t seem to align with the previous ones, the audience may get stuck on it and have difficulty moving forward with the talk. This is why it’s important for the speaker to make statements that are credible and understandable. While not every statement will resonate with the audience, some must stay with them.

Some statements should be memorable, creating “sticky statements”—those that stick with the audience and continue to resonate after the talk. However, it is crucial that these sticky statements do not cause the audience to become stuck in their thinking, preventing them from moving forward with the rest of the talk. If a statement is too difficult to accept or understand, it may cause the audience to lose focus and hinder their ability to engage with the rest of the content.

For example, we can consider the story of Manthara and Kaikeyi, and how Manthara misled Kaikeyi. In this case, we can discuss the effects of bad association. The specific story might go on for a longer period, with the principle being introduced occasionally. On the other hand, there could be talks focused on principles, with stories or examples coming in intermittently. These are philosophy-centered talks, though not exclusively philosophy—they can also involve any intellectual content.

In these talks, the majority of the content consists of concepts, with examples occasionally provided. Such talks are generally more intellectually demanding and are often aimed at a more intellectually inclined audience. These talks are typically for the “classes,” referring to those with the interest and capacity for conceptual understanding.

The point is that stories are enjoyable—everyone likes them. However, sometimes we hear a story and wonder, “What did I really learn from it? Was it just entertainment?” Even movies, for example, often convey values. These values may be explicitly shown through the characters’ discussions or conveyed through the choices that the characters make, sometimes after reflecting on them. Similarly, we may reflect on their choices. When it comes to story-centered talks, the depth of engagement depends on the individual. Some people may simply watch and enjoy the story, while others may think about how it relates to their own lives.

For example, if we dislike a character in a movie, we might think about why. It could be because of their personality traits, or perhaps because they are making bad choices. The extent to which an individual engages with a story varies. On the other hand, when concepts are the main focus, the speaker has more control over how many stories are included.

Now, if we look at two texts—the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavatam—where would each fall on this spectrum? The Bhagavatam is more “pastime-centered,” while the Gita is more “philosophy-centered.” The Gita itself does not focus on specific stories, although it takes place within a narrative. While it doesn’t emphasize stories, it contains numerous metaphors. We’re discussing this distinction to better understand the structure of a talk.

When structuring a talk, it’s essential to maintain a “train of thought.” For a train to move, it must have rails, and each rail needs to be linked to the next. Similarly, when a speaker makes a statement, there must be a logical progression. The psychology of both the speaker and the audience plays a crucial role here.

Let’s focus on the audience’s reaction, particularly their sense of acceptability—how credible, believable, and logical the audience finds the speaker’s statements. If each statement makes sense, the acceptability of the talk increases. If the speaker continues to make logical and acceptable statements, the audience becomes more open to considering statements that might have seemed questionable at first. This process builds credibility. However, if the speaker makes a statement that seems completely unreasonable, the acceptability will decrease, and the speaker may need to provide additional explanation, elaboration, or justification.

For example, if we’re discussing Indian spirituality, many people might expect the speaker to glorify Indian culture and criticize Western culture. But if I say, “Indians are very good at financial ethics,” this statement could raise doubts. To clarify, I might provide an example, such as e-commerce transactions, where people trust each other to send money after receiving goods, even without prepayment. This example helps make the statement more acceptable.

Similarly, if I were to say, “Indians are very cleanliness-conscious,” but the listener has observed dirty streets in India, they might be skeptical. However, if I explain that people in India are very cleanliness-conscious in their homes, though public cleanliness is less emphasized, this clarification makes the statement more acceptable.

Every statement is evaluated based on what the audience has heard or experienced. If a subsequent statement doesn’t seem to align with the previous ones, the audience might get stuck on it and struggle to move forward with the talk. This is why it’s crucial for the speaker to make statements that are both credible and easy to understand. While not every statement will resonate with the audience, some must leave a lasting impact.

Certain statements should be memorable, creating “sticky statements”—those that resonate with the audience even after the talk has ended. However, it is vital that these sticky statements do not cause the audience to become stuck in their thinking, preventing them from progressing with the rest of the talk. If a statement is too difficult to accept or understand, it may cause the audience to lose focus and hinder their ability to engage with the content that follows.

We discussed the issue of how some individuals may become single mothers and then may not want to take responsibility for raising their children. If relationships are solely about pleasure with no intent for procreation, it becomes unnatural and disruptive. Birth control, contraception, and abortion are unnatural interventions in the process of procreation. Naturally, these do not occur in nature, and we must intervene to prevent or interrupt the natural process. From a spiritual perspective, however, there is purification through service. When parents come together to raise a child in service to the Lord, the union becomes spiritually uplifting.

Normally, love in a relationship would involve at least some level of pair bonding—two individuals coming together with the intent of building a life together. A spiritually centered relationship, however, transcends pair bonding. It is not only about building a home together, but building a home for Krishna, where Krishna’s children can grow and become Krishna’s devotees. The purpose of the relationship shifts from self-centered pleasure to spiritual fulfillment.

When relationships are solely focused on pleasure, without the purpose of procreation, pair bonding, or service, they become nothing more than raw lust. Such lust is opposed to true love, as the foundation of love is rooted in a deeper purpose, beyond mere physical attraction.

We were discussing a different point, which is: What is the opposite of love? One opposite of love that is often overlooked is envy. Why is envy the opposite of love? It comes down to how we perceive the glory of others. When there is love, the success or glory of others brings us happiness. When there is envy, however, the success of others brings us unhappiness or even anger.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna repeatedly tells Arjuna that He is speaking to him because Arjuna is non-envious. What Krishna means is that Arjuna is not disturbed or agitated by hearing Krishna’s glories. He is happy to hear them. For example, if we win an award or accomplish something great, we may want to share the news with our family. However, if we have a sibling who is jealous of us, our announcement might trigger their jealousy instead of bringing joy.

The same dynamic can happen in relationships. If the husband is successful, the wife might feel insecure, especially if she earns more than he does. In such cases, the husband’s inability to celebrate his wife’s success might lead to jealousy and tension. This is a clear example of how love and envy are opposites. When there is love, we celebrate the success of others, but when there is envy, we feel agitation or resentment instead.

Krishna starts the Gita by saying, “I am speaking to you because you are non-envious.” We might think, “Envy towards God? Why would anyone be envious of God? He’s out of our league.” And that’s true in the conventional sense—envy typically arises between equals. For example, if we’re both doing devotional service, and someone else does it better, we might feel envious. But we don’t feel envious of someone who is much more senior to us. Similarly, we don’t feel envy towards God, who is completely beyond our understanding. However, envy towards God may manifest in a different form.

When we hear about God’s glories, instead of being filled with awe and reverence, we may feel agitated or skeptical. This reaction indicates a form of envy. We might not want to outright challenge God’s glories, but we may try to dismiss them. We could try to justify that what we’re hearing isn’t true. For instance, if someone gives a good class and everyone praises them, we might say, “They gave a good class, but have you seen how much prasad they eat?” We cannot deny their skill, so we try to undermine their reputation in other ways.

This kind of behavior—challenging, doubting, or falsifying God’s glories—can be a subtle form of envy. Arjuna shows how to challenge God’s glories in a healthy way when he asks, “How can you give this knowledge to the Sun God?” This is a genuine inquiry, a challenge for understanding, not an attempt to discredit or dismiss God. It’s a submissive challenge, not an antagonistic one.

If we approach God’s glories with the mindset of proving them wrong or trying to bring God down to our level, Krishna says He will withhold His glories from us because that attitude will only agitate us and distance us from Him. Krishna says to Arjuna, “I will speak my glories to you because you are non-envious.”

Now, Krishna speaks of a significant topic in this context: Does God control everything? Many of us would agree that God is the supreme controller (Parameshwara). But the real question is, does God control everything? We can accept that God is the supreme controller, but that does not necessarily mean He is the sole controller of everything that happens.

This distinction between being the supreme controller and the sole controller is crucial in understanding the dynamics of free will and divine control.

If we say that God is the sole controller, then there would be no room for free will. However, there is another issue to consider. If we acknowledge that God is the supreme controller, does this mean He controls our actions and choices? If God controls everything, why are we held responsible for our bad actions? For example, if a crime occurs and the police arrest an innocent person, placing a gun in their hand and forcing them to pull the trigger, it would be considered a barbaric abuse of power. If we say we have no free will, we’re essentially suggesting that God makes us do bad things and then punishes us for those actions. This would make God appear evil, which is a significant problem.

Thus, the denial of free will would imply that God is responsible for all our actions, including the bad ones, which would make Him unjust. This leads to the conclusion that if there is no free will, then God is evil. But this is clearly not the case.

While God is the cause of all causes, this does not mean that He is the cause of every single effect in the world. He is the cause of all causes, but not necessarily the cause of all effects. Let’s try to understand the difference between the cause of all causes and the cause of all effects. For example, Draupadi was disrobed by Dushasan. Krishna intervened in the situation by making Draupadi’s robe limitless, preventing it from being exhausted. But could we say that Krishna was responsible for Dushasan’s actions? No, it was Dushasan who was performing that horrendous act. Krishna provided Dushasan with the strength to do so, but Dushasan used that strength based on his own free will.

The cause of all causes is Krishna, but the specific effects—such as Dushasan’s actions—come from his own misuse of free will. The scriptures illustrate this by comparing it to the rain: rain is the cause of all vegetation, but which specific vegetation grows where depends on the seeds planted in the ground. Similarly, while rain enables vegetation to grow, it does not determine which plants grow in a given area. In this sense, rain is the cause of all causes, but not the cause of all effects.

This differentiation helps explain an apparent contradiction in the Bhagavad Gita. In Chapter 9, Verse 4, Krishna says, “Matsthani Sarvabhutani” (all living beings are situated in Me). But just two lines later, in Chapter 9, Verse 5, Krishna seems to say the opposite. If someone contradicts themselves, they might say, “Sorry, it was a slip of the tongue,” but Krishna doesn’t feel the need to apologize or correct Himself. Instead, He highlights the apparent contradiction, saying, “Behold this!” This is a demonstration of Yogam Aishwaram, the opulence and mystical connection Krishna has with the world.

In the Gita, the term yoga has many meanings, but one essential meaning is “connection.” It often refers to the soul’s connection with God through different paths like karma yoga, jnana yoga, and bhakti yoga. However, in this context, Krishna is referring to His connection with the world. He sustains the world, and He says, “The world is in Me, yet the world is not in Me.”

Krishna then offers an example to clarify this seeming contradiction. He compares it to the relationship between the wind and the sky. Just as the wind moves freely in various directions but is always situated in the sky, similarly, all living beings are situated in Krishna. The wind is free to move, but its connection with the sky remains constant, just as all living beings are in Krishna, but they are also independent in their actions.

Let’s try to understand this metaphor, but before that, let’s recite the words together once more. Krishna explains that if we consider the sky to be like an upside-down bowl, within that space there is a gust of wind. The wind can move in various directions—upward, downward, leftward, rightward, and laterally—so it is free to move in different ways. However, the wind cannot move beyond the bounds of the sky, which represents the domain of God’s control. While the wind has freedom within the sky, it cannot exceed the limits of the sky’s space.

Now, of course, we know that the concept of the sky as an upside-down bowl is just a metaphor. Krishna uses it to draw from our conventional understanding, and we know space itself is infinite. But this metaphor helps illustrate that the sky represents the domain of God’s control, while the wind represents our free will. We all have a certain “sphere of influence” (kshetra), which is determined by our past karma. Within this sphere, we can act freely.

For example, Dushasan had a certain position, and within that position, he had the freedom to act, but that power was temporary. His influence lasted only for a limited time, and during that time, he could do whatever he wanted within his scope. Similarly, a police officer may have unchecked power within their jurisdiction, but once their superior steps in, the situation changes. A dictator may control a country for a time, but their power is not absolute and will eventually be limited, either by external forces or by their own death.

This “kshetra” refers to both space and time, defining the limitations of one’s influence. Within this sphere, what we choose to do is up to us. So, when bad people commit bad actions, it is not God who forces them to do so. Rather, they misuse their power, and Krishna allows them to act according to their free will. Krishna observes their actions, and when their karma runs out, they will face the consequences.

In life, the extent of our influence can change over time. For instance, someone born into a royal family may have limited influence as a child, but as they grow into a prince or king, their influence increases. Over time, however, their influence may decrease as they age or fall ill, and eventually, when they die, their influence ceases. So, the kshetra is dynamic and changes with time. Additionally, different people within the same space may have varying degrees of influence. In a school, for example, a student may have some influence as a class monitor, but the teacher has more, and the principal has the most influence.

Krishna says, “All living beings are situated in Me, but they are not situated in Me.” This means that while all living beings are within God’s ultimate control, their specific actions are not dictated by God. This idea can also be viewed another way: no action can happen without God’s involvement, yet the specific intent behind an action is not always God’s will. In other words, while God grants permission for everything that occurs, He may not necessarily intend for all of it to happen.

For example, Krishna’s intention was to offer a peace plan to Duryodhana. However, Duryodhana rejected it. Krishna did not force Duryodhana to reject the peace proposal; that was Duryodhana’s choice. Krishna allows individuals to act according to their desires, but every action carries consequences, whether good or bad.

This concept is further explored in the Gita, especially in the context of the Pandavas. Despite the many wrongs done to them—such as the disrobing of Draupadi and the loss of their kingdom—Krishna does not condone the bad actions. Instead, Krishna observes and permits them to unfold, but ultimately, He ensures that justice is served.

There is a common saying, “Everything that happens is good.” However, this is not the teaching of the Gita, nor is it philosophically correct. While it may sound comforting, it is not accurate. In fact, when something truly bad happens to someone, it is wrong to tell them that it is good. For example, when Draupadi was disrobed and humiliated, Krishna did not tell her that what happened was good. Instead, He helped her when no one else could.

The Gita teaches that while everything can have a purpose or be for the greater good, it doesn’t mean that every event is inherently good. Some events are genuinely bad, and we must recognize that. But how we respond to those events—how we choose to see them and learn from them—can lead to positive outcomes. In this way, even negative experiences can contribute to our spiritual growth if we choose to learn and grow from them.

If we say that everything that happens is good, it implies that there is no room for bad people to do bad things, which would essentially deny the existence of free will. It also goes against human experience. In some religious traditions, there is a belief that everything that happens is good. However, it’s important to note that within each religion, there are many different denominations and interpretations. For example, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims each have various sects with differing beliefs.

In the UK, there was a court case against the very idea of God. The petitioner argued that the concept of a “good God” should be considered immoral and illegal, due to the severity of human suffering. He stated that considering the magnitude of suffering in the world, the very idea of a benevolent God insults human intelligence and dignity.

Now, when we claim that everything that happens is God’s will, we need to understand that “will” can have different meanings. It can mean God’s intention or simply His permission. Not everything that happens is what God intends to happen, but it is what He allows to happen. For example, when Duryodhana insulted Vidura just before the war began, it was a result of Duryodhana’s misuse of his freedom. Vidura tried to reason with Duryodhana, but when Duryodhana rejected his advice, Vidura left, choosing to go on a pilgrimage. Vidura’s choice to leave was a positive response to a negative situation.

The point is that while Duryodhana’s actions were wrong, Vidura used his free will to turn a bad situation into an opportunity for spiritual growth. This shows how, even in the face of evil actions, we have the power to choose how we respond. In this way, good can emerge from bad, depending on our reaction.

Krishna explains that there are different kinds of people who approach Him in different ways. In the Gita, Krishna categorizes humanity into a spectrum, based on how they act and how they approach Him. Some actions align with Krishna’s will, while others are simply allowed by Him. Krishna will discuss this in more detail, outlining various types of people, including the demoniac, impersonalists, and pure devotees.

Regarding impersonalism, there are two main categories: Brahmavadis and Mayavadis. Brahmavadis believe in the impersonal aspect of the divine but do not deny the existence of a personal God. They are drawn to the formless aspect of God, which is considered an impersonal manifestation of the divine. On the other hand, Mayavadis go further, claiming that the personal form of God is an illusion, or “maya,” and that the ultimate reality is the formless, impersonal Brahman.

Krishna does not condemn all who seek oneness with the divine. In fact, Brahmavadis, who are focused on merging with the impersonal aspect of God, are not seen as offensive. However, Mayavadis, who deny the reality of God’s personal form and call it an illusion, are considered demoniac in Krishna’s view. They engage in a philosophy that is not only harmful but also contradictory, as they meditate on deities only to eventually destroy them, claiming that this is the path to enlightenment.

Not all Mayavadis are harmful, though. Many of them are genuinely seeking spiritual progress, and they may follow a less extreme path. Still, Krishna strongly condemns the philosophy that denies His personal form, as it is seen as a form of spiritual degradation.

Krishna further elaborates on the spectrum of devotees. In verses 13 and 14, He speaks of those who are pure devotees, while in verse 15, He discusses three categories of people who worship Him in different ways. Some seek oneness with God, while others engage in devotion to various deities. Krishna will elaborate on these categories in the upcoming verses, distinguishing between those who worship Him in His universal form and those who worship His personal form.

In summary, Krishna acknowledges that human actions fall within a range from those in harmony with His will to those who misuse their free will. He explains that while everything that happens is within God’s control, not everything is according to His intention. Some actions are permitted, while others are allowed to unfold based on the choices of individuals. Krishna’s message is clear: how we respond to the situations life presents is what truly matters, and it is in our hands to turn negative circumstances into opportunities for growth and spiritual realization.

Krishna presents a spectrum of humanity, showing that different living beings have distinct characteristics. He doesn’t condemn any of them but rather acknowledges the diversity of approaches to the divine. Some people seek oneness with the ultimate reality, while others worship the one absolute truth in different forms. There are also those who worship the universe itself.

Many scientists, if not aggressively atheistic, could be considered nature worshipers because they often regard the laws of nature as supreme. This worldview can be compared to the Shakta system, where Shaktism emphasizes the worship of divine energy, often personified as a goddess. While scientists do not engage in specific rituals like pujas, the underlying idea is that nature itself is sacred. In this sense, some scientists may fall into a category similar to what Krishna describes as “Vishvato Mukham,” where they view the universe or nature itself as divine.

Einstein’s concept of God falls somewhere between nature worship and deism. Pantheism, which holds that everything in nature is divine, aligns with this idea. Deism, on the other hand, posits that God is the creator of the universe but does not intervene in its workings. Einstein’s views reflected elements of both pantheism and deism, making him a complex figure in the discussion of the divine. While he made statements about believing in God, he also made conflicting statements, which leads to a nuanced interpretation of his beliefs. His concept of God evolved throughout his life, influenced by his experiences, including the trauma of witnessing the Holocaust and the devastating impact of the atomic bomb.

For some, the idea of scientists believing in God might seem strange, especially when their beliefs don’t align with the devotion of a religious person. As such, we should understand that people’s conceptions of God can change over time based on their personal experiences and evolving views. This is important when interpreting the statements of figures like Einstein.

Moving forward, let’s discuss three important concepts briefly: Dvaitavada, polytheism, and the classification of gods.

Polytheism refers to the worship of many gods. Historically, when European colonialists, primarily Christians from monotheistic traditions, came to India, they observed the multitude of gods in Hinduism and immediately labeled it as polytheism. They found it perplexing to see so many temples and deities, as their own faiths were monotheistic, believing in only one God. One Western scholar even described Hinduism as “a museum of religions,” considering the numerous gods and idols a confusing aspect of the tradition.

However, when some thinkers in the West took a deeper look, they realized that in each temple, the deity being worshipped was considered the supreme deity by the devotees. While there are many gods in Hinduism, each is worshipped as the ultimate, making it difficult to classify the tradition strictly as polytheism or monotheism. The Vedic tradition doesn’t neatly fit into these Western categories.

In fact, the Vedic perspective can be described as “polymorphic bi-monotheism.” This means that there are many forms of the divine, but each form is ultimately seen as the one supreme reality. This view transcends the binary of monotheism and polytheism, reflecting a more nuanced understanding of divinity where all gods are expressions of the same ultimate truth.

In our tradition, the concept of God goes beyond a single entity; it involves a divine couple. For example, Radha-Krishna, Sita-Ram, Lakshmi-Narayan—both deities in these couples are considered supreme and divine, even though there may be a dynamic of Shakti (divine energy) and Shaktimaan (the source of energy) in their relationship. This is why our tradition can be called bi-monotheistic—not just monotheism, but the worship of two supreme beings.

Additionally, the concept of polymorphism means that the divine can take many forms. For instance, Lord Vishnu manifests in different forms such as Rama, Krishna, Narayana, Narasimha, and Vamana. These forms, while distinct, are all considered aspects of the same divine reality. In the case of the divine couple, like Sita-Ram or Radha-Krishna, it is often said in that order (Sita-Ram), but both forms are worshipped as equally divine. Thus, the idea of bi-monotheism reflects this duality and multiplicity of the divine.

Now, let’s consider the concept of multi-level understanding of the divine. In Western traditions, particularly in the context of polytheism, there is often the belief that there is one true God, and all other gods are false. This concept stems from the Abrahamic religions, where the notion of a jealous God is central. According to the Old Testament, God demands exclusive worship, and any form of idol worship or false gods is to be destroyed. Kings in biblical narratives are often depicted destroying temples of other gods as part of purifying the land.

This idea was carried forward in Christian and Islamic teachings, where idolatry, or the worship of false gods, is seen as a grave sin. In Islam, for instance, idol worship (called shirk) is considered the unforgivable sin, while other sins, such as murder or rape, are forgivable. The destruction of idols was not just a historical action but also tied to the belief that such idols are false manifestations, often linked to satanic forces.

However, in Hinduism, the relationship between God (Bhagawan) and the devatas (gods or deities) is very different. Here, God is seen as the supreme ruler (like the Prime Minister), and the devatas are like ministers assisting in the divine administration. The worship of other gods is not viewed as false, but rather as part of a broader divine system. The focus is not on destroying other gods but on recognizing that all the deities, though many, serve the supreme God.

In the Vedic tradition, the devatas have two roles: one is an administrative role, assisting the supreme God, and the other is in cosmic governance. Krishna arranges for the devatas to be worshipped because, for many souls, direct worship of Krishna may not be possible due to various reasons. Worship of the devatas is seen as a step towards coming closer to Krishna. This is a key difference between the Vedic tradition and the Abrahamic idea of one true God versus false gods.

For example, in the story of the prodigal son in the Old Testament, the father waits for the son to return, and when he does, the father welcomes him with open arms. In contrast, in the Vedic tradition, God does not merely wait; He actively works to bring the soul back. Krishna, for instance, sends a representative (the devata) to guide the soul back to the divine.

Imagine the soul (the prince) has left the kingdom of the father (Krishna’s realm). Instead of waiting idly, the father sends a minister (the devata) to invite the prince back, not directly speaking of the father’s position but offering the soul the opportunity to come closer to the divine. Once the prince (the soul) begins to recognize the authority of the minister (the devata), he is eventually led back to the father’s kingdom (Krishna’s presence). This is how devata worship works in our tradition: it’s a pathway to eventually worshiping Krishna.

While the best path is direct worship of Krishna (called bhakti), for those who are not yet ready, worshiping the devatas is an intermediate step. The devatas serve as guides, helping the soul progress on its spiritual journey.

In the worship of the devatas, it is important to understand that Krishna is not just a passive observer. He is deeply involved in the process. It is Krishna who gives power to the devatas to fulfill the desires of the worshippers. It is Krishna who gives shraddha (faith) to the individual to worship the devatas. This emphasizes Krishna’s role in facilitating devotion to the deities.

When Krishna tells us not to be envious, it is not just a directive for us to avoid envy but also an expression of Krishna’s own nature. Krishna, as the supreme being, is beyond envy. For example, if I am the boss of a company and someone else joins the company, working with the same title, I may feel slighted. However, Krishna is not like that. He is not concerned with his own glorification. His primary concern is the elevation of the soul. He is happy that the soul is engaged in devotion, even if it’s through other forms of worship, because Krishna’s primary concern is not his own status but the welfare of the soul.

Now, in the Bhagavad Gita, particularly in the seventh chapter, Krishna expresses this idea further. Let’s look at two verses that illustrate this point:

1. Verse 7.21: Krishna says, “Yo-yo yām yām tanum bhaktah shraddhayaarchitum icchati, tasya tasyācalām shraddhām tām eva vidadhāmy aham.”
   “Whichever form of the deity a devotee desires to worship with faith, I give them unshakable faith.”
   This verse shows Krishna’s kindness—He gives the faith necessary for the worship of the devatas. Even when people worship the devatas, it is Krishna who grants the faith required for that worship.
2. Verse 9.23: Krishna says, “Yepyanyadevatābhaktā yajante shraddhayānvitāh, te pimāmē vakontēya yajantyavidhipūrvakam.”
   “Those who worship other devatas with faith, they are actually worshiping me, though they do so improperly, without following the proper scriptural understanding.”
   This verse highlights that even those who worship other gods, though they may not follow the prescribed methods, are still, in essence, worshiping Krishna. However, their worship is considered improper because they don’t follow the correct process.

In a discussion with someone who questioned why some people criticize the worship of the devatas, I was pointed to a translation of this verse that omitted the phrase “avidhi purvakam” (improperly). The translation simply said, “Those who worship the devatas are also worshiping me.” When I questioned this, the editor of a popular Hindu website explained that they used translations from several prominent commentators, many of whom omitted this phrase. He argued that they wanted to present the Bhagavad Gita as it was understood by the majority of Hindus.

I responded by pointing out that truth in scripture is not determined by majority opinion. Scripture must be understood based on the traditional interpretations, and removing such important details can lead to misunderstanding the true message. Many of these translators, while noble, were not always deeply engaged with the spiritual tradition but were often influenced by political or nationalistic agendas. During India’s independence movement, some prominent figures tried to interpret the Bhagavad Gita in a way that unified Hindus under a single ideological banner, sometimes distorting its teachings for political convenience.

This is a departure from the true spiritual teachings of the Gita. Krishna does acknowledge that those who worship other devatas are still, in a way, worshiping Him. It’s like the soul returning to the father’s kingdom, which is good, but it’s not the best way. Krishna’s ultimate goal is for the soul to come directly to Him through proper devotion, not through intermediaries. While worship of the devatas can be a valid step toward this, it is still not the ideal path.

Now, let’s consider the utility of emphasizing these two points. On the one hand, Krishna acknowledges that those who worship the devatas are still ultimately worshiping Him, but on the other hand, He emphasizes that such worship is improper and not the best path. This dual perspective reflects the broader spiritual teaching: while there are various paths to the divine, the best path is the one that leads directly to Krishna, through the practice of bhakti.

To illustrate this with an example: Imagine a parent with two children. One child follows the parent’s instructions closely, while the other child, although still a part of the family, does not fully follow the instructions but still returns to the parent. The parent will still welcome both children, but the parent’s greatest desire is for the child to come back and follow the path correctly, because that is the best way for the child’s growth and well-being.

In the same way, Krishna welcomes those who worship the devatas, but He wants us to understand that the ultimate goal is to worship Him directly, with proper faith and understanding, following the prescribed path.

Let’s take an example to illustrate the point: Suppose one person is very good at studies and scores 90%, while another person barely passes with 40%. When both come to their parent, they will each be evaluated differently. The parent will praise the one who scored 90%, saying, “Well done!” and will likely scold the one who scored 40%, asking, “What have you done?” But now, what about the person who scored 65%? Is 65% a good or bad thing? It depends on where you’re coming from. For the one who scored 40%, 65% is an improvement, but for the one who could have scored 90%, it’s disappointing. Similarly, if someone is coming from materialism and begins worshipping the devatas (gods), it’s a positive step. However, if someone already practices bhakti to Krishna and turns to devata worship, it’s a step backwards.

In this context, when Krishna says those who worship other devatas are also worshiping Him, it’s about perspective. If a person is already inclined towards Krishna bhakti, they don’t need to turn to devatas. But for someone starting from materialism, worshipping the devatas can be a step towards coming closer to Krishna. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than being fully materialistic.

So, Krishna’s words can be interpreted in different ways depending on where someone is coming from. If someone has the capacity to worship Krishna directly, then turning to devata worship is not ideal. But if they are just beginning their spiritual journey, worshipping devatas is better than staying in materialism. Krishna’s teachings are inclusive; he recognizes that worshipping devatas is part of the broader path, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same as worshipping Him. There is a clear distinction: worship of Krishna is superior to worship of the devatas.

The Gita emphasizes that Krishna is the ultimate goal. In the seventh chapter, Krishna mentions that those whose intelligence is clouded by material desires will end up worshipping devatas. This is similar to a prince who, because of a flawed relationship with the father, might end up seeking someone else’s guidance, even though the father is the rightful authority. It’s not that the prince can’t come back to the father, but there’s a misunderstanding that needs to be corrected.

In the case of devata worship, it is not the same as the Abrahamic view of worshiping false gods. The devatas are not to be demonized for Krishna to be glorified. We can respect the devatas, but we should be careful not to over-respect them, which can lead to an unhealthy attachment. We should also avoid under-respecting them. The key is to understand the concept correctly and elevate others.

When it comes to terms like “demigod,” I prefer using “devata” instead. In the Western context, “demigod” is often associated with a figure who is part god, part human, like the Pandavas, which carries a different connotation. The word “devata” is more aligned with our tradition and conveys respect. It avoids the negative associations that some people might have with the word “demigod.”

In practical terms, if we come from a family or tradition where devata worship is common, we don’t need to disrupt it. If our family is performing a devata puja, we don’t need to trivialize or demonize it. For example, if the family is offering modak as prasad (sacred food offering) during Ganesh puja, we can take it with respect, understanding that we are doing this as a service to Krishna. There’s no need to make a big issue out of it. Krishna says in the Gita that we shouldn’t agitate the minds of others. If the mood in the family is centered around worshipping the devatas, we can join in without feeling the need to criticize.

This approach is important to avoid unnecessary conflict. Sometimes, devotees may become overly strict about their practices, which can lead to misunderstandings. For instance, I once knew a devotee who, during a family Ganesh puja, was given prasad but spit it out immediately after. This caused a major argument in the family, and they became hostile toward his spiritual practices. It’s essential to recognize that faith must be applied intelligently. Faith is good, but it needs to be applied with common sense. Faith without intelligence can lead to fanaticism, which causes more harm than good.

In conclusion, fanaticism is not the result of strong faith but often the result of insufficient understanding. Faith should always be accompanied by wisdom. Our goal is to elevate ourselves and others without creating division or unnecessary conflicts. The key is to act with intelligence, respect others’ practices, and not let differences become a source of agitation.

Somebody says, “I’ll not compromise.” “Yeah, don’t compromise.” That means we don’t have to say that Krishna is the supreme or that the devatas are superior. We can chant certain mantras, but after that, we can chant Brahma Samhita mantras about that particular devata or whatever we feel we can do in our minds. Does it matter? But it is too little, lacking common sense.

Prabhupada said many times that Krishna consciousness is common sense. According to time, place, and circumstance, we need to know what to speak, where, and when. When Prabhupada was studying at Scottish Church College, his professor was a Christian, and he said, “This Hindu theory of karma doesn’t make any sense.” Why? Because, he argued, if someone has done something wrong, who is the witness to observe that wrong? Without a witness, how can someone be punished?

Prabhupada knew the answer—it is the Paramatma in the heart. But Prabhupada felt that since it was Scottish Church College, he couldn’t disrupt the classroom setting. Did Prabhupada give the truth? Yes, at the right time and in the right place. He enlightened many people with the truth. But strategic silence is not compromise. Common sense sometimes requires a strategic silence.

One last point I’ll make now in Chapter 9: Essentially, Krishna is speaking all this to glorify the path of Bhakti, to establish how practicing Bhakti can give you everything that other paths offer, and even more. But before he can explain that, he must establish that not everything that happens in the world is necessarily His will. If we think that even bad things happen because of God, it becomes difficult to devote ourselves to such a God. We would think of that God as one who can arbitrarily do anything to anyone, or that God is indifferent, letting people do whatever they want without intervening.

Krishna clarifies that different people have different orientations. He uses the metaphor of an upside-down bowl, with Krishna above it. We are not with Krishna right now, but in this bowl, we could be as close to Krishna as possible or as far away as possible.

In 9.13-14, Krishna talks about the Mahatmas who are so close to Him that they are almost as if with Him, while the offenders, the demoniacs, are far below. In between are the devata worshippers, Brahmavadhis, and other types. Of course, the spectrum of humanity extends further, with atheistic or demoniac people at the bottom. This is a spectrum of humanity, and different people are situated at different places, but Krishna says the path of Bhakti can elevate everyone from wherever they are. This is the glory of Bhakti.

He describes Bhakti using the acronym EASE:

• E for EASY: Krishna says, “Patram, Pushpam, Phalam, Toyam” – this path is simple.
• A for ALL-EMBRACING: Even those who are low-born can practice Bhakti.
• S for SAFE: Even if someone makes mistakes, they are still within Krishna’s purview.
• E for EVERLASTING: The results of Bhakti are eternal.

In this way, Krishna is telling us that the glory of Bhakti is that it elevates and includes everyone. It is easy—you don’t need elaborate rituals. It is all-embracing, safe, and its results are everlasting.

So Krishna concludes that Bhakti is the ultimate path: “Manmana Bhava, Manbhakto…” You just practice Bhakti, and you can come to Me. This concludes Chapter 9.

Thank you very much.

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.