The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata
and the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Theological interpreters and exponents have many things to say about these passages of the soul, especially in connection with the status of the soul in brahma-loka. Is there a possibility of coming back, or is it only a penultimate step to reach the supreme Absolute? The Bhagavadgita does not throw any light on this difficulty. It is very short and pithy; it merely makes a statement of this kind and leaves us to consider its meaning in any way we like. But great thinkers, scholars, saints and sages who have pondered over this subject tell us that the region called brahma-loka, or the region of the Creator, is to be distinguished from the nature of the Absolute. Generally we do not make this distinction when we speak of God the Creator. In ordinary religious parlance the two are identified. When we speak of God as the Creator of the universe, we do not imagine or imply thereby that there is something superior to this concept of Creator. For the purposes of popular religion, they are the same.

But a distinction is drawn. Metaphysical and philosophical definitions are given in respect of these stages, into the details of which we need not enter here. The sum and substance of the opinions of these exponents is that there are two kinds of people who reside in brahma-loka,just as there can be two kinds of people living in a country—citizens and visa holders, for instance. Citizens of a country are of one kind, and visa holders are of a different type. Both live in the same country, and perhaps they have all the facilities that are available in this country—they can travel in the same coach, they can eat the same food, they can breathe the same air—they are practically the same in every respect. But their visas can expire, whereas citizens have no such problem of expiry of their tenure of stay in the country.

This distinction is drawn by exponents of this particular subject of the status of souls in brahma-loka. Commentators on the Gita, like Madhusudan Saraswati for instance, tell us that upasakas or worshippers who perform meditation unselfishly, without any kind of desire, do not come back, though they may reach brahma-loka and pass through that stage as a necessary condition of the further attainment of utter immortality, about which we shall speak a little later. But there are residents in brahma-loka like Sanaka, Sanatana, Santakumara, Narada, etc.—they are not visa holders. They have not migrated from one country to another and they have not risen from one level to another. They were there right from the time of creation itself and they have no such fear of coming back.

Also there is no fear of coming back in respect of those souls who have unselfishly meditated or performed upasana, even with the acceptance of the transcendentalness of God. The whole difficulty arises on account of this peculiar thought in our minds, namely, the transcendentalness of God, the other-worldliness of God and the immensity of God as contradistinguished from the finitude of the individual who performs the worship or devotion. This difficulty is overcome in the coming chapters—in the tenth and eleventh especially, about which we will speak later on.

The departure of the soul is the main subject of the eighth chapter, and the eighth chapter does not tell us that it is possible to attain God in this life, because it does not want to tell us everything at the same time. It wants to go stage by stage, taking us by the hand from one level to the other without frightening us in any manner. The soul’s departure is immediately decided when there is disassociation of consciousness from the material body, and in a way we may say it is decided even now. Teachers like Patanjali tell us that even when we are born, what will happen to us in the future is already written on our souls. Even the time of our death is already decided when we are still in the womb of our mother. The conditions through which we have to pass in our life also are already stated and decided, and the circumstances into which we are born in this world are also decided. Jati, ayu, bhoga—these three things have already been decided even when we are inside the womb of the mother. This means to say that the termination of our life has also been decided, which indirectly implies that what will happen to us later on has already been decided. Everything seems to be contained in the Will of God in a cosmical manner. Wonderful it is to think of.

The departure of the soul, therefore, is through various passages. Particular mention is made in the eighth chapter of what are commonly known as the devayana and the pitriyana margas, the Northern Path as it is called, or the Southern Path—the path of light, and the path of smoke or the path of darkness. There is departure, which means to say there is movement. The necessity for movement of the soul arises on account of the distance that exists between itself and the destination that it has to reach. If we accept that there is such a thing called distance, space and time, we also have to accept the necessity for travel. We already take for granted that there is such a thing called space, and therefore we have to also accept what is called distance. Space is distance, dimension, and measure, and all of us here perhaps have faith and the need to accept the distance of God from us in some way. It may differ from one person to another person, as far as the nature of the concept is concerned, but we accept that there is some sort of a difference and distance between ourselves and the Supreme Being, whether it is a qualitative distance or difference, or it is a quantitative one—sometimes it is both. Our conviction and acceptance of the fact that there is a distance between us and God is the reason for the departure of the soul from the body in some direction, and the direction that it takes depends upon the thoughts it entertained in this life. Generally, the deciding factor is the nature of the desire. Yam yam vapi smaran bhavam tyajaty ante kalevaram, tam tam evaiti kaunteya sada tad-bhava-bhavitah.

No desire can go unfulfilled—that is the law of desire. Strong or weak, it does not matter. Whatever form you contemplate in your mind as the objective of your desire, that you shall reach, attain, enjoy and possess—if not in this life then in the next life. No desire can be destroyed. It is an energy, and the principle of conservation of energy will tell you that desire cannot be destroyed. If desires and hopes cannot be destroyed, they should be regarded as immortal, at least in a relative sense. They are immortal as long as they are not fulfilled. Just as the creditor is always there as long as you cannot pay your debts, the desires pursue you wherever you go. You may reach the seventh heaven, but before you reach there the desire is already waiting for you. “What do you say about me,” it will ask you. And so you are gravitated automatically, by the pull of this catapult of your desires, to the point or place where alone it is possible for you to fulfil your desires. There is no dearth of resources in the universe. It is immensely rich and can fulfil any desire of any person. It will never say ‘no’ to any individual. It will not say, “I am sorry, I have not got it.” Whatever you ask for is present in the universe. As a matter of fact, you cannot think of anything that is not in the universe. So all your desires concern what is present in the universe somewhere or the other—it may be in this plane or in another plane.

So you will be suddenly taken like a rocket, as it were—a tremendous force, and the energy that drives that rocket is desire itself. The rocket is your own subtle body, and you are driven to that place where you will fulfil your desire, either fully or partially, according to the intensity of the desire. If the desire is intense—positive or negative—sometimes the fulfilment is seen in this very birth. In this very life you can fulfil your desires, provided the desire is terrific, uncontrollable, immense and it has overwhelmed you and inundated you. If the desire is so intense, whether it is virtuous or otherwise, you will see the consequence of it in this very birth. But if it is not so strong, you will reap the fruit thereof later on, in some other plane of existence, some other kind of circumstance where the conditions will be favourable for the fructification of this desire. Great souls, pious persons, devotees of God who have retained the concepts of the transcendenality of God, the other-worldliness of God in one sense, to put it more precisely, will reach God through the various stages of the ascent which are described in the scriptures such as the Upanishads and expounded in the Brahma Sutras, etc. They go from one light to another light, from dimmer light to brighter light, until the brightest light of the highest heaven is reached.

Unselfish devotees do not come back, but those who have desires of some type or other will have to be retained in that condition until their desires are fulfilled. Often our devotions to God are connected with some ulterior desires. Many of us will be finding it difficult to imagine what unselfish devotion to God can be. We may accept theoretically that unselfish devotion to God is the only real and true devotion. But our mind is so made that it cannot understand what unselfishness is, because there cannot be any kind of effort without an intention behind it, and this intention decides whether it is unselfish or otherwise. To seek something from God is the essence of the principle of selfishness that enters into the devotion to God. All prayers to God in all the religions have something to tell God. We convey a message to God. The necessity to convey a message to God again implies our suspicion that He is away from us, distant and transcendent still, and He requires to be told that something has to be done. That is the meaning of prayer.

But that need not necessarily be the meaning of prayer. Prayer can be an overwhelming, indwelling of God Himself in our soul—the soul getting invaded by the presence of God. The soul getting possessed by the omnipresence of God can also be devotion, and there one cannot expect anything from God other than the presence of God Himself. We are used to expecting things, and therefore we are also used to utilising persons and things as means for the fulfilment of our expectations. So the very defect in which the human mind is involved transfers its usual ways of the envisagement of values even to God Himself, and while it asks for small things from small persons, it asks for large things from God. The highest devotion is not an asking of anything from God. Then, any kind of ulterior asking ceases in the processes of the mind—it becomes totally selfless. The abolition of individual selfhood in gradual stages is the rise of devotion from the lower level to the higher level, called parabhakti or supreme devotion to God, which is identical with the wisdom of God—inseparable ultimately from the realisation of God Himself.

So the Bhagavadgita here tells us that there are two passages of the soul—the light and the smoke. There is a possibility of going up gradually with no return, and there is also an ascent for the purpose of returning. The soul reaches regions higher and higher until it becomes impossible for it to retain its individuality. That is the way to moksha or salvation by the progressive method of ascent, known as kramamukti. But those souls who are involved a in life of activity for the purpose of profit of one kind or the other, who are not devotees in a truly religious sense but participants in religion for the purpose of attaining earthly goods and recognition of some type or other, will have this desire fulfiled and they will revert to the place from where they started. The Upanishads have given us more details about these paths than we find in the Bhagavadgita, and there are possibilities of the soul getting into different kinds of involvement even after the shedding of this body. There need not be only two paths; there can be many other wanderings of the soul in various other fields of experience due to the complexity of desires. All desires have to end if God is to be reached finally.

That ending of desire is the immediate salvation of the soul. This is what is known as sadyomukti or the entry of the soul into the Supreme Being at once, here itself. There is no travel, no passage of the soul after death, and no reincarnation, nothing of this kind—no rebirth because the soul is immortal and is not conditioned by the process of the material evolution. The power of the universe does not affect it any more, because its experience is not involved in space, time and causation. There is no externalisation of the consciousness of the spirit; there is only a universalisation of it and not externalisation. This attainment of the universality of spirit is known as sadyomukti or immediate salvation. It is immediate because the Universal is present everywhere. There is no need to travel to the Universal, because no concepts of space and time are there. Even the concepts of space and time are involved in Universality, and are swallowed by it. Those who have attuned themselves to the Universal, whose lives are in harmony with the requirements of the law of the Universal, are liberated here itself. One need not wait for liberation after death.

This point will be taken up for consideration in the coming chapters—ninth, tenth and eleventh. In the eighth chapter we are only taken up to the level of the transcendence of God and the possibility of the departure of the soul in the fields to come, above the earth. It is only in the ninth chapter that we will receive a greater consolation by being told that God is not so far away as we were told earlier. His hands operate in this world just now, and devotion becomes an immediate activity of our day-to-day existence, and not merely a performance in a temple or church. Our whole life gets transformed into religion and spirituality when we are told that the law of God rules even this material earth. Towards this end we shall be taken in the coming chapters.