The Bhagvad Gita: A Selection Book Summary
Note: This summary is made up of my notes, thoughts and highlights of important passages while reading the book. I keep updating the summary when I revisit it, and occasionally may edit it to reduce summary length. Don’t be surprised if it has changed between visits. The author’s words are in normal font, while my interpretations are in italics.
INTRODUCTION
The Basic Understanding
THE basic perennial principle behind all religions (before they were corrupted by interpretations and formal rituals) was the same: the existence of a Reality, by whatever name called – Reality, Totality, Consciousness, God or whatever – which never did not exist from the beginning of the human race.
This Reality, which the first human being must have experienced, is the awareness of BEING – I AM – before any thought could have occured.
This reality – I AM – got clouded through subsequent thinking based on the feeling of a personal identity.
The presence or absence of the sense of personal doership and achievement would thus seem to be the dividing line between the happening of the experience of Reality or its not happening.
What is the one single basis of the perennial principle? It is this: all there is, is Consciousness – impersonal Consciousness in the awareness “I am” – other than which nothing exists.
Impersonal Consciousness is immanent in every single object in the universe.
- Consciousness thus exists in all objects, both sentient and insentient.
- Consciousness merely exists in the insentient objects.
- Consciousness functions through the sentient objects.
It is Consciousness which is the functioning principle in all human beings. You might quite easily substitute “God” for “Consciousness”.
If Consciousness (or God) is all that exists and functions through human beings, how can there ever arise the question of “personal” achievement for any human being?
Is it God’s Will, or is it your will, that must prevail? It is this basic principle on which must rest all spiritual quest: Consciousness is all there is – other than Consciousness, nothing is.
The total acceptance of the perennial principle – the total acceptance of What Is at any present moment – brings about a tremendous sense of total freedom.
If I totally accept that it is Consciousness which functions through each and every physical organism, I cannot get rid of the actual feeling of being a separate individual with my own life to live.
If it is Consciousness which functions through my body, how do I live my life? How do I make decisions which I must make every day? The answer is, in a way, simple. You act as if you are playing a role in the drama of life and living.
You make decisions as and when you have to make them, as if you have the volition to make such decisions – with the deepest conviction that Consciousness has already made those decisions along with their consequences.
The man of understanding does not shirk making decisions.
He thus makes his decision diligently, weighing the various alternatives, but knowing that it is Consciousness (or God) who is the actual functioning element, he does not have a feeling either of pride (if the action is successful) or feeling of failure or guilt (if the action turns out to be unsuccessful).
In other words, he lives in the present moment; he does not live for that which is always out of reach, he does not live in servitude, thirsting for survival in the future, because he is convinced the future is not in his hands.
In the absence of a personal sense of doership the man of understanding does not engage in a self conscious and deliberate campaign to “do his duty” with the intention of acquiring happiness.
The whole concept of happiness and unhappiness is based on the world of objects and is thus in effect quite illusory and transitory.
This would also be true for more refined concepts like “justice and injustice”, “good and evil” or “right or wrong”.
As Lao Tzu has put it, “When the world recognizes good as good, it has already become evil.”
The more one becomes entangled in the means to be used to attain the good and virtuous, the more remote, complex and difficult the search becomes – and the end is forgotten.
The understanding that Consciousness (or God) is in charge of functioning of the universe brings with it the simple good and simple virtue with which one is endowed by the very fact of being conscious – I AM.
“I am” is reality. “I am so-and-so” is false, which brings with it the delusion of a sense of personal doership.
With this “Trust in God”, grows quietly the humility and simplicity of ordinary life of faith, which is a matter of seeing the good as it exists – the What Is – rather than as something to be achieved through one’s own effort.
There are events and deeds but no individual doer thereof, as Buddha has put it.
If there is no individual doer – and all actions are part of the functioning of Totality (or God’s actions) – then my actions are not my own.
The actions of someone else are not his or her either. And therefore how can I consider anyone my enemy?
With this basic understanding arises, naturally and spontaneously, humility, love and compassion. These are not virtues to be deliberately acquired – they cannot be acquired by personal effort. There are gift from God that comes as a result of this simple, basic understanding.
The man of understanding is not really the man who has “by a lifetime of study and practice accumulated a great fund of virtue and merit”, but the man in whom nature acts without the impediment of personal effort and vanity.
A contemplative life of meditation and interior awareness would make the seeker as much obsessed with his self-improvement as would a life of active effort and achievement.
The true tranquility can only arise when there is the deepest conviction that there cannot be any self-will – that it is only God’s will that must prevail all the time everywhere – and therefore the only thing to “do” is accept What Is, without wanting to change it and without wanting to become what one is not.
The action of the man of understanding is not inaction but non-action from the personal point of view.
The understanding itself becomes this non-action which transcends the distinction between action and inaction, the distinction between activity and contemplation or meditation.
It is the understanding itself that brings about the union with the impersonal Consciousness or Totality or God.
The proof of the arrival of understanding is an essential humility … one might say ‘ontological’ or ‘cosmic’ humility of the man who fully realizes his own nothingness and becomes totally forgetful of himself, ‘like a dry tree stump… like dead ashes’.
This humility is so full of life and zest that it responds actively to the joys and sorrows of all living beings that are in the vicinity. The basic humility is not different from the basic understanding that always translates itself smoothly and spontaneously into action that is non-action.
The continuous search and effort for happiness, whether based on abstract concepts or specific objects, result in frustration.
The basic teaching, therefore, suggests that true happiness – peace – cannot be found until you stop looking for it. The happiness and peace sought after so avidly can arrive only when one is content with What-is, only by non-seeking and non-action (or natural, spontaneous action).
Non-action or natural spontaneous action – is by no means inertia or quietism or fatalism. It is not mere passivity.
Non-action being both effortless and spontaneous, is in perfect accordance with our nature and with our place in the universal scheme of things. It is therefore free from force and violence, and, for that very reason is extraordinarily effective.
One of the fundamental elements of the perennial principle or the basic teaching is the total acceptance of the complementarity of opposites. Life is not a static phenomenon; living means being in a continous state of flux and change.
This does not mean that the man of understanding remains indifferent to the polaric opposites and treats right and wrong, proper and improper as identical. On the contrary, he realizes that they are basically different, but he refuses to cling to one limited and conditioned aspect of any matter.
He realizes that opposites are different but not irreconcilable and therefore accepts the complementarity of opposites. He retains his perspective and witnesses the alternating way of opposites as a part of life and living: happiness when pursued to an extreme becomes misery; effort when pursued to an extreme becomes frustration.
The perennial principle or the basic teaching is based on the dynamism of nature: the right action transcends self-conscious personal motives. “When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten”.
The knowledge of the basic teaching cannot be imparted if there is absence of receptivity to it. The basic teaching cannot be communicated. It will communicate itself in its own mysterious way at the right moment.
The basic teaching does not include any abstract theory of “universal love”. This is because LOVE is not something apart from the Understanding. The oft preached “universal love” is based on the premise that the individual must find his own happiness in caring for the common good of all. This makes an inordinate demand on the human nature that when pursued to an extreme it will only lead to a very deep frustration. Love and compassion are something natural to man when he is not conditioned by self-motive. When pursued through a constructed system that ignores the fundamental realities, such pursuit must inevitably turn love into hate.
The final Understanding is that Love is all there is.
Chapter II / 13
THE in-dwelling Consciousness, referred to in the verse as dehinah, is the impersonal Consciousness which is the same life source in every living creature.
It is the identified consciousness, the ego.
Chapter II / 14
Feelings of heat and cold, pleasure and pain, are the result of the contact of the senses with their respective objects. They are ephemeral, they come and they go. All you should do is to accept them as such without getting involved in them.
Chapter II / 22
As a man casts off worn-out garments and dons new ones, so the in-dwelling Consciousness casts off worn-out body-mind organisms and enters into new ones.
The in-dwelling Consciousness, the impersonal Consciousness which is the life source of all living creatures. It is this impersonal Consciousness which casts off worn-out body-mind equipments and enters into new ones as part of general evolution.
Chapter II / 28
Beings are not manifest to human senses before birth. During the period between birth and death they are manifest. They again return to the unmanifest at death. In this natural process what is there to grieve over?
Chapter II / 30
The in-dwelling Consciousness within all living body-mind organisms is forever invulnerable, indestructible. Therefore there is really no need to mourn for any one.
Prolonged mourning or grieving over a period is a matter of involvement of the ego through identification with the body.
While an emotional reaction is perfectly natural, an involvement is a matter of ignorance.
Chapter II / 40
In this Karma Yoga, an attempt is not wasted even if it is an abortive one. Nor is there any adverse effect. Even a little knowledge and practice of this Yoga protects one from the great fear (of death and rebirth).
Chapter II / 46
The Vedas are useful only until the awakening.
To the awakened sage – the Brahmana – the Vedas are as useful as a reservoir when there is a flood everywhere.
Chapter II / 47
All you can do is to work for the sake of the work. You have no right to the fruits of the work (the consequences of your actions are not in your control). But do not let this fact make you lean towards inaction.
What he considers as his actions are in fact only reactions of the individual organism to an outside impulse: a thought which occurs, an event that he sees or perhaps what he happens to hear.
The fatalistic argument translates itself into the question: if I am not to be motivated by the fruits of my action, and, indeed, if I have no free will over my actions, why should I work at all?
You will not be able to be inactive for any length of time because the energy within the organism will compel you to act; to act according to the natural characteristics of the organism. In other words, whether to act not is itself not in your control.
Chapter II / 69
The knowledge of the Atman, which is the dark night to the ignorant, the recollected mind is fully awake and aware. The ignorant are awake in the daylight of their sense-life, which is darkness to the sage.
So long as the individual remains in his world of desires, the Real – the Atman – remains a total mystery to him. It is only when he realizes that the mind is nothing but a series of desires which never ends, that the possibility occurs of his awakening from the night of identification with the senses into the world of the jnani.
Ramana Maharshi said, “There are only two things: sleep and creation. There is nothing if you go to sleep; you wake up and there is everything. If you learn to ‘sleep’ when awake, you can be just a witness. This is the real truth.’’
Chapter III / 4
Abstaining from action is not the way to gain freedom from activity. Nor can one achieve perfection by merely ceasing to act.
Freedom from activity means not inactivity but the absence of sense of personal doership.
Non-action is action without a sense of personal doership whereas both deliberate action and deliberate inaction include the sense of personal doership.
It is the absence of the sense of personal doership which leads to perfection
From the stillness of the sages comes their non-action which is indeed effective action because there is no ego involved in such non-action.
Chapter III / 5
Actually, not even for a moment can one remain free of activity (including mental activity, both conscious and subconscious). The energy within the body-mind organism will automatically produce actions according to the natural characteristics of the organism.
Chapter III / 6
A man who renounces certain physical actions but cannot control his mind from dwelling on the objects of his sensual desire, is deceiving himself. Such a man can only be called a hypocrite.
It is a matter of fact that it is not very diffi cult to restrain oneself from doing certain actions. But it is far more difficult to restrain the mind from thinking of the very activities which one has forcibly deprived oneself.
Chapter III / 17, 18
A man is no longer obliged to perform any kind of action, once he has learned to find delight and satisfaction and peace in the Atman or Self.
For such a man there is nothing to gain in this world by any kind of action; nor does he have anything to lose by refraining from action. He is independent of anybody and anything.
To one who has transcended his ego, the routine work during the day is no longer required as self-discipline but is a natural fulfi lment of his Self-realization. Such a man of Wisdom does not need to work in order to get his material requirements.
Chapter III / 27, 28
It is the energy within the body-mind organism that produces actions according to the natural characteristics of the organism. Man, deluded by his egoism, thinks “I am the doer.”
What an ordinary person considers “his” actions, are really reactions produced by the brain in response to the senses when they meet their respective objects.
It is this natural reaction to the event which the ordinary man mistakenly considers his action.
Ramakrishna Paramahaunsa gave his disciples this simple advice: “Be absolutely convinced that you are merely a machine which is operated upon by God, and then you may do whatever you want.”
Chapter III / 33, 34
Even for a wise man, the energy within the body-mind organism produces actions according to his own natural characteristics. All living creatures follow their natural tendencies. What is the use of any external restraint?
Whilst the ordinary man will get involved in the natural reaction, the wise man will not: both the event and the reaction will be merely witnessed without any personal involvement.
Chapter / III 35
It is better to do one’s own duty, however imperfectly, than to assume the duties of another, however successfully. It is better to die doing one’s own duty: the duty of someone else will bring you into great spiritual danger.
The word ‘dharma’ in Sanskrit has several meanings and the correct meaning has to be understood in context.
While most of nature does its duty without any problem, a man’s mind plays tricks on him and wants him to decide which dharma he will follow.
Chapter IV / 10
Freed from lust, fear and anger, filled with Myself, finding refuge in Me, burnt and purified in the blaze of Wisdom, many have entered into My Being.
Whatever the path followed, it is necessary to lose the sense of doership, which means not getting involved in attachment, fear and anger. Ultimately, what counts is the faith and trust in God or the Impersonal Reality.
Chapter IV / 18
He who sees the inaction that is in action, and the action that is in non-action, is wise among men. Even when engaged in action, he remains in the equanimity of the Self.
Those who are caught in the machinery of money and power take no joy except in activity and change.
Prisoners in the world of phenomenality, what else can they do but submit to the demands of matter!
It is from the sage’s emptiness that stillness arises, and from stillness, action that is non-action.
Chapter IV / 19
The sages say truly he is wise who acts without lust or scheming for the fruit of the acts – the acts do not affect him for they are melted in the wisdom of My knowledge.
This verse again stresses the importance of the sage’s action that is so natural that it seems like inaction: in reality it is action that is non-action.
Chapter IV / 24
Brahman is the ritual, Brahman is the offering, Brahman is he who makes the offering to the fire that is Brahman. If in every action, a man recognizes Brahman, he will verily be absorbed into Brahman.
The point is that the wise one thinks of the act of consuming food as a jnana-yajna: the food, the eater of it, the digesting of it, are all modifications of Brahman just as the waves are part of the ocean.
Chapter V / 5
The wise ones who see knowledge and action as one have the true understanding: either path leads to the same end. There the followers of Karma-yoga meet the seekers after knowledge in equal freedom.
Lord Krishna categorically declares that neither the Jnana-yoga nor the Karma-yoga (neither the path of knowledge nor the path of Action) is the sole way to emancipation. One can reach the goal by either path.
If the seeking itself has not been a matter of our choice, how can the path be a matter of our choice?
Chapter V / 8, 9
The sage centred in Brahman has the constant, underlying thought “I am doing nothing”. He is totally firm in the thought that the senses react to the sense objects – no matter what he sees, hears, touches, smells, eats. It matters not whether he is moving, sleeping, breathing, speaking, excreting, or grasping something with his hand, or opening or closing his eyes: he knows that he is doing nothing at all.
The essential feature of Self-awareness or Enlightenment or Awakening is the total annihilation of the sense of doership in whatever activity that is being produced through the body-mind organism.
Chapter V / 15
What-is is always perfect.
If God’s Will is totally accepted, one’s personal will cannot exist, and therefore, there cannot be any question of any sin or merit.
If it is God’s Will that I should commit a murder, why should I be punished for it?
The answer is astonishingly simple: there is no “you” to be punished or rewarded; it was God’s Will, and the destiny of that human organism, that the murder would be committed, and it is also God’s Will, and the destiny of that organism, to be punished for the act.
Chapter VI / 6
Man’s will and intention is the only friend of the Atman. It is the same will and intention which acts as the enemy. For when a man is self-controlled, his will acts as the friend of the Atman.
To the extent that an individual feels himself to be in control over his destiny, that it is his free will which will dictate his future in this world, his will and intention – his mind – will be his enemy.
The same mind will be a friend to him who truly believes and accepts that the only will that can prevail at any time is God’s Will, that he himself is merely an instrument operated upon by God.
Chapter VI / 30, 31
The Yogi who sees me in all things and all things within me, will never lose sight of Me, nor do I ever become lost to him.
While the universe appears as diversity, essentially all is unicity, and it is the Yogi – the wise man – who sees this truth behind the apparent universe, and thus becomes one with the unicity.
Noumenon and phenomena, potential energy and activised energy, thought and action are essentially one in unicity and are dual only in phenomenality.
Energy activates its potentiality into the actuality of phenomenal life, but essentially they are not two.
Unmanifest Noumenon, in a burst of love energy, becomes the phenomenal manifestation – life and living as we know it – but essentially there is only Unicity.
Chapter VII / 3
It is perhaps only one in thousands of beings who strives for freedom. And amongst those who strive for freedom – and think they have succeeded – hardly one knows the total Truth of My Being.
Whatever anyone seeks must be seen as the seeking happening through an individual human organism as its God-given destiny.
Ramana Maharshi when he tells the seeker: “Your head is already in the tiger’s mouth, there is no escape.” Why be impatient?
Chapter VII / 4, 5
My prakriti is of eightfold composition: earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and the ego. Bear this in mind that behind this – and quite distinct from it – is That perennial principle which is the source of life and the sustenance of the universe – Consciousness in all beings.
Consciousness is all there really is. In the material manifestation, the human being is just one object; basically there is no difference in the make-up of the human being and the inanimate object. The question, therefore, of the individuality of the human being is really a myth.
The human being is merely a dreamed character in this dreamed manifestation – just another object – with senses which enable him to perceive things, and cognize and interpret and discriminate between what he perceives.
Chapter VII / 12, 13
You must realize that anything that belongs to the states of sattva, rajas and tamas, must proceed from me: they are contained in me, but I am not in them.
It is by the moods and mental states – the expression of these three gunas – that the entire world is deluded. Thus the world fails to recognize Me as I really Am: Supreme and deathless, I stand apart from them all.
The individual human body-mind mechanism is really nothing but an individual pattern of dynamic energy.
Chapter VII / 19
With his discrimination ripening through many a long life, the man of wisdom makes me his refuge – knows that Vasudeva (Brahman) is all there is. How rare is such a great one!
It means bondage when the mind desires something or grieves at something; it means liberation when the mind does not desire or grieve, does not accept or reject, does not feel happy or unhappy.”
Ashtavakra also says: “It means bondage when the mind is attached to any sense experience; it is liberation when the mind is detached from all sense experience.”
The mind is the “me” who is attached to sense experiences.
In the process of manifestation and its functioning – for this God’s game or lila to take place – for the love and hate relationships to arise, Consciousness (or God) identifies itself with each individual organism, and creates the “me” who desires or grieves for something, who attaches himself to the same experiences.
All there is, is Consciousness, that all that has happened, and is happening, and will happen is because of God’s Will and not because of the efforts of the fictitious “me”.
Chapter VIII / 5
If at the time of death, when a man drops his body, he departs with his consciousness absorbed in Me alone, he will be united with My being – there is no doubt about this.
Chapter VIII / 20, 21
Behind the manifest and the unmanifest (which concerns phenomenality) there is another Noumenal awareness which is eternal and changeless – this is not dissolved in the general cosmic dissolution. This imperishable Unmanifest Awareness is said to be the highest state of Being. Those who reach It do not return.
SAINT Jnaneshwar in his Anubhavamrita (Experience of Immortality) refers to this point: the arising of consciousness – I Am – on the original state of the plenum or pure potentiality when awareness was not aware of itself.
It is only when the sense of presence – I Am – arises on the original primal state of unicity that consciousness concurrently comes into movement and brings forth upon itself the totality of manifestation.
The movement of consciousness also simultaneously brings about the concepts of knowledge, vidya (I am – the sense of impersonal presence) and ignorance, avidya (when the impersonal consciousness or presence becomes identifi ed with each sentient being as a separate entity).
The I-subject – gets dichotomized in the process of manifestation as subject and object, each object considering itself as the pseudo-subject observer vis-a-vis all other observed objects.
The individual entitification – is the conceptual “bondage” of the individual as a separate entity.
“Liberation” consists in the realization that our true nature is the impersonal consciousness (I am That; That thou art) and not the individual body-mind organism with which consciousness had identifi ed itself.
When such a realization – the transformation or paravritti – occurs, the pseudo-subject ceases to be an object and becomes void by the superimposition of the opposites (subject/object) over each other;
The I-subject – cannot offer itself for comprehension because it would then be an object. The eye can see everything else but it cannot see itself!
Chapter IX / 2, 4
This is the knowledge above all other, the sovereign secret, the ultimate purifier. Its virtue is great, its practice relatively easy, and it is made plain only to the eye of the mystic. Thus is man brought to the Truth eternal.
LORD Krishna, in this verse, calls Advaita as the sovereign knowledge, the sovereign secret by which man is brought to the ultimate, eternal Truth.
Those whose nature inclines them towards seeking material gain or power will not even be interested in seeking the Self.
As Saint Jnaneshwar has put it, this teaching will be available only to him who is able to see his face without the aid of the mirror!
All creatures are part of the reflection or manifest expression of the unmanifest: the unmanifest therefore is immanent in all creatures but, at the same time, the unmanifest transcends all creation.
The substance can exist without the shadow but the shadow cannot exist without the substance: the substance, therefore, is immanent in the shadow, and at the same time, transcends the shadow.
Chapter X / 3
The one who knows Me as being birthless, without beginning, Lord of the universe, he alone among mortals is stainless of sin, unvexed by delusion.
You will be judging not the body-mind organism through which God’s action has been created, but God himself if you judge anything that happens in the world according to your standards.
Ramakrishna Paramahaunsa said, “Be absolutely certain totally accept – that you are a machine which is operated upon by God, and then do whatever you.”
Chapter X / 10, 11
To them, always aware of their Lord, and ever devoted, the strength and depth of their devotion brings forth from Me the Yoga of discrimination which illumines and guides them towards Me.
When the devotion of the devotees reaches great intensity – and only the devotion and love to God remains, without even the individuality of the devotee – then He instils in them the necessary receptivity – the Buddhi-yoga, the Yoga of discrimination – which leads them to the direct experience of the Imperishable Self, the ultimate purifier when the sense of personal doership is totally annihilated.
Chapter X / 20
I am the Atman that dwells in the heart of every mortal creature: I am the beginning, I am the life-span, and I am the end of all beings.
Chapter XI / 32, 33
I am come as Time, the ultimate waster of the people, ready for the hour that ripens to their doom. The warriors, arrayed in hostile armies facing each other, shall not live, whether you strike or stay your hand.
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