Feeling-The Philosophy of Bhagavad Gita

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The idea of God is not in philosophy. Psychology is not in the realm of philosophy. Philosophy has to present a course of wisdom that is recognisable from the point of view of common sense and palpable methods for the development of that wisdom for practical realisation. At the same time, the person who wants to become wiser has to overcome his psychological inclinations and he must feel sure or confident that there is such a power in him to overcome his limitations. That power to overcome the psychological limitations has to be identified to exist and whether that power is God or not in name is immaterial. The Bhagavadgita is that philosophy where Krishna, the preceptor, takes Arjuna into confidence and brings out proof of the existence of a pure consciousness distinctly free of psychological consciousness. That pure consciousness can not be called a God that man worships, but a power that can be felt. Therefore, feeling is sought to be explained, at different stages of its structure and purity. That is the message of philosophy here. The philosophy ends with the identification of consciousness and never enters into exploration of acts of consciousness, called mysteries of metaphysics. This is called the astikya - philosophy, meaning Philosophy of Existence. Existence is Feeling of Existence and not the Material Existence without feeling.

The legends of Bharat places the origin of Bhagavadgita between Krishna and Arjuna about 3200 B.C., some 2700 years before Buddha. Hill' says that Krishna is mentioned in Panini's works (350 B.C.) and there is internal evidence to show that the Bhagavadgita in its present form appeared about 200 B.C. When Vivekananda doubted the legends and the existence at any time of Krishna or Arjuna and put that as a question to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the latter said, "those who have been able to conceive of such ideas ought to be those ideas themselves"2. He meant that without living in that background, it is not possible to communicate so effectively, that the message has lived with the masses for centuries not depending on the variously interpreting scholars.