SONG OF ENLIGHTENMENT
SONG OF ENLIGHTENMENT
SWAMI SHYAMENDRA
Modern Presentation
of
Srimad Bhagavad Gita
THE WONDERFUL ART OF
SUCCESSIVE SOMERSAULT
ON THE TRAPEZE OF
SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE
IN PROGRESSIVE SPACE LAYERS
OF DISCRETION
TOWARD HIGHER AND HIGHEST
CONSCIOUSNESS
Aum Namo Bhagavate Vasudevay Foundation, USA
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my Reverend Father who educated me in Gita wisdom ever since I was five years old. Who lived until this book was written, but departed to heaven before it appeared in book form.
It was on Sunday, 26th of January, at 11:00 a.m. when we received the sorrowful message. We entered into prayer, “O Lord of Gita, please bestow peace and joy upon his departed soul.”
With sacred memories of his compassion, concern and belongingness, I offer my heart-felt obeisances to that magnanimous one who always enjoyed speaking and listening the Gita and Ramayan, the two invaluable gems of wisdom of India, the wisest nation of the world.
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
If you would like to know the details of Sri Krishna’s life, please read Swamiji’s recent books: Lord of Love,The Butter Thief God & Song of the Fargone Beloved. In order to enrich your action, read his books the Elegance of Action, & Bliss Enlightenment. In order to mature your yogic experience read his books Power of Powers and commentaries on Yoga Sutra. Enjoy his discourses published in New Insights into Upanishadas, & Nine Tough Yogis. These are but various components of the eternal, timeless message expounded herein, in this Bhagavad Gita.
Additional Life-Evolving Literatures
| he MessageAdvance PsychologyWonderful HealthElegance of ActionI Make My Own Destiny Bliss EnlightenmentPower of PowersAll This Is ThatNew Insights into UpanishadasNine Tough Yogis
Song of Enlightenment Gita The Divine Concerto (Gita Vol. I) 100 Techniques of World Peace Where’ve You Been All My Life (Vol. I Ramayana) Rama Experience (Vol. II) Thy Heart I Know Full Well Lord of Love The Butter Thief God Song of the Fargone Beloved Lost In Oblivion Garland of Love Garland of Bliss Let Me Long To Belong To Her |
Flower Shower to You Glancia Ambrosia Gotta Be A Cub Jesus Christ, Sai Baba, etc!
Lovetrance World (back-issues) Time Track Secret Cave of Aloneness From Nowhere to Now Here Shimmerings of Timelessness Beyond the Horizon of Illusion Journey Into Grace Yoga is transcending the Power Trip Yoga of Cosmic Joke Yoga of the Quantum Leap Yoga of Just floating Into the Divine Yoga of the Musical Thrill Yoga of Acting, Expecting Nothing Yoga of Doing Nothing, Just Existing, plus 60 more…. |
ANBV Foundation
514 West 26th Street, #236, San Pedro, CA 90731-6388 USA
Sudden Enlightenment Cozy Comer, Laxman Jhula 249302 Himalayas. INDIA
ilcc@mrinter.net; mailto:swamishvarnparamhansa@hotrnai
Copyright • 1992 by ANBV Foundation, a subdivision of ILCC
Printed in United States of America
Table of Contents
Can You Believe It?
Introduction
His Mighty Boat & Splashing of His Ore
In His Sacred Remembrance
Learning the Art of Somersault
Arjuna-Visada-Yoga
…The Melancolia…
Sankhya-Yoga
On the Line of Duty
Karma-Yoga
Excellency and Elegance of Action
Jnana-Karma-Sanyasa Yoga
Fire of Understanding
CHAPTER FIVE
Karma-Sanyasa Yoga
Post-Enlightenment Life
CHAPTER SIX
Atma-Samyama Yoga
Flame in a Windless Room Mind in Deep Meditation
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jnana-Vijnana Yoga
Wisdom & Experience
CHAPTER EIGHT
Aksar-Bramha Yoga:
Intergalactic History
CHAPTER NINE
Rajavidya Rajguhya Yoga:
Yoga of Royal Science of Royal Secret
CHAPTER TEN
Vibhuti-Yoga
Divine-Splendors
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Visvarupa-Darsan Yoga
Encounterment with the Cosmic - The Mahakal
CHAPTER TWELVE
Bhakti-Yoga
Yoga of Devotion
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ksetra - Ksetrajna Vibhaga Yoga
Cosmic’s Fusion and Division In Life, Soul & God
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Guna-Tray-Vibhaga Yoga
Triplicity of Nature - The Guna Squad
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Purusottama Yoga
Yoga of Superman - Cosmic Tree of Life
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Daiva-asur-sampad-vibhag Yoga
Angelic & Satanic Wealth
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sraddha-Traya-Vibhaga Yoga
Your Faith in Religion & God Is What?
An Opium, a Hoax, a Business Deal or a Genuine One?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Moksa-Sanyas Yoga
Wisdom-Born Freedom!
Gita-Directory
Gita-Experience
Computer YOGA
Can You Believe It?
EDITORIAL
A visitor asked a holy man, “Sir, why is this handkerchief trembling?”
“Because you came to visit me my child, and I wanted to see you. I had a high fever so I put it in this cloth which happened to be nearby.”
Can you believe it, that this body, mind and all the ideas and understanding about yourself is like a piece of cloth which happened to be nearby, and you, for some unknown reason, have happened to put yourself into it and since then you are not what you are in fact? And since then all the miseries and problems have arisen. And you keep on searching for yourself, Who am I? Who am I? … Answers do come but soon to be proven too pseudo and thus one never finds it. Because your search begins with identification of yourself with the handkerchief and that keeps changing as soon as it is worn out. You even become identified with any new thing, which happens to be nearby. This is the condition of all people throughout the world.
In Gita Krishna explains himself many times in terms of the very Self of all the beings who are lost in an identity crisis. When he says, “Come to Me, Listen to Me, Worship Me, or Relinquish all and take shelter of Me,” he is not saying it out of ego or to control you or enslave you. He only means if you do it you will realize yourself, and doing so age-old problems and suffering will come to an end.
“What a great surprise” A seer says to Krishna, “You are our own Sell, but we take you as the other while actually the body, senses, and mind are others, totality alien, even inert, but we take them as ours, our own, our self, and then we begin to search for ourself somewhere else, all and everywhere… What a great wonder of ignorance?”
That is why a sage promised, “Lord, knowing you one becomes you.” This is him, the very atma of everybody. For the welfare of the world he appeared as another being in the body and began moving and speaking and acting as one of us.
In his cosmic form, space and time are just imposed. When he appears by his maya power, making us feel as if he is also like us and acts among us as one of us, his pastimes are then highly captivating, but all these are only to reach us, to touch our hearts, to convey the message. This is the language he uses just to communicate with us. When infinite is talked in terms of finite there will always be a problem. Therefore, when Krishna says, “I create, I am doing it, you be an instrument, I am the supreme power.” Then just don’t become negative, don’t get turned off. Don’t wonder if he is God, then where I shall be. If he sits on that chair, where will I sit? Don’t compete. You will lose a most wonderful opportunity. Be sympathetic, try to understand his pain. He is trying to tell in various ways, Aksar, nistraigunya, Bramha, purusa, God, Atma, I, mam, etc., that these just terminologies for you, what you actually are, your own future possibility, your ultimate potentiality. So be cooperative and positive, think what he is going through for you. And I am sure you will get the point.
Then whenever you will meet Krishna you will find none else but an advanced state of your ownself. If you are a scientist you’ll find him as a greater scientist. A poet, he is a greater poet; a wrestler, he is the greatest wrestler; a politician, he will he the greater one; if you are a beauty lover, he will be the greatest of all beautifuls; a musician, he is the best musician; mystic, he will be the greatest mystic; if rich, he will be more rich than everybody you have ever heard of; if you are a terminator, he will come to you as a bigger terminator; if you are a logician, he will appear as the world’s best logician. In short Krishna is another name for your own higher possibility. Krishna of Gita transcends individuality. He is Tao, Nirvana, Kaivalya, Self, and so many, and at the same time, none of them. He is just what there is. And to know what there is to this ultimate ISNESS, is the message of Gita of Krishna.
Also, by reading about so many qualities and specialties to develop, your mind may begin to think that it seems too big and troublesome a job, leading towards hard-heartedness, and dry living. Please don’t be stuck with this stereotyped narrow vision. Whenever you enjoy something obviously you become oblivious of other things. It is the same with poetry, love, nature, scientific investigations and philosophy. Absorption is the same; when you taste a delicious item cooked by a friend the absorption is the same as a philosopher in his library. But no one blames you for being hard hearted, cold or alienating others. No, it only pleases you.
The same way when you are expressing the greatest bliss of the world or preparing for it, then naturally you will appear or sound or feel dry and harsh, but this is not so. Your sensitivity, compassion, observation, vitality, and aliveness grow a thousand fold. So don’t be disheartened. You arc definitely growing, enriching and climbing on a solid foundation for the first time in life. Believe it. As firm and strong your trust becomes so much homage descends, and then the entire Gita wisdom become so familiar to you that as soon as you read it you begin to feel it. There have been many great saints who became enlightened in just this way.
Somebody said, “I am. I am all this. And all this is That.”
It is as easy and simple, as nothing else is so easy and simple. Through sadhana, practice, all what we are doing is just unwinding the complexity of vasanas, samskaras, and karma. Cleaning off these dusts; untying the knots of the string.
Please know also that, all indications of “he” in this Gita translation also include “she”. In the soul, in the atma, in the true Self there is no distinction. Whatever is told is equally applied to all ladies of all nations, of all times. It is also the same with children, teens and old age persons. Age, gender, and number, don’t matter. This knowledge is for all children, teens, elderly, ladies, gents, americans, europeans, eskimos, whites, blacks, and everyone else too.
Lastly we would like you to know that this is not the only book of the author. He has presented psychological and yogic commentaries on the very first chapter of Gita in more than one thousand pages, entitled, The Divine Concerto. This great book is available through any bookstore or through ANBV Foundation directly. He has also given discourses on chosen verses of Gita composed in a book entitled Bliss Enlightenment.
If you would like to know the details of the historical background of Arjuna and the Pandavas, he has also written a book entitled, Fantastic World War of Antiquity. This latter book is a mini-Mahabharata. The very essence of history. If you would like to know the details of Sri Krishna’s life, please read his recent books, Lord of Love, Lord of Bliss, & Lord of Beauty. For further knowledge and understanding there are dozens of other titles such as Lost in Oblivion, Thy Heart I Know Full Well, Garland of Love, Garland of Bliss, and yogic books such as Nine Tough Yogis, Upanisad Translations, Yoga Sutra Commentaries, etc. These all are but various composites of the eternal, timeless message expounded here in this Bhagavad Gita.
Thank you very much.
The Editor
Introduction
I am not trying to solve modern man’s problems by turning the clock back to an older era, vice-versa, I am trying to solve modern man’s problems by transcending the clock, entering the timeless realm of consciousness through this timeless message which appeared in the world in 3000 B.C.
Life is a great laboratory in which finer and finest experiments are going on. On the finest levels the experiment itself transforms into experience. And experience in its light of maturity, transcending all, embraces the Absolute Reality.
Our brain has approximately ten to twenty billion brain cells. All are interconnected. They produce electrical signals of fluctuating frequency, known as brain waves. While working on conscious mind level one remains in the Beta wave length. When working on the subconscious level, Alpha and Thcla waves commence. When you are hostile and cold blooded. Alpha activity is dramatically decreased; when you are warm and creative, enthusiastic and vital (hey increase. Delta wave signals a much deeper and creative experience of life.
If you understand this Gita wisdom, it is very likely that the reputed wonders of Alpha could be effectively harnessed by you. The famed American mystic Edgar Caycc said, “You get to heaven on the arms of the people you’ve helped.” The essence of the most part of Gita’s sermon is, “Doing skillfully your duty, risking everything, expecting nothing.” This is the way to be free from bounds of ropes of negative pathological instincts. Then highest wisdom is at hand, and this alone offers freedom, which is eternal and everlasting.
Jean Paul Sartre’s patent idea is, “We arc condemned to be free.” He describes how noble and aristocratic was his grandpa who look care of his mother and he after the death of his father. To finance the household he took a job in his old age. Very generous and praise worthy. But Sartre’s penetrating eyes unfold more than regular eyes can see. The lerriblc narrowness of heart and mind, along with the helplessness of his mother even in the safe shelter of her own father’s home. Those were the days when physical and sexual abuse had not begun, but still, a subtle exploitation, hypocrisy, and selfishness was going under the banner and label of high sounding liberal principles. Sartre saw it. Hearing about it startles us really and makes us wonder how hypocritical and selfish our own society is, hiding under the guise of charity and philanthropy. It may be going on only simply because no one has pointed it out. Then maybe Krishna is right; but too much right may be too scary.
In Sartre’s novel “Nausea” the main character Roqucnlin says, “This nausea is now not only inside me but I am the one who is within it. Things are divorced from their name. Existence is purposeless, meaningless, and shapeless…” And he goes on. But all what he is saying is what one feels during the vairagya and pratyahar practicing stages of yoga. Only his case it was shrouded in a negative light and in yoga it is seen through a positive vision.
“God is dead, we have murdered him - You & I. We are all his murderers.” Nietzsche pours out his heart from the mouth of a raving madman who was searching God in the crowded market place, holding a lantern in the broad daylight.
What he means to say is simply the death of our complex, shaky belief in God, which to Karl Marx is, but an intoxication of opium. He talks of death of modern man’s hypocrisy of God’s belief, but makes God more alive through the conception of a superman. No matter how Aclolf Hitler perverted and deformed this idea and tried to be the one and failed, still through the spirit of Nietzsche there opens a wonderful door to understand (iila and the God whom he couldn’t make alive. Tli.it < iod is right line in this Clita, the only one alive, enlivening all and everything of (he woild, through love, life and rejuvenation.
We find in European history all along since 5(X) BC, Heraclitus talking against Pamienides, Socrates talking against the democrats, Plato against the Sophists, Descartes against the Empiricists and Scholastics, Hume against Descartes, and Kant against Hume. German Romanticism, philosophy of Enlightenment, Beethoven and Wordsworth among these wonders here comes George Wilhelm Hegel and his historicity of philosophy makes such a pool that embraces all.
The same way in India, Shankara talked against Buddha, Ramanuja talked against Shankara, Madhva moves apart from Ramanuja, Chaitanya drifts still further. Haridas & Harivamsha explore still new wonders far away from the past. But all these and many more are floating on the nectarine pool of Krishna’s Gita. Some blossomed into fragrant (lowers, others by now have spread into thousands. Others siill are in seed form, still others in bud form. But they are all here in this Gita. And that’s why I chose; I thought, let me translate the Gita. And here I go….
Before I go I offer my heart-felt, warmest thanks to Amandaji who so nicely edited the language and placed them in the form of free verses. I offer my warm thanks to Shyamasundar for fixing beautiful music in my poem Gita-Experience. May Lord of Gita bestow blessing upon them.
-SwamiShyam
January 20th, 1992
…His Mighty Boat
& Splashing of His Ore…
I was then so ecstatic eight years old about as I was picking up Gita from the hands of my reverend father, contained in a shining small silver box. I ran down among the bushes of marigold plants and green grass carpeted lawn in the garden beside our home and opened page after page… I do not know what I read but great ecstacy filled my heart great love inundated. I became so deeply in love with each of those plants and trees and flowers and sky above as I loved myself… What I read then, - now I know, and that’s what I have put in this book, page after page after page wonderful, amazing, sparkling diamonds and emeralds and sapphires of Gita-wisdom.
The easiest, simplest, integrating, illuminating translation of gita is in your hand. Please enjoy it as each sip of your morning coffee; taste, relish and relax in it; make it your own. As much as it grows into your own your true Self will shine in effulgence of peace, love and wisdom infinite.
When I was about ten or twelve I started learning to sing verses of Gita and understand the meaning. My reverend father would speak at times at length and the whole house would become an audience. There was a series of introductory verses I remember now faintly in which the war was described as a fierceful river as if an Amazon or Congo, and all warriors were dangerous water beasts, water whirls, ebbs and tides. Anyone can devour in a second. But then there was a boat and Krishna was sailing it, Arjuna was sitting on it, all safe.
The river of war is the river of life; urges of lust, anger, jealousy, greed, boredom, loneliness, are the water beasts; anytime, from anywhere they attack and there goes a way to instant downfall forever. But then here comes Krishna sailing the mighty boat of Gita, who picks you up and sets you comfortably in the boat’s state room, this luxury cruiseship of Gita wisdom.
Life is still a fierceful river full of beasts not outside but inside. From inside they take over your brain, your heart, your body, and as if an electrode has been placed in the head and programmed accordingly, you become an enemy of your own liberation. Enemies change shifts. One after another, non-stop it goes on all life. Our attachments, greed, stubbornness, angers, prejuditions, egoisms, are beastly notions inducing drugs of their obsessions in our system, which they rule over.
Now enough time has been wasted, we’ve got to shout out - “O Krishna”,”Oh Krishnam Lordam, come, come dear, bring your boat please…” And lo, there, shimmering, shining, smiling he looms up he is coming, coming to pick you up. Now you are on the boat. Page after page after page reading, absorbing, feel the splashing sound of Krishna’s ore, his presence, his perfumes…
While all over and all around there are those beasts, still roaming, hungry, fieceful, frightening on all sides, trying to get you, but they are in the water and you are in the boat of Gitanic Wisdom under Krishna’s mighty protection, who is your own purified intuition… Again it is you who have to make your this intuition mightier and mightier. His recognition, His formal acquaintance, and this Gitanic wisdom is the way…
In His Sacred Remembrance
“The world is a shoreless, bottomless pit of mire. As soon as you are born and become trained in social manners and customs the sticky, soggy, ugly stinking mud of ignorance- a misunderstanding almost about everything, starts entangling you in its trap… You’re stuck; but can’t leave, can’t escape, can’t avoid. Because, you can’t live without this world. Even if you go to - Himalayas, America, or Heaven, world is there too. Although in another form. But world is world. And world is thickly painted with worldliness. And world withoul worldliness is Liberation, is a sigh of Aha experience. You’ve to be free from worldliness while yet remaining here in this world. You’ve to be in snow-white suit even being in thick, black painted world, remaining absolutely unstained. You’ve to learn and master the art of somersault.”
That is what my Reverend Father said- He said this when I was little while watching a circus,
“Listen Jiwan, - You’ve got to do somersault. And Gita is the art of grandest somersault from the trapeze of intellectual skillfulness spinning towards progressive skies of discretion, intuition, mystica & cosmica consciensia. Make an astounding somersault. A wise man who understands the Gita well is a catcher, who is always ready with his safety net. You’ve got to learn to spin with the speed of 85 miles an hour. Be accurate and precise in timing. Be well prepared so that you’ll never land on your neck, or head.
“And listen,” -he said
“Being warmly interested in the wisdom of Gita is the peak of maturity and that is the secret of intellectual height. If only Gita becomes the necklace gem of your life that is getting onto the trapeze…”
So Hi readers,
Are you on the trapeze—-?
Then here we begin our somersault…
Learning the Art of Somersault
Sir, how to somersault?
Please study each Chapter with timeless, reathless and bodiless intensity. Each of these Eighteen Chapters are varieties of spinning in the air. You have to be beyond body-consciousness to be on the trapeze. Then somersault either in the air of immortal love or submergence into Bramhic experience.
Where is the audience?
The whole world is the audience. When you land back on body-consciousness you are the most needed person by everybody. Then you are the actor, you are the Hero, you are the living messenger of God and the redeemer of the world.
What if Gita is too difficult for me and I can’t understand it?
Then just sit cross-legged, spine straight, and meditate. You are doing actual somersault and Lord Krishna is standing there with the safety net.
What if I cannot sit cross-legged?
Then be in whatever pose you can sit in and visualize like that.
What if I can’t do that?
Then, whatever you know of Gita, just preaches it to others. Win many souls for Lord Krishna. In Chapter Eighteen he has promised that he will take care of you if you do this. So do this.
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