The Language of the Bhagavadgita: 4. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday 28, November 2025, 19:40.
Article
Scriptures
The Language of the Bhagavadgita: 4. 
Swami Krishnananda
(Gita Jayanti Message spoken on December 26, 1982)

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You would have yourself observed that when you glance through any page, any verse, any word of the Bhagavadgita text, you would have received some inspiration when your spirits are drooping. When you are agony-ridden and distressed, and you see no meaning in things due to your sorrow, at that time when you open the Bhagavadgita you would have seen something scintillating, piercing, and projecting itself as a solution of your problem in a motherly, kindly affection. This is what I found, and everybody would have found it.

The Bhagavadgita is principally God speaking to man, and when God speaks, you know what He will speak. Everything is spoken when God speaks because God is all things, the supreme be-all and end-all. Arjuna’s multi-formed vision as recorded in the Eleventh Chapter cannot be called Sri Krishna, the son of Devaki, Vasudeva, a Yadava prince, a friend of Arjuna. You can imagine what sort of thing it could have been that this poor Arjuna visualised. Vṛṣṇīnāṁ vāsudevosmi (B.G. 10.37): I am Vasudeva among the Vrishnis. Who speaks this? Vasudeva himself will not say that. There is somebody else speaking behind the screen and saying, “I am Krishna among the Yadavs, as I am many things among many other things.”

This grew into a mighty magnificence of universal expanse which is the supreme shaktipada, as we may say in modern style—God entering man and possessing him, flooding him, overpowering him, destroying his existence itself, frightening him to his core, and compelling this frightened poor spirit to exclaim the very same prayers which were put into the mouth of Arjuna in the Eleventh Chapter: “Mighty Being, I cannot tolerate the vision presented before me.” Perhaps it is the salt doll that, before stepping into the ocean in which it is going to melt, gets frightened at the very sight of it and exclaims, “Enough of this!” When our feet go one inch deep into the waters of the ocean, we get frightened at the waves dashing upon us and we draw ourselves back. We cannot even see the ocean without a sense of shocking fright which passes through the very veins of our body because it is a terror, and we know its powers. Jnatum, drastum, pravestum are the words used towards the end of the Eleventh Chapter in connection with the manner in which the soul tunes itself with God-existence. It has to be understood, and the understanding was communicated in a mighty manner throughout the chapters leading up to the Ninth or Tenth, we may say. Then comes drastum: It has to be seen. And it was seen by Arjuna. He understood what it could be when, in the Tenth Chapter, he was told what God could be and what He is. “Oh, it is like this. I understand. Jnana has come. Now darshana is necessary.” Manyase yadi tac chakyaṃ mayā draṣṭum iti prabho, yogeśvara tato me tvaṃ darśayātmānam avyayam (B.G. 11.4): “O Lord, if you feel I am fit for this vision, deign, condescend to grant me this vision.”

The vision was granted. The whole sky was lit up with light, and thousands of suns arose, as it were, said the poet. What else can be said? Thousands of suns are nobodies before this light, but we have to say something. What else can we say? We are like frogs in a well and the ocean is so big, but whatever we say, it cannot be equal to the actual ocean. So we may say it is like thousands of suns or millions of suns, but that cannot be an adequate description of God’s glory. We have not seen any light greater than the sun’s light, so we can only multiply the sun’s light arithmetically and imagine that God must have been like that. However, God is more than all He has created, even greater than the sun’s light itself. Well, the vision was granted, but we do not know whether Arjuna actually entered it. Pravesha perhaps was not done. He visualised it, and there the matter ended.

Arjuna said, “Come down. I shall be pleased to see you once again as my comrade, my jolly friend Sri Krishna, not as this mighty terror before me.” It appears that Arjuna did not enter it, because he was still the same Arjuna after the Gita was spoken. He was not a different person. At least this is what we have to believe, as it is told in the Mahabharata itself. It was a sudden injection of a power that was required at that moment, and perhaps when the work was over the power was withdrawn. It was not essential for Arjuna to be always in that condition. It was not necessary, and it would also not have been proper.

However, we are seekers and are humbly trying to tread this path of divine glory though we have not entered it, not visualised it, perhaps not even properly understood it. Our plight is far, far below that unconditional surrender which Arjuna felt necessary when his total personality was tending to melt as a ball of lead melts in furnace fire, or mist melts before the sun.

This glorious advent of the Bhagavadgita is the sacred occasion of our prayers and worships today. As I mentioned, the Gita is not a book. No religion considers its scripture as a mere book, just as you are not a mere body. You know very well you are so-and-so, and are not merely a body, though nothing can be seen about you except your body. The Bhagavadgita is not a book, though it looks like a book and nothing else is seen there. As we have something non-physical within us though only the physical is seen, there is something super-physical and super-linguistic in the Bhagavadgita, apart from its appearing as a Sanskrit text which can be understood by grammatical interpretations and the application of semantics, etc.

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Continues

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