The Holy Geeta Commentary by Swami Chinmayananda

Hailed as the second Swami Vivekananda, Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda (1916-1993) has left great legacy behind for mankind. On realizing the true purpose of life, he worked tirelessly and withtremendous energy for more than four decades to spread the message of Vedanta. A great orator, writer, leader, patriot and spiritual giant, he is one of the finest representatives of Indian spritual heritage.

the sprawling worldwide organization f chinmaya Mission carries on torch lit by this great saint.

"When Param Pujya Gurudev Chinmayananda attained Mabasamadhi, Sri Krishna must have welcomed him into his abode saying, "Come, come, my beloved one. You outdid me, for I taught Geeta to one Arjuna, and you awakened many Arjunas round the globe", remarked a devotee fondly. Such was the profound influence of Gurudev's Geeta discourses on the audience.

His talks have been compiled in this commentary - The Holy Geeta. This text of Gurudev is so popular that it has made its entry into corporate houses and five-star hotels.

This edition owes its prim look to a very assiduous team - Joseph, Raju Nair, Pradeep Kharwal for executing the tedious but unavoidable task of DTP; Mr KS Rindani, Mrs. Savita Chakravarty for relentless proof reading; Ramona Singh for the appealing cover design and book mark; Thomson Press for its commitment to fine details and technical execution.

:' Revamped from cover to cover, we now present the latest edition, for your joy, solace and guidance.

If the Upanishads are the textbooks of philosophical principles discussing man, world and God, the Geeta is a handbook of instructions as to how every human being can come to live the subtle philosophical principles of Vedanta in the actual work-a-day world.

Shrimad Bhagawad Geeta, the Divine Song of the Lord, occurs in the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata, and comprises eighteen chapters, from the 25th to the 42nd. This great handbook of practical living marked a positive revolution in Hinduism and inaugurated a Hindu renaissance for the ages that followed the Puranic Era.

In the Song of the Lord, the Geeta, the Poet-Seer Vyasa has brought the Vedic truths from the sequestered Himalayan caves into the active fields of political life and into the confusing tensions of an imminent fratricidal war. Under the stress 6f some psychological maladjustments, Arjuna got shattered in his mental equipoise and lost his capacity to act with true discrimination. Lord Krishna takes in hand that neurotic mind of Arjuna for a Hindu treatment with Vedic truths.

Religion is philosophy in action. From time to time an ancient philosophy needs intelligent reinterpretation in the context of new times, and men of wisdom, prophets, and seers guide the common man on how to apply effectively the ancient laws in his present life.

If we try to digest properly the implications of the Geeta’s advice in the light of Vedic lore, it becomes amply clear how actions performed without egocentric desires purge the mind of its deep-seated impressions and make it increasingly subtle in its purification and preparation for greater flights into the Infinite Beyond. To explain this, we will just try to review little the conception of the mind and its functions in our day: to-day life.

Mind is man. As the mind, so is the individual. If the mind is disturbed, the individual is disturbed. If the mind is good the individual is good. This mind, for purposes of our study and understanding, may be considered as constituted of two distinct sides - one facing the world of stimuli that read it from the objects of the world, and the other facing the 'within’ which reacts to the stimuli received. The outer mind facing the object is called the objective mind; in Sanskrit we call it the Manas, and the inner mind is called the subjective mind; it Sanskrit, the Buddhi.

That individual is whole and healthy in whom the objective and subjective aspects of the mind work in unison, and in moments of doubt, the OBJECTIVE MIND readily conmes under the disciplining influence of the SUBJECTIVE MIND. But unfortunately, except for a rare few, the majority of us have minds that are split. This split between the SUBJECTIVE and the OBJECTIVE aspects of our mind is mainly created by the layer of egoistic desires in the individual. The greater the distance between these two aspects of the mind, the greater the inner confusion in the individual, and the greater the egoism and low desires which the individual comes to exhibit in life Through the five 'gateways of knowledge', the organs-of perception, all of us experience the world of objects around at all moments of our waking state. The innumerable stimuli that react with our sense-organs (receptors), create impulses which reach the OBJECTIVE MIND and these impulses filter deep down to the subjective stratum through the intervening layers of individual egocentric desires. These impulses, thus reaching the SUBJECTIVE MIND of a person, react with the sting impressions of his own past actions that are carefully stored away in the subjective layer and express themselves in the world outside through the five organs of action (effectors). The Diagram 'N gives figuratively the design of each activity that man performs in the world outside when he consciously comes to react with a given set of stimuli.

At each moment, man meets with different patterns of these stimuli, and thus constantly gathers new impressions in the 'subjective mind'. Every set of impulses reaching it not only adds to the existing layers of impressions already in it but also gets coloured by the quality of these vasanas hoarded within. When they are translated into action, the actions cat!) a flavour of the existing vasanas in the 'subjective mind'.

All of us live constantly meeting a variety of experiences and at each incident, we perceive, react with the perceived and come to act in the outer field. In this process, we unwittingly come to hoard in ourselves more and more dirt of new impressions. The 'subjective mind' gets increasingly granulated by overlapping signatures of our past moments. These granulations make the 'subjective mind' dull and opaque, and form, as it were, an impregnable wall between ourselves and the spiritual Divinity that shines eternally as pure Consciousness in all of us deep within the core of out personality.

The theory of Vedanta repeats that reduction of the vasanas is the means of volatilising the mind. When I look into a mirror and do not see my face in it, it is not because the mirror is not reflecting the object in front of it, but because the reflected image is not perceptible to my vision due to, perhaps, the thick layer of dust on the mirror. With a duster, when I clean the mirror, the act of cleaning does not CREATE the reflection of the face, but it only unveils the reflection which was already there. Similarly, man is not aware today of his divine spiritual nature because the 'subjective mind' reflecting it is thickly coated with dull vasanas gathered by it during its egocentric, Passionate existence in the world.