The Importance of the Bhagavadgita-4 : Swami Krishnananda

24/04/2019
(Gita Jayanti Message spoken on December 26, 1982.)
4.

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 equal pedestals 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. And 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, similar to, we are told, 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 even the future of Rama’s life was recorded by Valmiki before the events took place. Some say that Vyasa could visualise the future, and 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, transcribing it.

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, and 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. Just as 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 none less than Bhagavan Sri Krishna in any way.

To be continued ..