The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita- Explained by Paramhansa Yogananda

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W E ARRIVED IN INDIA FOR A THREE-WEEK VISIT the day Swami Kriyananda began writing this book. He had been struggling for several weeks with the problem of how to approach it.

"My first thought," he told us, "was to write a slim volume, as in fact I called it in the first introduction I wrote. I had long been wanting to tackle the whole Gita, but that project, though it held paramount importance for me, also frightened me, both because of its magnitude and because of its supreme importance. The prospect that your coming," he said to us, "might possibly disrupt my line of thinking was what 'put me over the edge,' in the sense that it brought me to a resolution of my dilemma! I felt I must begin work, or else lose whatever clarity I'd arrived at for the project already."

Actually, it was only a week or more after our arrival that he came to realize that, instead of writing the "brief overview" he'd first intended, he had actually launched (or been launched!) on writing the whole Gita.

Throughout our visit, Swamiji, while playing the loving host-chatting with us for hours, going out with us to shops and to dinner-spent all his free time working on this manuscript. In answer to our concern that he must be finding our presence a distraction from this work, he replied, "On the contrary, it is helping me! I find the whole project so awe-inspiring that I felt almost overwhelmed by it. Your presence helps me to approach it simply, one day at a time. Getting feedback from you has helped also, even if it doesn't clarify ideas I have already fairly clearly in my mind, for at least it keeps my feet on the ground, mentally, while I wrestle with concepts so subtle that I must find ways to make them relevant to everyone." After our departure, others came to visit Swamiji. He kept up the same schedule, and assured them all that their presence, far from distracting him, helped to "ground" him by relating what he was writing to actual needs and realities.

Unbelievably, he finished this work-comprising as it did, in its first draft, six hundred pages-in less than two months! To everyone, himself included, it seemed a miracle.

"Fortunately," he told us, "I have a very clear memory, and can recall vividly the days I spent in Master's company, reading his entire manuscript, and helping him with its editing. I said to him at the time, 'Sir, this is the most wonderful thing I have ever read!" We too, in reading this manuscript, feel that it is the greatest thing we have ever read. One day, Swamiji said to us, "I feel as though Master were working as I write-not only through me, but with me."

Why This Book?

THIS BOOK, WHICH COMES AFTER THE PUBLICATION T of Self-Realization Fellowship's (Yogoda Satsanga Society's) God Talks With Arjuna, has been writ-ten in answer to a publicly expressed need for a simpler and clearer version.

The first version was not published until forty-five years after its writing was completed. It is exhaustive and comprehensive. Can a thing be comprehensive, however, and yet not be complete? Certain teachings, and even certain stories, important to me in the original, do not appear in the first published version.

I should state that I worked personally with Paramhansa Yogananda during the major portion of his writing of this work. He had told the monks in 1950, before he went out to his desert retreat to begin this labor, "I asked Divine Mother whom I should take out there with me to help with the editing, and your face appeared, Walter [the name by which he called me].

To make extra sure, I asked Her twice more, and each time your face appeared. That's why I am taking you."

I read the original manuscript, and worked on it with him (though not extensively). The copy I worked on still exists in SRF's archives; it contains my handwriting. I was in my early twenties then, however, and a "green-horn" without proper experience as an editor. Now that I have reached nearly the age of eighty, I might be described as somewhat seasoned in this field-especially with some eight-five books to (what I hope are) my credit.

What he dictated was fluent, easy to understand, and beautiful. I remember exclaiming to him at the time, "This is the most wonderful work I have ever read!" For many years (since 1995, with SRF's publication) it has been my deepest desire to present a version that was closer to the original. The actual manuscript, however, is not available to me.

Fortunately, I have an exceptionally clear memory, which I have drawn on in writing other books, most recently Conversations with Yogananda. I have also been teaching these truths for nearly sixty years, as a devoted disciple of my Guru, and have the teachings, so to speak, "under my belt." Although I had, of course, to refer to their book, I only skimmed over it lightly. This book is in no way a paraphrase or copy of theirs.

THESE PAGES CONTAIN AN EXPOSITION OF THE T hidden meanings in the Bhagavad Gita as they were explained by my great Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, and (before him) by his line of gurus.

The reader today is confronted by an almost bewildering array of translations and commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. The very universality of that scripture invites people to see it in terms of their own diverse approaches to truth. Those who by nature are primarily active find wise guidance in the Gita for how to act in such a way as to free themselves of emotional involvement in this world. Those whose natures are primarily rational find in the Gita supreme guidance on the impersonal attitudes needed for living with wise and calm non-attachment. Those of devotional inclination find in the Gita the inspiration to love only God. And those, finally, who seek God through calm meditation find in this scripture deep teachings on right attitudes in meditation.

Truth is one. People try to slice it like a pie, but even the slices of a pie narrow to a single center. What the Gita shows is that, however many aspects there are of truth, all of them radiate outward from a single center.

Yogananda emphasized in his writings, and especially in his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, that man is a triune being: physical, mental, and spiritual. All parts of human nature need to be developed, lest any one of them obstruct the others.

My Guru once mentioned to me, with regard to one-sided approaches to the Bhagavad Gita (of which there are many), "Even Swami Shankara, profound though his commentary was, denied the importance of physical reality. What he wrote was overbalanced on the spiritual side. He was right in saying that all things are only an appearance, but it should be added that in this realm of appearances maya does have its own reality. Everything is a dream, but even dreams, as dreams, are real."

The Bhagavad Gita teaches every important aspect of the spiritual path: during activity, Karma Yoga (the yoga of right action); during thinking and discrimination, Gyana Yoga (the yoga of wisdom and discrimination); when feeling and experiencing emotion, Bhakti Yoga (the yoga of devotion). There is a central teaching, however, in the Bhagavad Gita, which unites all paths even as subsidiary streams unite in a larger river.