THE BHAGAVAD GITA

According to Paramahansa Yogananda, the great master of India who brought to the West the scientific techniques of yoga in order to awake the divine consciousness of man, the Bhagavad Gita is a Universal scripture, a timeless and comprehensive message in its expression of truth, it is the "Song of the Spirit", "The Sublime Song", the divine communion of the realization of the truth between man and his Creator; it is the teachings of the Spirit through the soul, which must be sung incessantly!

Being a mystical-philosophical poem, it is the most celebrated episode of Mahabharata, which is one of the two greatest Sanskrit epics in ancient India, and the most revered text by Hindus. As an assertiveness manual, it points out that humanity is lost between two paths: that of aggressiveness, according to which man acts driven by the ego, by his interests, and that of passivity, in which man, aware of the laws of karma, chooses not to act. However, the Bhagavad Gita points out a new path, the path of the wise: the right acting, to act according to the supreme essence of being, to act according to the noblest values, that of acting without guilt or karma.

This episode of the Mahabharata was translated into Portuguese by Professor Huberto Rohden according to the Sanskrit text, enriched with explanatory notes, comments and with parallel topics from the sacred books of Christianity, which became one of his bestselling books and with great metaphysical meaning, over the wisdom and incomparable value of the messages it contains. Rohden, to translate it into Portuguese, relied on the writings of one of the greatest scholars of Sanskrit texts, Sir Edwin Arnold, of the German authors, Franz Hartmann and JW Hauer, of Baburam Maharaj, better known as Swami Premananda, in addition to the illustrated edition in English by Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

The Bhagavad Gita is the compilation of questions and answers from the dialogues between Krishna (God) and the human being Arjuna, which elaborates a variety of concepts, dramas and human dilemmas. The narrative is structured in the investigation of who we are, how we should live our lives and how we should act in the world, the purpose of life, crisis of identity, human soul, human temperament and forms of spiritual search.

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The text below, to be comprehended and the truth to be perceived requires the reader to undo the ego's preconceived images that all work deserves to be rewarded. In every job or every action, a reaction is implicit, and the value to be given is personal because of action and the reaction is part of the inexorable law of Cause and Effect.

So, Krishna said to Arjuna: "... where no work is done there is no result ... But these works must be done without any personal interest and any desire for results".

According to Rohden's interpretation, when theologians teach their faithful to perform good deeds to deserve heaven, they understand heaven external to man, and this is a mistake, which fosters the mercenary spirit; it is posthumous selfishness, transferred from the life lived here to the life after death. The Gospel of Jesus teaches that "the kingdom of heaven is within you", and therefore, "when you have done all that you have been asked to do, say: we are useless servants; we fulfil our obligation, no reward we deserve". The true mystics of Christianity comprehended the truth of this parable by teaching that when someone did what God expects, it is doing its duty, trying to be unconditionally good, regardless of the idea of ​​heaven or hell. Heaven is a dimension where only the good ones live, and hell is the home of the bad. But heaven and hell are not dimensions external or above human nature, but states of consciousness within each human being.

According to the cosmic conception of Eastern philosophy, the activities of profane man are fundamentally tragic, full of guilt, or karma, because the ego acts, and that ego is an illusion, and everything the illusory and tyrannical ego does is necessarily negative, contaminated with guilt and evil.

If every activity of the profane man is based on this premise, then we are facing an inevitable dilemma: either to act and to be burdened with guilt - or not to act and thus to keep from guilt.

Much of Eastern philosophy has opted for the second alternative of the dilemma: not to act, to surrender to total inactivity, in eternal passive meditation, in order not to increase the negative debt of karma.

The 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 full of guilt. The Gita discovered a third path: that of acting without guilt or karma, recommending the path of right actions, which is equally distant from false-acting and non-acting.

How can man act without being filled with guilt?

False-acting is acting out of love for the ego; but the right acting acts out of love for the Self, though through the ego and this activity do not create guilt. The right to acting, for the sake of the true Self, not only does not create new guilt in the present and the future, but it also neutralizes the karma of the false acting of the past, 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.

Man, realise yourself, but remember that what you plant and water inspires a purpose, and each one will be rewarded according to their deeds ... "to each one, according to his deeds", " give and you will receive”.

This is what Krishna explains to his disciple Arjuna through the 18 chapters of the dialogue in this metaphysical poem; self-knowledge to make self-realization possible through the right actions, which is the quintessence of the Gita, an invitation for right actions because man does not realize himself by either acting or by false-acting.

The soul of The Bhagavad Gita is a poem of self-redemption through self-realization based on self-knowledge.

Man, know yourself!