Baghavad Gita Chapter 8

1-2.

Arjuna asks Krishna eight important questions that are vital to his understanding of man’s relationship with God and with God’s creation. Even after so much teaching from the avatar, i.e. from God incarnated into human form, even now Arjuna is still unenlightened and unaware of great profundities. He could only have asked these questions out of his own lingering sense of separation. He asks about the nature of God, of the human spirit, of Karma (or the results of action and inaction), about the kingdom of the earth and the kingdom of Light. Because he specifically asks, “What is the kingdom of Light?” he is already cognizant of a realm that is higher than the kingdom of earth, that consists or of is maintained by a higher, subtler force than matter. He never asks where these kingdoms are because he knows that such a question would be meaningless without some abiding place that they could be said to be near to, or far from. The question about the referrent, the abiding motionless Centre, is the first question that must be answered before any of the subsequent ones can HAVE any answer. “Who is Brahman?” or “Who is God”.

Arjuna’s last three questions are about the personality and its relationship with God. He asks “Who offers the sacrifice in the body? How is the offering made? And when the time to die arrives, how do those who are engaged in devotion know you?” After asking about the larger context in which man is created and thrives, Arjuna now wants to know how the Spirit of God manifests itself in the individual, and how the individual can return with awareness to God at the hour of death. His question, “How is the offering made?” is the most interesting because it has the most depth. It is plain that Arjuna already knows one great truth: that because the Spirit in the body is identical with the spirit of the creator – indeed, that the Creator Spirit indwells every person – therefore the one doing the offering is the same as the One to whom the offering is being presented. And Arjuna wants to know how this can be so. He wants to know what then is the motive for sacrifice and the mechanism for it.

His last question, about death, shows that he assumes or understands that only a person who has engaged in devotion or sacrifice – and who is therefore in harmony – can come to know God in an immediate non-intellectual sense. And Arjuna wants to know how this happens. He might be afraid to ask whether his own consciousness may disappear altogether at death, leaving him unable to rejoice in his union with God. A relationship with God, either before or after death, must assume at the minimum a point of awareness of that relationship. God cannot have relationship solely with HimSelf.

Arjuna’s fifth question is “What is the kingdom of Light?” but the Sanskrit for this verse has also been translated as “What are the demigods?” It is true that the word ‘kingdom’ implies inhabitants, and that a group of beings implies a realm where they have their being. Arjuna asks about this because he wants to know what effect that realm and its inhabitants have on him and on mankind. Do they influence the affairs of men? Is that the place where men go after death? Do the demigods reward or punish men on earth or even after death?

The questions which he puts so simply and concisely contain within them dozens of others more complex and even frightening. It is Krishna’s task, then, to answer them in such a way that ordinary men in years to come can find a way to manage their lives in accordance with the highest principles of truth and goodness. The answers must be simple, and they must resonate truthfully in men and women, so that their truth may be felt.

3, 9-10

Krishna answers the first question only by saying, “Brahman is the Supreme, the Eternal – indestructible and transcendental,” and he moves on to answer the second question. But this first answer is dry, and quickly skimmed over – one’s mind scarcely thinks of it before moving on to something else. A page later, however, Krishna gives an answer which satisfies the soul, and it is given in the context of the moment when one departs from this life. He says that a person goes to God when his last moments are in harmony and when he steadfastly remembers God the Poet, the Creator, who knows everything and who rules all things from all time – who is smaller than the atom yet maintains all of creation, and who is as luminous as the sun.

Here there is enough food for contemplation. With these words one can sit and think about Brahman, and at one stroke realize both Who He Is and that it is possible to return to Him. And thus we know also the answer to the question of sacrifice: its ultimate utility lies in its powerful ability to make us fit for this ultimate reunion.

4

Krishna says, “In this body I offer sacrifice, and my body is a sacrifice. I, the Supreme Lord, the Supersoul in the heart of every person, am called the Lord of sacrifice.”

What does this mean, though? It is God (as Krishna) who is speaking. God is saying, “I offer sacrifice.” It is one thing for a separated human to offer sacrifice to God, but why should God be offering it, and to whom? He says He is the Supersoul in the heart, and we can understand that. It is when He says, “I am called The Lord of sacrifice” that the light finally dawns. It is God within our hearts that is the impulse to sacrifice. It is That, or He, that continually creates the will within us to return to Him what is already His so that we ourselves may return to Him – because we are already His. This is a teaching of enormous depth, and it must be dug for, because its profound meaning is not easily extracted from the short answer that Krishna provides.