Shrimad Bhagavad Gita: The Royal Secret (Chapter 9)

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What is that which can be known only by experience, the most secrel knowledge, that inevitably leads to the supreme Brahman, that which is hidden to those who have not awakened in them their inner purity?- The art and practice of devotion.

This is what Sri Krsna seeks to explain in the ninth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita. He begins by explaining that devotion to Him, the supreme Being, will deliver the direct experience of the Truth. He goes on to explain how devotion allows the uncovering of that sacred knowledge.

Pointing out the various pitfalls that prevent people from realising this, He enumerates ways in which great people have overcome them. Proceeding to the most common form of devotion, worship. Sri Krsna seeks to elaborate on the nature of worship, the different types of worship, and the fact thatall can seek redemption throughit.

He ends by giving a strong assurance. "O son of Kunti! Know for certain that My devotee will never perish.

Srimad Bhagavad-gita, as a textbook of Hindu renaissance, has necessarily to carry with it the seeds of thorough reformation, almost revolutionary in its onslaught. The fundamental principles remaining the same, a religion that keeps pace with life has to readjust itself to accommodate current social problems and political conditions. Religion was not extinct in the era of the Mahabharata. But the Vaidika principles needed a readjustment and a re-affirmation in the context of the life available in that era. Vyasa's mouthpiece, Lord Krsna, is the most brilliant organ that sang a song of progress to the new era throbbing with its cultural revolt.

When the fundamentals forming the foundation are to be kept sacredly the same, the only adjustment that is possible for the expansion of the science of life, is to discover a more liberal means for its application, and to annotate the same in the language of the conflict and struggle available in that period. Blind faith can have a compelling charm only in the early ages of the people and when they grow stalwart in their reason, and almost muscular in their emotions, the impetuosity of the generation can no more be tamed and kept in bounds by the sandy beaches of barren faith. They demand and expect walls of unshakable logic and reason to support the stream of assertions in the philosophy of their thinkers. To a large extent, an interpreter of a philosophy - not the philosopher - will have to dance to the rhythm of the inundations of the land and the direction of the current of thought and life in his age.

This new interpretation, at once intelligent and meaningful has, no doubt, injected a new vigour and brought fresh blood into the senile values of life and their ineffectual application in the society. Such repeated transfusions of youthfulness and vitality into the dilapidated body of the religion had sustained the ageless tradition of the Hindus through its chequered career down the aisles of time. One of the most powerful rejuvenation treatments that the immortal lore received in recent times is from the hands of Vyasa, and the Bhagavad-gita reports that operation divine.