On Gita

Have been reading the Gita lately and one of the points that consistently comes up in the entire text, one which fascinates me, is the unified view of good and evil taken in the text. Religions around the world have always very clearly demarcated between the good and evil and have clearly mentioned how each is treated after death, Christianity has its heaven and hell, Islam its jannat and dozak has similar concepts and so has Hinduism in its swarg and narak and practically every other major religion in the world. In all the religions the primary aim of all living entities is to achieve a pass into the good afterlife, an entry through the PEARLY GATES.


In this backdrop Gita is the only text which deviates from this well established norm and states that there is no such thing as heaven and hell but these are concepts for the less developed mind, a mind which will not be able to fully appreciate the complexity of the aim of life, a mind which has been trained in terms of rewards and punishment to move in a direction which will help the soul finally achieve salvation.

Krishna says that 'I am all the good and all that is bad in the world, both good and evil reside in me, there is nothing outside me'. This is a remarkable departure from the theory we are fed since childhood that if you are good then you go to heaven while the bad fellow goes to hell. On the contrary every soul based on its karma comes back to earth and keeps moving up on the spiritual chain till finally it achieves the its aim of getting one with the creator and realising the ultimate truth.

The aim of the human life according to Gita is self realisation, knowing the true nature of oneself which can be achieved either through the study on oneself or through karma yoga (selfless service). The most famous words which every Hindu is brought up with come here where the Lord asks us to work for his glory and not for the fruits of labour. This is interpretted in a number of ways but one of the best which may help one keep on track to achieving a desireless state of mind is that we have already been given so much by God that anything and all that we do should be in His glory, as a re-payment of debt rather than as a job in which we get paid at the end of the specified task.

Gita gives a very detailed step to step guide suiting everyone's disposition to move towards God. It is the complete book a Dummy's guide to nirvana and answers all questions that may arise. One has to understand it and follow the path. So where does that leave the other religious texts of Hinduism.

The Vedas in Hinduism state a number of rituals which promise a person material wealth in this life and a secure place in Heaven post it. The idea behind these is to introduce the mind to a path of spirituality and ignite in it the desire to know more and understand the meaning of life. In this respect the Veda are a lesser text which are only to be used till a particular maturity of thought is achieved by an individual. The Veda create various gods and goddesses to satisfy the variety of desires that each individual may have in the material world, but all these texts, rituals and gods become useless once one realises the futility of the grants they can give. Then one is pulled towards the supreme being (who manifests as all these gods and goddesses) and tries to realise the true nature of this God.