Swami Gober's Bhagavad Gita Commentary: Introductory Essay - 29

Everlasting Shame

But, if thou wilt not fight in this righteous war, then, having abandoned thine duty and fame, thou shalt incur sin.

People, too, will recount thy everlasting dishonour; and to one who has been honoured, dishonour is worse than death.

Bhagavad Gita, Chap 2, ver 33,34

The Mahabharata war was not a righteous war, as Krishna claims; it was a devious war. The Bhagavad Gita is not a sublime philosophy, as people generally think; it is something of a not-so-subtle subterfuge. The Bhagavad Gita is a Trojan horse, only much more insidious.

Ancient Troy was a great city. As recounted by Virgil in his Aeneid, the Greeks dissemble to give up their ten-year brutal siege of the city of Troy, and appear to have sailed back home. Released from long years of grueling standoff, the Trojans step out of their fortressed territory, breathe free at last, and survey their battered shores. They descry some ships receding over the horizon, and then lay eyes on a mysterious gigantic wooden horse standing tall on the sea-coast. To anyone with an iota of common sense the very first thought that could have occurred in such a situation, upon catching sight of this building-sized enigmatical equine, is that there could very well be soldiers cached inside it. After all, the Trojans were out to inspect if their coastline had been fully cleared up, danger could be lurking about anywhere. Even if a very small number of Greek warriors got to infiltrate their city, the retreating Greek armies could double back and Troy would be highly assailable this time. It was a situation where people ought to have exercised extreme caution. But no, they are already in a party mood, brimming with gaiety. Children rollick around the horse, men and women forgather close to it whispering among themselves, while the puzzled King Priam consults his advisors as to what this beastly colossus could be. Presently, some people sight a Greek soldier trudging along in dejection from far away, appearing to be a frustrated deserter. They approach him and upon inquiring learn that this horse is an offering to the goddess Athena. The faker professes that worshipping it would bring them prosperity. And so the unsuspecting folks merrily haul the monstrously heavy horse into their city and set it up in their temple. They dance, drink and celebrate late into the night. When everyone has succumbed to drunken stupor or fallen asleep, Odysseus and a couple of hundred other Greek warriors cooped up inside the beast’s belly break free and promptly set about to slaughter the whole quiescent, hapless town.

Whether it really happened or not, this is a most ridiculous story. How could anyone be so gullible and stupid as to lug in the enemy onto the altar of their temple, fancying to venerate it with religious fervor? Manifestly, the Trojan horse was conceived by ninnyhammers who hadn’t an iota of simple horse sense — imagine the Trojans getting hold of the chintzy ruse and somehow sealing up the horse and sinking it into the bottom of the Aegean sea! Regardless, the Greeks did no dishonorable thing in pursuing this stratagem, they were simply desperate and were discharging their duty to the best of their ability, striving for victory and fame by hook or by crook, but it is a shame that the Trojans who so bravely withstood the Greek onslaught for a decade, suddenly decayed in their brains, forsook all their wits at the last moment and embraced the sanguinary adversary; offering themselves to be unceremoniously sacrificed to the Greek goddess of war, Athena, who later became the goddess of heroic endeavor, and finally morphed into the goddess of wisdom! It is a shame too, an everlasting shame, that Indians dragged in this small section of the Mahabharata — subversively inserted into the epic at a much later date — into their temples, homes and hearths and began worshipping it as a goddess. A goddess of war and cunning transmogrified once again into a goddess of heroic endeavor and wisdom!

A prayer invoking the goddess of the Bhagavad Gita, which often appears preambling the main scripture, goes like this:

Om. O Bhagavad Gita, with which Partha was illumined by Lord Narayana Himself, and which was composed within the Mahabharata by the ancient sage, Vyasa, O Divine Mother, the destroyer of rebirth, the showerer of the nectar of Advaita, and consisting of eighteen discourses—upon Thee, O Gita, O affectionate Mother, I meditate!

The Bhagavad Gita by its own declaration and by common consent is regarded as the essence of the Upanishads, Hindu sacred texts that spasmodically roll out nuggets of the truly empyrean philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. People generally regard the Bhagavad Gita as the supreme expression of Advaita. The doctrine of Advaita is the doctrine of non-dualism which proclaims that whatever exists is only one Being and one soul. Standing in sharp contrast to Advaita are the devotional philosophies of Dvaita and Vishistadvaita, dualism and qualified monism, which posit a separation between the individual soul and God. While Vishistadvaita grants that the individual soul can eventually merge into God, Dvaita doesn’t even allow for that much. And the Bhagavad Gita, rather oddly, is rallied around and hailed equally by all these three sharply divergent paths.

This is a central paradox in regard to the Bhagavad Gita, it is the principal text of both the Advaita philosophy of Hinduism and the Dvaita cult though these two are antithetical to each other. Normally, this is glibly explained away by pointing out that each chapter of the Bhagavad Gita focuses on a particular approach to God, therefore the book can be construed as an attempt at synthesizing various schools and paths. But that’s nonsense. Spiritual leaders of various sects have written extensive commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, and it is generally assumed that each of them emphasized those particular verses which resonated with their line of philosophy and interpreted the scripture in ways that suited them better. There does exist some small scope for varying interpretations, nevertheless the overall drift of the Bhagavad Gita is quite unambiguous — it is a thoroughgoing ISKCON document, i.e., a manifesto of Dvaita / Vaishnava sect.

Vaishnavism is a grossly idolatrous creed that has nothing to do with any philosophy in any philosophical sense. Krishna goes on exhorting Arjuna, ‘Love me, worship me, believe in me, know me as the supreme God, offer everything to me, consecrate your work to me, seek only to come to me and you will come to me,’ ad nauseam. There is nothing but this in the whole of the Bhagavad Gita. From this way and that, Krishna comes again and again to the same point, ‘Love Me, worship Me, take refuge in Me, do whatever I say, and you will reach to the supreme goal, which is Me again!’ Even the very last concluding verse of the Gita asseverates the same thing:

Sarvadharmaan parityajya maamekam sharanam vraja;

Aham twaa sarvapaapebhyo mokshayishyaami maa shuchah.

Abandoning all dharmas, take refuge in Me alone;

I will liberate thee from all sins; grieve not.

chap 18, ver 66

‘Dharma’ is a bouncy, multifaceted term which can mean anything — duty, religiousness, righteousness, virtue, nature, whatever. In effect, Krishna is saying, commit all the sins you want and forget everything else, just take refuge in me, and I will take good care of you for all eternity! That is the final and in fact the only message of the Gita, clear and straightforward. Where in Hades is Advaita in this? How on earth could this book have been regarded as the principal text of Hinduism, and placed right next to the lofty Upanishads? It is just because Krishna couldn't go on reprising ‘Love me, worship me, take refuge in me,’ for 18 chapters continuously that he brings in this thing and that thing now and then, here and there, to break the monotony. But there is no equivocation whatsoever in the main thrust of the Gita. Certainly there are good many references to Advaita in the book, but on the whole there is no enunciation of any great philosophy here, nor anything like psychological insight or profound spirituality. Yet, a priori, everyone considers it to be the crowning manifestation of perennial philosophy. The Bhagavad Gita's insightfulness, sublimity, practical relevance have been lauded by swamijis, pundits, scholars, followers and non-followers alike down through the ages. I am just flabbergasted.

One of the Gita's most famous commentaries is by Adi Shankaracharya, the great ninth-century expounder of the Advaita school of Vedanta, and the Gita is surprisingly often associated with Advaita and Vedanta, the philosophical core of Hinduism, whereas there is really not much of anything like that in the book. What is mostly there is quite its antithesis. How could this possibly be, how could such a fantastically blatant scam be perpetrated upon billions of people down the centuries?

The story of Trojan horse can give us some succor here, it shows us that people can be infinitely dumb, they can bring in something which should be shunned like the plague, right into their hearths and their very hearts, place it in the sanctum sanctorum and idolize it. ‘O mother goddess, O source of infinite life, O dispeller of eternal darkness!’ — it goes on. The Bhagavad Gita is a part of mind warfare. Verses from it have contrived to slink in and sink into the minds of millions of people, destroying their intelligence! Troy just perished overnight. It was an instantaneous death. But it had been a long, long night for India. India kept perishing and perishing for ages. It is perpetual ignominy, everlasting dishonor, shame unending.

“You can't fool all the people all the time,” goes the adage. The Bhagavad Gita, the Song Celestial, is an incontrovertible testimony that indeed you can fool all the people all the time! Not just counting Indians, but Emerson, Thoreau, Aldous Huxley, Einstein, and so on, the list of world luminaries who spoke in lavish praise of this book is simply surprising. Here is this pure hogwash, which appears to me more like a funny parody of a scripture than any kind of real thing, and great intellects all the world over have gone on waxing seriously poetic about it. It is unbelievable, and what a shame too! I haven't so far come across any intellectual or spiritual person who talks about the Gita and does not regard it in high esteem. Not even a small reservation, not a single negative comment, generally speaking. The Lord and his Cosmic Wisdom have fooled so many wise people who are not otherwise likely to be fooled! And here I am, Swami Gober always at your service, attempting to deconstruct this holiest of holies (as well as the phoniest of phonies), verse by verse, and demolish it. Freedom of mind, open space to think, grow and explore! I hope my readers would appreciate the uniqueness and intrepidity of my humble undertaking.