The Bhagavad Gita, is a Sanskrit episode of the epic Mahabharata, a historical event of more than 5,000 years before the Christian era, which dates back to the time of the Vedas. It is one of the most influential treatises in Eastern philosophy; it is the eternal message of spiritual wisdom from ancient India, which in addition to being a religious scripture, is also a scripture of life, based on faith and devotion. The word Gita means song and the word Bhagavad means God, often the Bhagavad-Gita is called the Song of God, or the Sublime Song, or the Song of the Lord.
The text below is an excerpt from the book Bhagavad Gita, translation and interpretation by Huberto Rohden, which brought together only the last 25 verses of the original book of 18 chapters, thus summarizing the most important messages of the original text.
Western culture is currently receiving the techniques of yoga and meditation, as if it were more of a fad, practising controversially, addressing only the surface of what these sciences are. Yoga and Meditation has a much broader meaning, which is not limited only to techniques of postures, habits and external actions, but to change the internal attitude for a new individual conscience, without this transformation, any attempt of self-knowledge and the subsequent self-realization is invalidated ... to know the truth about oneself, to live that truth and be free.
Says Rohden in the presentation of the book, that: “According to the cosmic conception of Eastern philosophy, all the activity of the profane man is fundamentally tragic, full of guilt because of the one who acts is the tyrannical ego, and that ego is a dismal illusion and everything that the illusory ego does is necessarily negative, contaminated with guilt and evil.
If this is the activity of the profane man, then we are faced with an inevitable dilemma: either to act and to be burdened with guilt - or not to act and thus be kept from guilt.
Much of Eastern philosophy has chosen the second alternative of the dilemma: not to act, to surrender to total inactivity, to engage in passive meditation, in order not to increase negative debts.
Bhagavad Gita, however, does not recommend either of these two alternatives: neither to not act and to keep from guilt, nor to act and to be covered with guilt. The Gita recommends a third way: that of acting without guilt, which is the way of the right-acting, the observance of all commandments and laws, freedom, respect, responsibility, love and, above all, detachment equidistant from false-acting and non-acting.
How, then, can man act without being burdened with guilt?
False-acting is acting out of love for the tyrannical ego; but the right-acting acts out of love for the Self, though through the ego, and so its activity is not to blame.
The right-acting, for the sake of the true Self, does not create new guilt in the present and in the future, and also neutralizes the faults of the past's false-acting, thus freeing man from all his debts.
That is what the supreme wisdom of Bhagavad Gita consists of. But for man to do so, for the sake of the true Self, he must know that Self, he must know the truth about himself.
This is what Krishna explains to his disciple Arjuna through dialogue in this metaphysical poem; self-knowledge to make self-realization possible through the right-acting.
The quintessence of the Bhagavad Gita is, therefore, an invitation to the right-acting, because man is not realized either by non-action or by false-action. The soul of it is a poem of self-redemption by self-realization based on self-knowledge.
Man, know thyself! Man, realize thyself!”
Krishna speaks:
--- Only those who have mastery over their internal world of personal desires, who are disciplined in eating, sleeping, watching, resting and having fun, will achieve through the exercise of yoga and meditation the liberation from all evils, and is focused on its supreme self ... this is a freedman.
--- Just as the flame does not flicker when in a place sheltered from the wind, so does the heart when exempt from the gales of the senses and burning in divine love, towards the heights of the Eternal.
--- When, thanks to continuous meditation and yoga, the heart found rest in that place where comprehension reigns, where the sublime spirit contemplates itself and finds everything within itself;
--- When the soul experiences joy that transcends the reach of the senses and the intellect and is only known by the soul in the soul itself - that consciousness of the truth that the spiritual man will never lose;
--- And when a man reaches that goal and has the truth in greater esteem than all the treasures, and perseveres in it unshakable so that no suffering makes him unhappy;
--- So, he knows that perfect yoga and meditation makes him immune to even the greatest pain and that this goal is achieved through energy and perseverance.
--- It is necessary that he pulls out of his heart all daydreams and vacillations, all greed, vanity and mania of greatness, that he closes and watches over all the doors through which the world of the senses can invade his soul.
--- Then he approaches the sanctuary, step by step, and will know the beauty of peace that dwells in the perfectly dominated heart, where the truth prevails and where the soul enjoys true freedom.
--- And even if the fickle mind rebels and tries to flee away, the soul will discipline itself by the force of love and lead it back to the Supreme Being.
--- The ineffable beatitude penetrates the soul when the heart, free from illusion, joins the Creator and divests itself of any desire.
--- Whoever thus offers itself as a burnt offering to the Creator and lives in permanent union with It, experiences in itself the limitless beatitude that the divine presence fills.
--- Integrated into the Creator, it lives divine life and perceives Its spirit in all creatures, for it knows that all things have its inner being in It.
--- Whoever sees me as the One and the Only one in all things, and sees all things in me, the Supreme Reality, it lives firmly in me, and I live firmly in it, whatever the conditions of its external life.
--- I am the immanent Reality in all beings; whoever worships me as the One and the Absolute, remains in me in everything, regardless of the vicissitudes of his life here on Earth.
--- O Arjuna! He who, among joys and sufferings looms sovereign over the power of the knowledge of me, the One and the Only one, this is the most perfect of spiritual men.
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