The Language of the Bhagavadgita: 3. Swami Krishnananda.- November 07, 2025.

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Friday 07, November 2025, 19:40.
Article
Scriptures
The Language of the Bhagavadgita: 3. 
Swami Krishnananda
(Gita Jayanti Message spoken on December 26, 1982)

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The difficulty of Arjuna at the commencement of the war has been rightly considered as similar to, or rather identical with, the astonishing problem facing a spiritual seeker in his arduous struggle to move towards God and His realisation. Where to demarcate this point of the difference between the ordinary conversation that might have taken place between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, and where it overcame this limit, we cannot say. All this is beyond us. However, it is certain that it grew into terrible intensity as it reached the Ninth or the Tenth Chapter perhaps, and it burst all boundaries when it reached the Eleventh. When the Eleventh Chapter records the conversation, it is difficult to believe that any ordinary conversation took place. The Being that spoke even on the verge of the conclusion of the Tenth Chapter, more properly in the Eleventh Chapter itself, could not be a linguistic medium that spoke in any language whatsoever. Something entered the soul of Arjuna at his very core and spoke, as I mentioned, as we would expect God to speak.

We cannot know how God speaks—with His tongue, with His eyes, with His hands, with what medium? That medium is not mortal. It is an immortal non-communicational system of communication, a type of enlightenment which cannot be communicated, because it is not possible for want of a communicating medium. This is what Vasishtha spoke to Sri Rama on one occasion when he said this heightened form of wisdom, knowledge or enlightenment cannot be communicated from one to another because there is no means of communication. What is the instrument to be used in communicating this wisdom? Language is inappropriate. No word known to man can carry this wisdom, as a dry straw cannot carry hot embers. Thus, the Bhagavadgita is considered as a divine revelation and not an ordinary written textbook. It is charged with some power which can only be called divine, nothing less.

The recorder of this great gospel, Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, was another miracle in himself. He was not in any way less than Sri Krishna, as we are told. According to our accepted traditional belief, great Masters like Vasishtha, Krishna, Vyasa and Suka were on an equal pedestal in knowledge and power. There is no comparison among them. And the recorder of this great gospel, which is a great mystery in itself, was also a mystery. There are many traditions which tell us many things about the way in which the Bhagavadgita was recorded by Sri Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa. Some say he was visualising directly what was happening and recording it then and there, as it was, as we are told, was the way in which Valmiki wrote the Ramayana. It was written during the lifetime of Rama himself, not afterwards, because it was sung in Rama’s own court by his own children. They could foresee things, and the future of Rama’s life was recorded by Valmiki even before the events took place. Some say that Vyasa could visualise the future, and that he foresaw all the details of the events that were to take place later on, when he spoke to Dhritarashtra even before the war took place. With a new eye altogether, called the third eye, Vyasa could know and see every bit, all the minutiae of the whole thing that was to take place.

Others hold that the omniscience of Vyasa cannot be expected to forget what it knows, and it was recorded later on by the scribe, the great Lord Ganapati himself. We do not know whether Ganapati was summoned exactly at the time when things were taking place in the Mahabharata venue or it was a later event. However, many divine features seem to commingle in increasing the sanctity of this divine gospel, the Bhagavadgita: the great Lord speaking in whatever way he might have spoken, a great Lord, Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, dictating, and a great Lord, Bhagavan Ganapati Ganesha, writing it down.

This is like Ganga who touched the three great divine beings, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva. She flowed from the kamandal of Brahma, fell on the feet of Narayana, and then descended on the head of Siva. Just as we have the sacred Ganga who touched all the three great divine beings, likewise, the Bhagavadgita is a Ganga flowing before us as divine grace. We can call it only divine grace: love of God for man. God loves man. Sri Krishna loved Arjuna, and the Absolute loves its own creation. Grace flows immensely, like the flow of milk from the udder of a cow or the flow of honey, as all love is. And here is the Bhagavadgita before us: a concrete, substantial manifestation in language, the language of Bhagavan Vyasa himself, who was not less than Bhagavan Sri Krishna in any way.

Thus, the Bhagavadgita, in the language it is written today, is not merely an instrument of communicating divine knowledge to us, but it is divine grace descending upon us. It is holy, supremely sanctified. The vibrations that the Bhagavadgita recitations set up are said to be in tune with, en rapport with, the vibrations which emanated from the mind of Vyasa himself, or perhaps the vibrations of the Supreme Being, the Viratsvarupa, God Himself, when he dictated this great gospel to Lord Ganesha. Sarva sastra mayi gita: All the sciences of human life are explained in some way or the other, in some verse, in some place or some context or the other of the Bhagavadgita. All the Shastras are there; you need not read any other book. This one book is sufficient to unravel the mystery of the human predicament.

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