S5E8 Devotion as Freedom
This episode investigates the nuances involved in the devotional freedom offered by the Bhagavad Gita as the crowning jewel of the yogic endeavor. We look at material from chapter 18, which clarifies the nature and scope of the transformation that occurs when the highest devotion is attained by the practitioner: specifically, one is transformed at the levels of identity, perception—or the mind and the senses—and with respect to subsequent action, or work, in the world. Most importantly we discover that all of this is the result of the influx of God’s Grace into our inmost heart.
Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions below. Matt will be glad to answer you!
Edited Transcript
Greetings, everybody. Welcome back. We're still in the process of finishing up the end of season five, which is about meanin, purpose and liberation. In this season we begin to speak about enlightenment, and have given some contemporary definitions from teachers that are important to the Shala, some of whom are alive still today. We're finishing up the season with some traditional definitions of enlightenment, or what it means to be liberated from ignorance.
So far, we have made a little commentary on the Veda and also the three great commentators, Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhava, and their commentaries on the Upanishads to show the differences, and the kind of diversity of views in Vedanta about what it means to be liberated. We then stepped into the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali and talked about that a little bit.
In this episode, we're going to talk about the great font of spiritual wisdom and inspiration, the Bhagavad Gita. Now in season two, specifically episode one, I believe, entitled The Mahabharata and the Gita, I did a fairly extensive commentary on the Gita to provide some background, historical context, and sort of lay out the basic orientation in the Gita. Specifically I talked a lot about how the Gita is a synthesis of the two great ways of sacrifice, or the way of action, and the way of renunciation, or the way of knowledge, and how it offers bhakti, or the yoga of devotion, as the crowning jewel of the yogic endeavor. So I'd refer back to that season to gain some context and background info. This will definitely put you in a place where you're able to hear these things that I'm about to say in a way that is probably more useful if you're not familiar with the Gita already.
So as I just said, we're speaking now about bhakti, or the yoga of devotion. This is the essence of what the Bhagavad Gita offers, and so in relation to the problem of suffering and being bound by birth and death, being bound by ignorance and illusion and egocentricity, the Gita works through a long series of teachings through the course of many chapters, and ultimately arrives at the realization of total devotion to God as the fruit of everything that's useful in the endeavor of yoga. As we'll see in this episode, what it means to be truly devoted is quite a sophisticated thing according to this teaching. We're going to look specifically at verses from chapter 18, which is the final chapter in the Gita. And this chapter is often translated as the Moksha Dharma. Moksha is a word for freedom. We could substitute it for liberation. Dharma is a word for purpose, or law, or virtue, or duty, and all of those things kind of roll into one single vision by the end of this chapter.
So I'm focusing specifically on three shlokas toward the end of the chapter. This would be chapter 18: 54, 55 and 56. This is Krishna speaking, still delivering teaching to Arjuna, the prince who has, by this time, had his fears about the battle he has to engage in set aside and done away with. He has been taught about bhakti, about what it means to be devoted, and so he's learned, in a way, about true love. He's overcome his egoic preoccupations, and in these three verses, this is Krishna sort of summing up everything that has come before. Let me read these three to you, and then we'll go verse by verse, and kind of take apart the essence of each of the lines and look at what's contained in all of these places:
Existing as Brahman, with his mind made tranquil, he neither laments nor hankers for anything. He is equal to all living beings. Such a person achieves the highest state of devotion to Me, and it is through this devotion that he gains knowledge of Me, of my greatness and of my true identity.
When he thus properly understands me, he then immediately enters into my being, always performing his prescribed duties while remaining dependent on Me. Through my grace, he attains the eternal, changeless position.
Let's start with the first of these three shlokas. This would be 54: “existing as Brahman, with his mind made tranquil, he neither laments nor hankers for anything. He is equal to all living beings. Such a person achieves the highest state of devotion to Me.” Now, this first phrase, “existing as Brahman”, is very, very important. For those of you who may not know, Brahman is one of the ways that the Gita refers to the highest self, one of the ways that the Gita refers to sort of the ultimate. Krishna is describing here the devotee who has attained moksha, so that devotee exists as Brahman. This means existing with an intuitive understanding that the root of identity is this highest self. So this signifies a transformation, a deep transformation, in the devotee’s understanding of who he or she is. This sense of identity should be called trans-egoic, or trans psychological.
There's a tendency in the modern world (and maybe this tendency is actually more ancient than what I'm allowing for in this moment, given what the sacred texts say) but, there's a tendency to identify with discursive thought, and feelings, and desires, and those kinds of things, as being our identity. That means to live as if I am what I think; I am what I desire; I am my emotional reactions to things - or my feelings about things - and that is what it means to actually be bound in a state of ignorant desire that keeps one chained to the cycle of birth and death. When we come to exist as Brahman, we have transcended attachment to those egoic states, and we have transcended the tendency to identify as our impermanent, always-changing psychological content. So what it means to be liberated here, in part, is that my identity is rooted in the deepest source of reality, and I have an intuitive grasp of this, such that my thoughts and my feelings and my desires are appropriate to what my actual identity is.
The second phrase, with his mind made tranquil, he neither laments nor hankers for anything. There's a lot here. First, there's this word mind. You can look back to the episodes on Sankhya, in particular early on in the podcast, for a cursory tour through the view of the mind that we're dealing with here. This view of the mind is a view of a sacred hierarchy, a tripartite hierarchy with the highest level being buddhi, or what is called intuition, or often translated as the intellect, or that which understands, that which intuits. Then we have ahamkara, or the ego. That means the I-maker, the thing that guarantees that experience feels like it's happening to a unique individual. Then we have the lower mind, or Manas, which is the senses of cognition, or the incoming senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch; and the outgoing senses of speaking, grasping, moving, eliminating and procreating. All of that would be the lower mind; all of that constitutes what we call the senses. We would call this the sensory motor loop in Western language. This would be the mind.
And so, “with his mind made tranquil, he neither laments nor hankers for anything”. This means that the mind, as a result of existing as Brahman, is set in its proper relationship, which is that of a sacred hierarchy where the buddhi, or higher mind, takes its orientation from the self, ultimately, and individually from the soul or the Atman. And then the ego, as the child of buddhi, takes its orientation from the intuition or the intellect, or that which understands and intuits. And when the ego is taking its cue from the higher mind, it fulfills its function, which is to be responsible for action in the empirical world, or the outer world. It fulfills that function of being responsible for action by being guided by something that is wiser than it, and then the lower mind (which is subordinate to the ego) - the senses, which are tools, so to speak, of the ego those senses are actually being guided by higher mind, or the intuitive, discerning intellect that is subordinate to the self.
When the senses are being guided by that channel that runs all the way from the top of the sacred hierarchy into the eyes, and the hands, and the mouth, and the ears, and the nose, and the skin, and so on and so forth, they are freed from a kind of slavish, repetitive, mechanical, pleasure-seeking, and pain-avoiding in their activity. So when the senses are guided by the higher mind, it is possible for novel, or new, information to emerge through the act of perception. This would be the world - or the lower realms, which are perceived through the senses - linked up with the higher realms of the self through the conduit of the ego.
And so when we exist as Brahman, the mind is made tranquil. It is peaceful; it is calm; it is not lamenting, which means caught in rumination about what has been lost, or what has not gone well according to my personal desires. Nor does it hanker for anything: that is, driven by a kind of emptiness, which is hunger that needs to be fulfilled by acquiring new things. This mind is in service of the higher principles.
This person who exists as Brahman with a tranquil mind, is then equal to all things. Such a person achieves the highest state of devotion. The sense of being neither better nor worse, but simply a part of a larger whole, fulfilling my own individual purpose, and therefore doing my part in relation to that whole, is something that follows naturally when my identity is cleared up, and my mind is tranquil, and my senses behave according to the dictates of higher principles, or that which understands. So in this space, we attain a kind of peacefulness, and are freed from things like envy, things like resentment in relation to others. And we see all things, even the lowest things - the blades of grass, even the clod of dirt (I believe the Gita says at one point) - to be as valuable and beautiful, or as worthless (depending on how you look at it) as gold.
Now, when these things are instantiated, the highest state of devotion results. So, first of all, existing as Brahman with a tranquil mind, we are freed from egoic desires. We become equal, in a sense, to all living beings. And this leads to the highest state of devotion. There have been several states of devotion mentioned before this in the Gita, but they haven't been the highest state. So now we're speaking of the place beyond which we can love no more. We have reached the pinnacle.
If we go to shloka 55, Krishna says “it is through this highest state of devotion that he gains knowledge of Me, of my greatness and my true identity. When he thus properly understands me, he then immediately enters into my being”. So the highest state of devotion is not only a state in which we understand love, we are also capable of service; the root of our identity is clear to us, and our mind is tranquil because it's rooted in that highest identity principle; and, our senses behave accordingly. So our desires are not crazy for things that are not good for us. All of these are states of devotion. However, when we reach the highest state of devotion, as a result of these things being instantiated, knowledge arises. Moreover, this is not just any knowledge. This is knowledge of “Me”, and Krishna is referring to himself here. So this is knowledge of God, and it has two prongs: knowledge of my greatness, and knowledge of my true identity.
Knowledge of God's greatness could be summed up for our purposes by St. Anselm: God is that than which no greater can be conceived, that than which no greater thing or being could be conceived. So this would be the highest possible being that transcends all other conception, that is the creator of, and exists in, all possible worlds. That means, if there is a being of considerable greatness, and anything greater can be conceived, then that original being is not God, and if you keep pushing and pushing back to the boundary, when that greatness is realized, nothing greater than that is even conceivable.
And the true identity of that “being”, is also known as a result of this highest devotion. You should look again - or listen again - to season five, episode Six, where we comment on the three great teachers of Vedanta: Shankara and his Advaita Vedanta, or non dual-Vedanta, and Ramanuja and his qualified non-dual Vedanta, and then Madhvacharya and his dualistic Vedanta, because the identity of the Ultimate source ranges from impersonal (and I would say for Shankara, that's probably the essence of what he thought); and then for Ramanuja and Madhvacharya, the highest identity is personal: a divine person with which we are capable of a sort of intimate, personal relationship.
So knowledge is knowledge of God's greatness and God's true identity. When this knowledge is instantiated, that is, a proper understanding of who God is, “he then immediately enters into my being”. Entering into the being of the Divine is the ultimate yoga, the ultimate bhakti, where I am now in the most intimate relationship with God that is possible. Depending on the commentator again - Shankara, Ramananja or Madhava - that relationship should be nuanced. If we remember Shankara, then in this highest of spaces there's nothing left of me. I am annihilated in that love and all suffering, and birth and death, ends in that annihilation. If we remember Ramanuja and Madhva, there is something real about me that is left intact, and in this highest of spaces, I am entering into a relationship of love between two real parties, myself and the Divine Lord.
So intimacy emerges from this deep knowledge when the goal is reached. At this point, the pillar of faith has ascended, and I have first person knowledge, first person experience of the ultimate. Then, finally, in shloka. 56 we get a sense of what that one who has realized to that level looks like, and acts like in this world. And this is a combination of this eternal escape from birth and death being embodied here in this world. 56 says, “always performing his prescribed duties whilst remaining dependent on me. Through my grace, he attains the eternal, changeless position.” Now this first phrase, performing prescribed duties, is a reference to being born, for instance, in a particular caste or Varna, and therefore having particular duties that are appropriate to my station. It's also a reference to something that the Gita calls Svadharma, or “self dharma”, which means my own individual purpose, or my own individual virtue, if we wanted to borrow a word from the west. In this sense, the Gita is very life affirming, very family affirming, very job or vocation affirming, and very individual affirming, for the most part, because it believes that the creation is good, and that we need to stay in the game of life, and that we were born with certain gifts, and with a particular purpose, or particular set of virtues that are realized through the practice of yoga, and that are thereby expressed in our activity. We can serve family, community and so forth with our uniqueness, when we are rooted in the highest identity principle, and when our minds are capable of tranquility, and our senses are under control, and we have gained knowledge of who God is through deep devotion.
So these prescribed duties are our personal dharma. This is never neglected in the scheme that the Gita has to offer. It's always the case that we don't abandon our duty. It's always the case that we do what is required of us. But it's very important - now that we have realized this highest state of devotion - that the way in which we do these things is unique, because it's called bhakti yoga, and that means we have realized selfless service, and knowledge of our own identity. In that space, it's clear to us that God is actually in control, that we are not the doer. As The Gita says, we are not deluded by egoism.
Notice that it says always performing his prescribed duties whilst remaining dependent on me. This means, on the outside, I'm being the father that I'm supposed to be. I'm being the teacher, and small time farmer, and husband that I'm supposed to be. So on the outside, you can see me mowing the yard, and you can see me washing the dishes, and you can see me keeping after my children. But on the inside, I know that it's God that's doing all this. I know that I am dependent on the Lord, and I am tranquil and peaceful as a result of this. So on the outside, I make the sacrifices in action that are right for my station in life, my age, and so on and so forth. But on the inside, I am Nishkama, “without desire”, because it is the Lord that actually does everything.
Finally, he says, “through my grace, he attains the eternal, changeless position”. The Gita is unique at the time of its arising - I think? I could be wrong; I'm not a total expert by any means - but it's unique in offering the grace of God as the salvatory power in the world. According to its instruction, we can pray for God's grace and hope for God's grace to set us free. And so here it says, specifically, “through my grace (that's Krishna), he attains the eternal, changeless position”. What does this mean? This means, through God's grace, at the highest place of devotion, when we are renounced on the inside and doing our duty on the outside, the karmic cycle of birth and death, or the wheel of suffering, the wheel of samsara, is broken, so I reach the eternal, changeless position. That means I realize the eternal nature of myself as the atman, or the soul, in relation to and totally dependent on the grace of God. And in this space, I am no longer subject to karma. I am no longer subject to birth and death. My liability to come back into this space transcends karmic forces, and I am able to be with Krishna or God forever, wherever that is.
And so we have this beautiful, multi nuanced notion of what it means to be free in the Bhagavad Gita. I'd love to let one of my favorite commentators, Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan, sum this up for us. He has two basic summaries here that put it all together, and I'll read both of these for you. So of verses, 54,55, and 56 Radhakrishnan says: “the knower, the devotee, becomes one with the Supreme Lord, the perfect person, in self knowledge and in self experience. Jjnana or supreme wisdom, and bhakti or supreme devotion, therefore have the same goal [and that would be union with the Supreme Person]. To become Brahman is to love God, to know Him fully, and to enter into His being.” A little further on in his commentary, he says, “ in these three verses, the author indicates that wisdom, devotion and work go together, only the work is done with the knowledge that nature is the power of the Divine, and that the individual is only the instrument of God.” So I won't add too much to that. I think that sums it up nicely.
I think it's beautiful that from the time of the Veda, where we live properly through action, and action is the sacrifice, and then up through the time of the Upanishad, where we still make a sacrifice, but that sacrifice has been internalized, and I myself become the sacrificial ground, doing pranayama, and I renounce many of the things in life. I think that all through those tendencies, it's beautiful that the Gita then comes back and says, No, wait a minute, it's alright to be in relation to the world. It's alright to have a family. In fact, it's good. It's good to be a warrior. It's good to be a merchant. It's good to be a carpenter or a cook. It's just important that you see the body, the sky, the trees, the plants, the animals, the mind, all of nature - it's important that you see that as God's power, and through that, you see yourself as God's instrument fulfilling the Dharma. All of that together means that we know God, and that we love God, and that we have entered into God fully. It is possible in that space for all of our daily actions, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, to become profound acts of freedom, profound acts of worship. I know that's exciting to me. I hope that is to you too.
So I hope this has been interesting. Thanks so much for joining us. God bless you, and we'll see you next time.
