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"The first Marathi poet... at once a devotee, a Yogin and a thinker,"—this was how Sri Aurobindo spoke of Jnaneshwar in the context of Indian culture and literature. His magnum opus Bhavartha Deepika, popularly known as Jnaneshwari, was written seven hundred years ago when the Yogi-Poet was just about fifteen years of age. It is a marvellous literary work and presents the Gita in the form of a series of discourses. Jnaneshwar gave these discourses in the temple of Mhalsa at Newase on the bank of the river Pravara, in Maharashtra. In the process, he recreated in his language another magnificence that has remained unsurpassed ever since. In fact, it has acquired the status of a scripture in the vernacular. Jnaneshwari is recited regularly and revered in every Marathi household even today. The scripture has proved to be an unfailing spiritual guide to the seeker souls.
We are glad to bring to you a study of Jnaneshwari, entitled The Wager of Ambrosia, by Prof. R. Y. Deshpande. It presents the Marathi Adi Kavi's work in an entirely new way. Prof. Deshpande,— a well acclaimed poet, writer, critic and scientist,—is a professor of physics at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education and also the Associate Editor of Mother India, a monthly review of culture, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. A major part of The Wager of Ambrosia, a phrase taken from Jnaneshwari, was first serialised in the Ashram periodical during April 1997 and January 1999.
The Wager of Ambrosia is a broad appreciation of certain aspects of the great poet's commentary on the Gita. It deals with some spiritual, yogic, poetic, literary, philosophical topics and provides a distinct perspective in the light of Sri Aurobindo. Extensive use of the Marathi text as well as of the Gita adds to its value in a great way. We hope Prof. Deshpande's work will throw open the doors to fresher and rewarding studies of the Yogi-Poet's timeless creation and help our readers comprehend it in its deeper sense.
Chapter 1
It is said that when the Sanskrit version of Jnaneshwar’s Amritanubhava was shown to Raman Maharshi he danced with joy. He would have gone into deep ecstasy had he read in Marathi the Yogi-Poet’s work on the Gita. This work is commonly known as Jnaneshwari and has the status of a guide-book in the vernacular, even that of a Scripture. The composition is not exactly a commentary, but it takes the Gita only as a precious occasion to create poetic magnificence in yet another medium. Profound spiritual philosophy based on spiritual experiences are described in the language of a mystic and not that of a metaphysician. Seven hundred shlokas of the Scripture have been rendered into nine-thousand owis in a mood as if a whole new aesthetic world were spread out for the spirit’s free and wide-ranging enjoyment. In it the luminous density and dignity of Sanskrit turns into lyrical felicity of a young or fresh Prakritic dialect which is also revealingly true to the warmth and meaning of the original’s substance. With it arrives the dawn of a new literature.
An owi is a three-and-half line verse-unit with the first three lines rhyming with one another and the last half making a brief completing statement. There are generally eight to ten syllables in each line and the whole presents a poetic argument in a swift and terse but vivid fashion. The terse and the swift in these verses actually mean composed definiteness and subtle suggestive many-sidedness of sense in which poetry is neither crammed nor allowed to disperse in a facile uncontrolled manner. Though pretty ornate, this poetry is highly reflective and throughout there is a spiritual atmosphere. In its calm arrive mysterious sounds whose source is hidden in the depth of silence that upholds everything. Though not quite mantric, the Word unmistakably carries in its gleaming contents what Sri Aurobindo calls the overhead rhythm. Its beauty and charm are persuasive and the poet delights in piling simile upon simile to make his point. It is not infrequent to see a dozen illustrations given to elucidate a single proposition. These illustrations abound in glimpses of nature, in truths
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and facts of life, in shades of human psychology as much as they touch upon aspects of yogic disciplines. While we may get an impression that Jnaneshwar has a leaning in thought somewhat towards the Shankarite Adwaita, it cannot be said that he considered the world to be illusory. The unborn and yet taking birth and the actionless and yet active in his dynamism—such is the divinity of the Supreme in this world and it is in it that we are enjoined to live. It indeed is the true and great liberation, param mukti, mukti from the littleness, from this “transient and sorrowful” existence.
The composition of Jnaneshwari is in the manner of a discourse in which the speaker is explaining the Gita to a mixed audience; in the group there are also well-qualified and competent listeners, though perhaps fewer in number. But the exhortation transcends the immediate context and goes beyond the local-temporal to gather the infinite. The method of discourse gives an easy happy fluency to the presentation, and the sustained audience is indicative of its success. This can happen only when the narrator is clear in mind about the ideas and thoughts he is going to expound. Nowhere is there any hurry; nowhere does the inspiration sag to rob poetry of its charm. There is a joyous awareness of truth and beauty entering into another enterprise of aesthetic experience. The essence of delight, rasa, is everywhere. In fact it is that which weathered the seven centuries with their stormy vicissitudes. The thirty-thousand horsemen of Malik Kaffoor, Alauddin Khilji’s rapacious commander, had not yet descended on the country in the Deccan and there was still the wise and noble king Ramadevaraya reigning from Devagiri to lend wisdom and nobility to life. There was peace and plenty in the land. This prosperity and peace also encouraged artistic and literary activities, with the king himself as their high patron. Jnaneshwar belongs to this period. It is to such a class of the élite that he is reciting the Gita recreated in his Marathi. Eloquence and elegance of the poem bespeak well of it. Prior to this there was hardly anything of value in Marathi and whatever little was there was essentially Sanskritic and metaphysical. But Jnaneshwari, the magnum opus of the Yogi-Poet, gave birth to a new language, offering to the creative spirit a new world of delight. In it, to use a phrase from the magnum opus itself, the ineffable and the effable, Para and Vaikhari, the supreme and the spoken tongues join together;
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in it the secular and the esoteric lose all essential distinction and there is only one single urge. Indeed, while the Yogi-Poet prepared a lustrous body for the language, he also gave to it, more importantly, a gleaming soul even if more thoughtful and meditative than exuberant and emotional. In an obvious reference to Jnaneshwar, Sri Aurobindo speaks of him as the “first Marathi poet... at once a devotee, a Yogin and a thinker.” All the three elements, with a stronger intellectual élan, are characteristically present in Jnaneshwari.
Jnaneshwar completed his work in 1290, at the age of fifteen. It was in the temple of Mhalsa, in Newase, on the southern bank of the Pravara, that he discoursed on the Gita for about three years. The simple folk of the village would gather there regularly and drink of the nectarine poetry as fresh as the water of the River. The rapt crowd consisted of young men and old men, women and children, and the expounder, while unravelling the mysteries of the Scripture, had to take them along with him. But, then, in the audience were also learned people and exceptional people, great souls, who remained spellbound as the honeyed words flowed from the lips of the young speaker. The water of the river Pravara is famous for its sweetness and so too flowed this holy sanctity in a broad crystalline stream, about to join the sacred Godavari. It was for the first time that people were hearing such words in their language, Marathi. Through it directly the voice of the Lord reached the devotee-heart and it felt blessed. They did not know Sanskrit and until then they were deprived of this blessedness, but with Jnaneshwari a whole new world of devotional life opened out for them. The first Marathi poet combined in himself the lyrical mysticism of Valmiki and the spiritual classicism of Vyasa to build the foundation of a larger collective social order. The method of the poet is reiterative, emphasising each idea or concept with the help of several examples. It does amount to a kind of poetic fervour, but it is meant for the listeners to understand what is being presented. Explanatory-exhortative is the technique which makes sure that the author is sure of what he is speaking about. The commentary therefore, instead of becoming a darshana or metaphysical tract on abstruse systems, acquires the status and dignity of a literary creation which is revelatory in its knowledge and substance. In fact, the author’s title of the book is Bhavartha Deepika—“The Purported Sense Illuminator”
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—which offers fair freedom to elaborate upon the meaning of the original. Thus the poetic work also becomes a spiritual guide-book. Its mellifluence is haunting and there is the sublimity of Himalayan altitudes, yet the narrator requests the indulgence of the audience. Not that there is diffidence; but he is conscious that what he is trying is something quite unusual which will be considered scandalous by the traditionalists and the purists. The family—his parents and with him his two brothers and one sister—had to suffer social humiliation; maybe it is a thing of the past now, but such were the cruel realities of the time and Jnaneshwar had to face them as aspects of the lifeless spirit. However, we should also be fair to the learned Brahmins who diligently preserved the Shastric textual body for the benefit of the common kind: the moment they recognised that Jnaneshwar was not an ordinary person but possessed supernatural yogic powers, they admitted that the documented scriptural stipulations could not be applied to such highly evolved beings. Incidentally Sachidananda, who was brought back to life by Jnaneshwar and who became later his devotee and disciple, copied the verses as the composition proceeded. The poet acknowledges this debt in the epilogue of the poem. Very little is known about the author and his works—as far as historical details are concerned—and much has assumed the form of astounding mediaeval myths.
The version of Jnaneshwari which we have at present was edited by Sant Eknath, the sixteenth-century householder poet and devotee. In the course of the intervening three-hundred years Jnaneshwari had got greatly corrupted with misinterpretations and interpolations and the text had to be critically looked into. There is a belief that Jnaneshwar himself, in his subtle form, told Eknath to undertake the work of preparing an authentic text of the original. It is the authority of this critical edition that we now accept, for all our religious, philosophical and literary references. However, we have no idea of the method the bhakta adopted in carrying out this research. Yet the standard text is fairly dependable and, more importantly, the spiritual contents are genuine. We can breathe in it and grow in it, as would a flame in the tapas-force of a Yogi. That is a great gift indeed.
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Chapter 2
Jnaneshwar likens the Gita to a rain-bearing cloud. No doubt from its gleaming contents it is the abundant sea that supplies water to the nimbus; but it is the cloud, and not the sea, which pours beneficences on creature-kind. In that sense it proves more gainworthy than the source from which it comes. The formless incomprehensible Brahman is All-Knowledge and may be all right; but it is not accessible to the understanding and cannot be seized by expression, nor does it in any immediate way participate in our affairs. Of what direct use is it then for us? Yet it is the same All-Knowledge that the Gita brings to us in a great plentiful measure. The blank featureless Absolute wears the body of verses and gives to vision a recognisably surer and sharper form. In its consciousness-force is the transmuting glow of its own unknown and unknowable divinity. The Impersonal assumes personality and as a “preceptor, father, mother, friend, master, guide or lover” establishes an approachable relationship with the aspirant to fulfil his thousand fold longing. The Gita’s advice to abandon all rules of conduct and remain in the oneness of the supreme Person then becomes dynamically meaningful. But this dynamism is not a one-way dynamism. Indeed, the supreme Person lets himself loose in the rush of a creative delight and one wondrous way to breathe that delight could be through the Truth-Word’s assertive luminosity. That is what the Gita is. Vyasa received it and put it in a metrical form of the Anushtubha. This truly is a marvellous gift to sorrowing mankind who should always be grateful to him. Our best way of being thankful to him would be to practise what he urges us to do.
About the greatness of this work Jnaneshwar gives a very glowing account in a number of places. Thus at the beginning of the eighteenth chapter he describes the Gita-Palace or the Gita-Temple as follows: Imagine a mountain of precious stones and jewels; imagine somewhere there a quarry master busy with the excavation work; imagine also a wide flat land where an imposing temple is built using the unlimited supply of this construction material. From the quarried
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stones of life is raised a fortification around the edifice of the Mahabharata. The architectural minutiae, and the magnificence, are planned by the great Seer and the Upanishads are the mine of that imagination and the Vedas its mountain of gems. The dialogue between the Lord and the chosen Disciple provides the rocky blocks which are put one above another in a pile of knowledge reaching heaven. This Gita-Palace of Vishnu, gita-vaishnava-prasada, is the exceptional miracle that has come into existence through the genius of Vyasa. Some chant its glory while circumambulating it; some lean against the walls inside the temple and hear its recitations; some others with a copper piece and a betel leaf in their hand as their humble offering enter into the sanctum sanctorum of its meaning. There, by the Understanding of the Self, they unite themselves with Srihari. Thus it proves to be a Temple of Salvation, moksha prasada, for those who come to it. A philanthropist does not make a distinction between the high and the low, child or grown-up, rich or poor, when he is entertaining people at a banquet and, in the same manner, the Gita offers to all such an abundant and generous feast of benediction. Be it therefore reciting and chanting, or listening, or pondering over its sense, the Gita leads every one on the path of liberation.
This is the excellence which the verses of Vyasa bring to us. In it the sublimity of poetry is as natural as the beauty of a flower or the sweetness of sugar. The radiance that is everywhere gathers itself into a gleaming marvel and becomes the sun; this sun then stands at the centre of creation to give light to it and to sustain it with nourishing energy. The Lord of the Universe is now amidst us as the Word of the Gita. She is his puissant arm to establish his will in life. In the phrase of Jnaneshwar she is mantrapratipadya bhagawati, the Goddess Parvati expounding and firming up the might of the Supreme in a delightful revelatory manifestation.
The Gita appears in the Book of Bhishma, Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata, and begins with a description of the battle-scene. Two formidable armies are standing face to face and are poised to engage themselves in the War of Destruction of the World. Dhritarashtra’s hundred sons with the Axis Commanders are proud
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of their vast oceanic prowess and harbour no doubt of victory. The Pandavas on the other side, with a relatively smaller army, have the support of the virtuous Allies, with Krishna as the wise counsellor as well as the charioteer of Arjuna. War-conchs are blown and the call has come. But at that precise moment sags the spirit of the Hero. This of course cannot be allowed to determine the fate of the nations and the divine Charioteer intervenes and takes the reins in his hand; he makes the human Warrior fight the battle of life. The unAryan attitude is an infirmity and the chosen Winner of the Trophy has to throw it away; by the acceptance of the highest Will he has to rise in thought and feeling and action, in conformity with his nature, swabhava, and wield the defeatless weapon. Though in the immediate context the Gita is an exhortation and is meant to bring back the fighter on the path from which he has deviated in a moment of weakness, the purpose is to establish the Law of Righteousness in the dynamism of a thousand workings. The divine Teacher is on the battlefield, in the full splendour of avataric divinity, and has taken control of the world and of all the occult forces that have precipitated here now. He has come to exterminate evil and to uphold the supreme Dharma. “Though unborn,” to paraphrase the Teacher's words according to Jnaneshwar, “I take birth by the process of Prakriti-Yoga. In the least affected by it is the indivisibility of my consciousness, my imperishable and immutable nature. My coming and my going are but the reflections of Maya and, though active in works, my freedom remains uncircumscribed. Imaged I cannot be, but by the potency of my Prakriti I take form for special purposes. Then I remove the darkness of ignorance and demolish the foundations of falsehood and tear to pieces the formats of retrograde and sombre powers. By supporting the actions of good and noble and virtuous souls I hoist the flag of happy victory. I destroy the crookedness-mongers and the demon-hosts and I protect the holy and the saintly. The soot of impiety and non-reason and faithlessness accumulated over ages I cleanse and I keep the lamp trim and make it burn with a steady and bright flame. This then becomes a joyous desirable festival of light for the Yogis. The world gets filled with truthful bliss, satsukha; everywhere people follow in the conduct of righteousness; devotees remain in the nobility and fullness of graceful calm. Howsoever huge be the
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mountain-heap of sins, it gets dissolved with my birth of incarnation. For this work from age to age I come and I uphold the order of the worlds. Those who live to serve me, or those who take pleasure in the knowledge of the Self, or those who are verily the dazzling mass of spiritual austerities, shining in their tapas, the ones who by their holiness give holiness to the holy and sacred places—they indeed dwell in me and come to me, become one with me, madbhavam-agatah.”
Such is the assurance of the avataric divinity and it has come down to us by the most well-disposed and kindly act of Vyasa. He wrote it out in splendid poetry and fixed it permanently for us. How can we be sufficiently faithful to it in the conduct of our daily transactions should be the thing of concern for us. Sri Krishna enfolds Arjuna in his arms and, without breaking their two-ness, makes him one like himself, dwaita na modita kele apana aise, says Jnaneshwar. This is a spiritual possibility opened out to man and man should avail himself of it for his own well-being.
Sanjaya, the war reporter, is giving his account to the blind king Dhritarashtra in his palace. He could see what was happening on the battlefield and hear the exact words spoken by Vasudeva to the great-souled Partha. Sanjaya owes to Vyasa the exceptional boon of subtle sight and hearing. In his exultation he says so and asserts further that wherever the supreme Master of Yoga and the Wielder of the mighty Bow are, surely Fortune and Victory and the luminous executive Power in full majesty and the Right in her steadfastness are there. The whole experience for him, of listening to the Gita was that of the Embrace of the Eternal, brahmatvachi mithi in the language of the Marathi Adi Kavi. The gripping felicity of Jnaneshwar’s poem also has that bright and lucid astounding quality which is as fresh as when it was composed seven hundred years ago. That indeed is the authentic mark of its overhead-spiritual character.
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The traditional wisdom tells us that you have to give yourself to the Guru in order to be taken over entirely by him for your soul’s and your life’s fulfilment. The mother-child and the father-son are but only two types among the innumerable relationships there can be with the relationless Divine. Not only Father or Mother, he is also Teacher, Master, Lord, Friend, Philosopher, Guide, Preceptor, Playmate, Comrade, Lover, even Antagonist. When on the battlefield Arjuna witnessed in the Avatar the aspect of the Dreadful Cosmic Spirit, he repented and spoke of the casualness with which he had behaved with him;* Ravana wished to merge into the Supreme by following the Path of Enmity; Kutsa attained such likeness with Indra that he was taken by him to his home; the help of heroic kings as colleagues was sought by the gods in the heavenly battles; the Bhakta surrenders entirely to the deity of his worship even as he practises devotion in the ninefold manner; the Jnani is ever absorbed in contemplation of the omnipresent Reality, while the Rishi does Tapas on the Truth-existent and takes a new birth in its spiritual fire; the Yogi gathers himself into the Divine Being, the Giver of Siddhis, Siddheshwar, and remains in its perfection. The One in the mode of the Many establishes as many contacts in the creative manifestation of his delight. Each is a soul-relationship with the Oversoul when projected in the terrestrial play, the play working itself out in the
*"For whatsoever I have spoken to thee in rash vehemence, thinking of thee only as a human friend and companion, 'O, Krishna, O Yadava, O Comrade,' not knowing this thy greatness, in negligent error or in love, and for whatsoever disrespect was shown by me to thee in jest, on the couch and the seat and in the banquet, alone or in thy presence, I pray forgiveness from thee the immeasurable. Thou art the father of all this world of the moving and unmoving; thou art one to be worshipped and the most solemn object of veneration. None is equal to thee, how then another greater in all the three worlds, O incomparable in might? Therefore I bow down before thee and prostrate my body and I demand grace of thee the adorable Lord. As a father to his son, as a friend to his friend and comrade, as one dear with him he loves, so shouldst thou, O Godhead, bear with me. I have seen what never was seen before and I rejoice, but my mind is troubled with fear. O Godhead, show me that other form of thine. I would see thee even as before crowned and with thy mace and discus. Assume thy four-armed shape, O thousand-armed, O Form universal." (The Gita: 11.41-46; Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 375)
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world of death, Mrityuloka. Not self-oblivion or abolition of our individuality in the featureless Absolute should be the object of our true endeavour; but the perfection of free spirit in the divine nature and its conduct and happy expression in that law is what has to occur. Each one then becomes real-ideally his amsha, his part, a Vibhuti possessing correspondingly the aspect of him who is of infinite Quality, ananta guni; one Narayana is then present in every Nara. These divine souls indeed will be the denizens of the divine creation that is to come on the earth.
When such is the state, then in it all distances between the Guru and the Shishya disappear. The Preceptor is not seated high on a pedestal and the Disciple low on the ground at his feet. And yet in the evolving consciousness this separation has to be meaningfully and functionally recognised. In fact, according to the tradition, initiation of the aspirant into spiritual life is done in secrecy, with the tacit understanding that nothing of it will be spread around or disclosed to anybody. The Shishya lives in the physical presence of the Guru for three days and nights, as if taking a new birth in the warm luminous womb of the Initiator. The Dikshakar takes upon himself the entire burden when the Dikshita surrenders to him totally. For him “Guru is Brahma, Guru is Vishnu, Guru is the great God Shiva; Guru is the transcendental Eternal,” and before this auspicious and benedictive excellence does he ever bow.
is Viswasaratantra’s prayer offered to the greatness of the Guru. With his help even the lame can cross a mountain and the dumb pour out an ocean of knowledge in impeccable speech. According to the Veda the Teacher is the pathfinder who leads the pupil directly forward to the goal of whole-natured Awareness, vindatyajjasinam. There is also a tradition which recognises four types of Gurus: Guru, Param Guru, Parameshthi Guru, and Paratpara Guru—the Preceptor, the spiritual Teacher of one’s own Guru, the most excellent Guru, and he to whom is applied the description “Guru is verily the supreme Brahman, the Eternal”, gurursakshat parabrahma. To have the uttermost Guru, the Paratpara, the Supreme, is an exceptional privilege and one can never be sufficiently grateful to him when he happens to come to us.
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Rare is this relationship, possible only when the Divine incarnates as an Avatar and embraces the ready soul. But, and quite understandably, it is generally the initiator-aspect alone that we associate with the Guru. In the one we see the unborn disciple, aja, entering into spiritual life and in the other the already realised soul, pakva, living in the white radiance of the Benign.
What does the Guru do? He accepts the responsibility of the Shishya in every respect, spiritually and materially. All his past Karmas are dissolved, all his predispositions or samskaras are removed. One gets the Guru by the grace of the Guru himself; that is grace itself. Truly, for the Shishya there is no God higher than the Guru, na devah sriguroh parah. Which then means that he should not do anything which will be harmful for his progress. Slippery also is the path and the result can be serious and grave. He has to remain in the protective atmosphere of the Guru and he has to be ever-vigilant. Wrong deeds done by him will accumulate fresh samskaras or Karmas which will be more difficult to overcome and discard—in fact, spiritually, the consequences can be even disastrous. The Shishya raising his hand against the Guru, in whatever manner or form it be, under whatever compulsions it be, particularly when the Guru is the Avatar, is the extreme perversity bearing its own calamity of consequence—unless there intervenes the Grace of the Guru. Complete sincerity is the only holiness, punya, that can help the seeker under the Guru’s care. Very often people forget why they have gone to a Guru. They start having or putting non-spiritual demands and get swayed by extraneous considerations. To hold the central aim of sadhana in focus is an obligation that rests entirely with the Shishya. His one main concern should be Godward progress. The Guru’s help is always for this purpose and not for satisfying his vitalistic desires and ambitions. How sad when the aim is lost! How wonderful when steadfast he remains in faith!
One of the methods by which the Guru initiates the Shishya is by giving him the Mantra, the Word of spiritual Power and Realisation, the Word that effects transformation in his soul and spirit. The initiation by the Guru can even be by putting his hand on the head of the disciple, as Ramakrishna did in the case of Vivekananda. It can be the invisible Presence which can touch the aspirant,
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enter into his consciousness and lead him on the path. Even in his external activities, or in acquisition of skills, the Instructor can bring him up and make him an accomplished expert in the field. Ekalavya, of the Hill-Tribe, learnt the art of archery by worshipping the clay-image of Dronacharya who had refused to accept him as his disciple in the royal company of the Pandavas. For exceptional souls not the human Guru but the Great Spirit of Time, Mahakala, who manifests in him is the sovereign moulder of their destiny. When the Mantra is established in a definite way Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Joy course through the inner being of the receiver. In the silence of his mind the quiet listener gets the message and
The Word repeats itself in rhythmic strains:
Thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body’s self
Are seized unalterably and he endures
An ecstasy and an immortal change;
He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power,
All knowledge rushes on him like a sea:
Transmuted by the white spiritual ray
He walks in naked heavens of joy and calm,
Sees the God-face and hears transcendent speech.
(Savitri, p. 375)
Happy is the man when this exceptional moment arrives for him. Happier still is he who lives in it. He who chooses the Guru has actually been chosen by the Guru.
Such a miracle of high order was wrought in Jnaneshwar by the power of his Guru Nivritti, his elder brother, who belonged to the Tantrik Nath Sect or Sampradaya, the Practitioners of the Occult Method. One day Nivritti, when he was hardly a ten-year-old boy, lost his way in the Brahmagiri mountains around the Trimbakeshwara Temple. In that bewildered state he happened to enter a cave where a Yogi with a shining countenance was seated in deep meditation. When the Yogi opened his eyes he was struck by the boy and, smiling, spoke to him affectionately. Introducing himself as Gahininath, he told Nivritti that his Guru Gorakshanath had foreseen his coming and had instructed him to initiate the boy into the sacred Mystery.
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Gorakshanath was the preceptor of Nivritti’s great-grandfather Trimbakpant. Nivritti was given the Mantra Rama-Krishna-Hari and was further told that he should initiate his brother Jnaneshwar in the spiritual path. A mission for him was already marked out by the Yogi. In the epilogue to Jnaneshwari the author gives the lineage of his Gurus, starting from Matsyendranath who directly received the yogic lore of ancient times given to Goddess Parvati by Yogeshwar Shiva himself. Matsyendranath taught it to Gorakshanath from whom it came down to Nivrittinath. Later, this Nath Sampradaya went from Maharashtra to Bengal and from there spread to other parts of the country. Many supernatural acts are attributed to these Naths.
In Jnaneshwari Jnaneshwar acknowledges at a number of places,—in fact almost at every important step,—the benedictive gifts he received from Nivritti. The way an empty pitcher gets filled up with water when dipped in the sea, or the way a wick gets lighted in the flame of a bright lamp, in that way, says Jnaneshwar, was he inspired by his Guru to undertake the composition of the Gita in Marathi. It is indeed by the glory of the Guru’s grace, by his lustrous majesty, krupeche vaibhava, that he has been able to accomplish this task, a task of such difficulty as was there to found the Roman race—to adapt Virgil. The Guru’s forbearance is that of the earth who ungrudgingly and tirelessly upholds the movable and immovable objects; from his ambrosia does the moon give soothing coolness to the world; his bright radiance is taken by the sun to remove darkness all around; from him the sea gets its supply of water, and the water its sweetness, and the sweetness its beauty; from him the wind derives its strength of impetuosity and the sky its blue wideness and knowledge its imperial glow and grandeur; the Vedas find their easy yet forceful utterance because of him, as does happiness its buoyant delight, and the universe its comely form:
(Jnaneshwari : 18.1723-28)
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Thus Jnaneshwar gives his obeisance to the rising sun who is the Guru, who dispels the night of ignorance and spreads the day of auspicious realisation. While singing this praise the transcendent (Para) and the articulate colloquial (Vaikhari) enter into the secrecy of the seen (Pashyanti) and the mature middle (Madhyama) tongues, the four divisions of speech joining together in one fulfilled expression. He offers such a Song of Adoration to the Preceptor and rests in him fully assured, without any fear. He has done Vak-Tapas in previous births and it is as the fruit of this Tapas’ Truth-Word that he is now ready to do Gita-recitation in a new language. His yogic preparation and yogic mission under the guidance of the Guru have arrived at this point; now both experience and expression flow mellifluously through the revelatory utterance of another mantric lyricism. As the Upanishad would say, ascetic effort (tapah-prabhava) and benedictive grace (guru-kripa) have given him this siddhi. We are fortunate to receive it through him.
Jnaneshwar raises the Guru to the height of the Supreme, not just because of a certain tradition but because of a definite fact of spiritual truth that is there behind it. However, it is not the same thing as the Supreme coming down and becoming a Guru. In other words, what Jnaneshwar is describing is the Guru-Shishya relationship and not, for instance, the Mother-Child or Father-Son relationship. If the one is austere and spiritually luminous, the other is warm with love, is endearingly sweet and felicitous. In the one there is the fulfilment of the Yoga of Self-Realisation, with the liberation of the soul in the Brahman as its complete siddhi; in the other the constitutional nature also comes into play and it works on the material level to bring about a transformative miracle. The one is for Swargaloka; the other is for Mrityuloka. This does not mean that the yogic stature of Jnaneshwar suffers in any way, just as the significance of the work of Rama or Krishna or Buddha does not get diminished in the later contexts. It simply means that we are living in New Time, Time that has come directly from Eternity, Time in which each individual finds his proper manifestive purpose and truth. To live and grow in it, in that multifold Reality, should be our commitment towards this New Time and we must accept it and fulfill ourselves in it. In it are the hundred relations with the Guru who is the Avataric Divine himself. Salutations be to the Guru!
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(Jnaneshwari: 1.1)
Om! Salutations to the venerable Foremost, the Veda-propounded, the Pre-eminent; glory be to the Self-Aware, in the nature of Being. Victory! Victory!
With this invocation to the Supreme Jnaneshwar begins his poetic composition. The greatness of the Gita is its subject; the leader of the path is none other than Rishi Vyasa himself; the grace of his Guru Nivritti gives him the necessary confidence and capacity to undertake the daunting task; the rapt and attentive audience of saints and simple people encourages him and makes him speak what he is going to speak. The dimensions of the poem thus perspicuously extend into all the three regions, into the terrestrial, the universal, and the transcendental; at the same time their unifying relationship creates a harmony whose basis is the delightful Brahmic consciousness itself. Matters pertaining to the divinities, adhidaivic, to the entities and beings, adhibhautic, and to the manifest spirit’s supremacy, adhyatmic, find their natural place in it, as does the sunshine in wide- ness of the unclouded day. The watermark—or, shall we say, the honey-mark?—of the Yogi-Poet is present on every page; the gleaming sweetness of the speech speaks well of its authenticity. In it the Ineffable finds expression and acquires features with all their vibrant qualities. The Unapproachable comes nearer and takes a recognisable shape; to him we can offer our worship and obeisances and we can receive from him gifts of benedictive riches.
The Bright One comes to us now in the aspect of Ganesha who illumines every meaning in the light of his understanding. Word the Eternal, all-potent and inexhaustible, outside of which there is nothing, shabdabrahma ashesha as Jnaneshwar says, gets beautifully iconified in that deity. Vedic hymns and the Scriptures define in their orthographic exquisiteness the shape of the God.
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The easy flow of the poetic verses is the movement of his limbs and the deep esoteric sense of these stanzaic delineations gives to his poise comeliness. Eighteen Puranas bejewelled with fundamental propositions of things adorn his shining godhood. Literature and poetry and art in their spontaneous fondness are indeed the jingling bells of the silken belt around his waist. Carrying the simile further, Jnaneshwar says that the quiet musical sound or arthdhwani of these little silvery jingling bells is in the nature of nuances and shades, the delicate expository details, that in their import and signification revealingly tell of his many-glowing attributes. The Six Systems of Philosophy, shaddarshana—Patanjala, Sankhya, Vaishshikha, Nyaya, Mimansa, and Vedanta in its profound and joyous contents—are the weapons in the hands of this Ganesha. It is the followers of the Nyaya School who attacked and demolished the Buddhistic Doctrines and established the Ancient Wisdom once again. The two parts of the Science of Vedic Interpretation, the Ritualistic and Theological parts, Karmakanda and Jnanakanda of Mimansa, the introductory and the culminating texts, are the two ears of this God of universal knowledge. Around him swarm, like bees, the wise and the learned to gather the honeyful essence of the exegetic principles and affirmations. The discussion in which the final differences vanish is the white tusk of this God with the elephant’s head. Reinstitution of the concept of Absolute Brahman in the Metaphysical Debate and the assertion of the Good of Religion, dharmapratishtha, are indeed the boons extended to us by him. He is the one who removes all obstacles and grants us the great fortune of happiness, mahasukha. In the glint of his eyes is the exultant lustre of subtle perceptive sight and his two temples merge into each other, indicating that duality and non-duality in the end arrive at the same conclusion. The ten Upanishads look beautiful in his crown, like lotuses fresh and fragrant and full of splendent lore, udarjnanamakaranda. So is his wide forehead scripting the entire vastness of Thought. The One who is beyond descriptive enumerative details is now in the seed-state from which sprouts all that is. The Self of Knowledge is in the Image of Ganesha. In the manifest creation it has assumed the form of the Word, the primal Syllable, the syllableless creative syllable Om; that gives rise
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to a thrilled manifoldness of the spoken speech, soft as well as gorgeous in colours and with harmonious sounds. Its joyous sensibilities with sense carrying and tying them together in the manner of the soul of aesthetic delight gives us a deeper satisfaction. The incomprehensible Divinity is present now as Omkar and it is to him that the hymning obeisances are offered.
Jnaneshwar next proceeds to worship Sharada, the Goddess of Learning, the expressive dynamism of the manifest Word:
(Jnaneshwari: 1.21)
Now to the one who enjoys variously the eloquence of the tongue, beautiful, and endowed with sagacity and connotative sense, and artistic skill in expression, to her, that Sharada, the enchantress of the World, I bow.
The supplication of the poet to the Goddess is not just a formality or mannerism of the mediaeval age, nor a mere façon de parler; in it there is a certain spiritual spontaneity that makes it truly meaningful as much as appealingly genuine. There is in it an occult element which puts us directly in contact with the source of inspiration itself. This we can perhaps better appreciate if we compare Jnaneshwari with, say, Paradise Lost. The Celestial Patroness used to visit Milton in the night, or when “Morn purples the East”, and it is she who gave him the easy “unpremeditated Verse”; she made him see and tell “Of things invisible to mortal sight.” But after a while her visits started becoming infrequent and what greatly entered into his poetry was thought-stuff and thought-strain. On the other hand, we notice in Jnaneshwar the uninterrupted flow of what Sri Aurobindo would call the “overhead” expression, the language that comes with the power of word-sense and sound-sense native to some high spiritual plane above the mental. There is in it thought; there is in it the image; but the soul of its melody belongs to another world giving new values to thought and image; it is that soul who has taken birth here to sing his exceptional song. Being a Yogi par excellence, Jnaneshwar was in
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intimate contact with Sharada to receive her gifts which he could transcribe into our language without disfiguring or spoiling them in the process. The sustained level of expression bears ample witness to the poetry’s genuine quality. Everywhere is present the delight of the spirit. It enables us also to live in its bright and wondrous presence. In contrast to this, a theological theme which is developed in intellectual terms can hardly attain such a stature or can touch at this grandeur. But in Jnaneshwari with its tranquil sublimity we understand what spiritual poetry can really be.
What is the method by which spiritual poetry can be written? Is there a mechanism, a technique, a guiding principle of aesthetic creation which can be summoned by the writer to help him in this respect? And is not that demand as wrong as suggesting that Kalidasa or Shakespeare follow classroom texts for writing a poetic composition or drama? A poet with great art at his command has to be either a rich and ready instrument to receive genuine inspiration, or he must be himself a denizen of the overhead world where spiritual poetry is born. Jnaneshwar avowedly belongs to this latter class. He could move with quick and luminous ease in these realms of gold, and savour the fragrance of flowers of the Edenic garden, and ride the rhythmic melody of a crystalline stream in the fields of calm. “There is a profound intrinsic delight and beauty,” says Sri Aurobindo, “in all things and behind all experience...which makes to a spirit housed within us...a revelation of the truth and power and delight of being and our feeling of it a form of universal Ananda...the calm yet moved ecstasy with which the spirit of existence regards itself and its creation. This deeper spiritual feeling, this Ananda is the fountain of poetic delight and beauty.” Jnaneshwar drank freely and abundantly of that fountain of poetic wonder and joy.
But how has this come about? who must have led him to this wondrous joy? making that a sudden occurrence, a miracle? But to Jnaneshwar it does not come as a surprise. His gracious preceptor Nivritti is seated in his heart and it is indeed he who has wrought the miracle. It is like possessing a great treasure, mahanidhi, or discovering the heavenly stone chintamani which brings to fruition
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all noble longings; such is the alchemic power of the Guru. Now the worthy disciple has found the Guru and the Guru has accepted the disciple. Jnaneshwar bows to Nivritti and turns his attention to the greatness of the tale narrated by Vyasa in his vast Epic of the Bharatas.
This is a tale from which issues out every happiness; all the propositions of existence are present in its splendid formulations; the ocean of its nectarine utterance is filled with the nine felicities that go with aesthetic delight. Here resides the Goddess of Word-Fortune, shabdasri, who has established for our benefit scriptural codes and texts. Wisdom has by it acquired adulthood and maturity, and the demonstrated theorems and conclusions their taste, and prosperity her excellence and appeal. By it the sweet has sweetness, and the sensuous beauty and pleasing elegance and shapeliness, and the worthy things of propriety and dignity:
(Jnaneshwari: 1.36)
There every quality possesses the capacity and authority of the one who is All-quality, guna sagunapanache bik. By the brilliance of Vyasa’s verses knowledge in the consciousness of the society has acquired right discernment and sharp perceptive sense, a working intuition in the dynamics of the day-to-day. Just as a person acquires manners and urbanity when he lives in a city, or as youthful beauty is visible in the bright flush of a maiden, so has human life acquired wondrous merit from this remarkable tale given to us by Vyasa. The poet acknowledges the gift of the Rishi.
Now, as if zooming his camera, Jnaneshwar comes to the Gita proper which is a part of the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata. Churned from the ocean of eternal literature, shabdabrahmabdhi, by the genius of Vyasa, it is the cream of spiritual experiences which the ascetics long to have, the saints perceive and get, and those who are established in the oneness of the Infinite ever enjoy. This is the song that has been well appreciated in the three worlds, a song that has been praised even by Brahma and Shiva.
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Therefore in order to understand and grasp the Gita one has to be very alert and sensitive to its beauty and sweetness, to its evocative sense and to its truth. A right kind of listener is needed for its poetry, one who is with a sober and calm heart, steady, but driven by the passion or zeal of a seeker, who appreciates the subtleties and profundities of expression; Jnaneshwar draws the attention of his audience to that effect and makes it aware of it. Here are words which convey the contents even without their being uttered, of which the refined senses seize the implications much before they reach them. In order to embrace the sky one has to grow vaster than the sky. “But I know,” says Jnaneshwar, “I have made myself very audacious, if not impudent. I know it is like a lapwing that ventures to sound the depth of the sea with the measure of its beak. The glory of the Gita is so dazzling that Shiva compared it with the wondrous beauty of Bhawani herself, devi jaise ki swarup tujhe. Even the Vedas are puzzled or are at a loss to comprehend and describe it.” But Jnaneshwar feels confident; for, he has been touched by the fabled stone which can transform a base metal into lustrous gold. There is no doubt that by the favour of Saraswati the dumb gets the siddhi of speech. And, in the same way, does not ambrosia bring back the dead to life? Such is the power of the Guru’s grace and hence he need not harbour apprehension, argues the devout saint-poet.
Finally, Jnaneshwar pleads for the indulgence of the respectable listeners attending the sessions. If there are defects, remove them—requests he. Nay, he goes a step farther and proclaims that it is from them that he is going to derive courage and strength to rise to the exceptional occasion; whatever they are going to make him speak it is that he is going to speak—tumhi bolawila mi bolena. This is how he considers himself favoured and blessed by the knowledgeable and competent elders in the gathering.
But now the benedictory command has come: “It is indeed not very necessary for you to speak all this. Hurry up and concentrate on the composition; please proceed without any apologies.” Jnaneshwar is extremely happy with this patronising as well as inspiring approbation of Nivritti and requests everyone in the Mhalasa Temple to listen attentively to his words that are aflame like little lamps in the adoration of the Gita.
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The Tree of Literature was planted by the great Seer and now it is bearing rich and ripe fruits of sweetness. And what a wonder this book of the Gita is! Praise be to it, all praise—bapa bapa grantha gita, as Jnaneshwar says. The Lord himself is the revealer of the supreme creative-formative Truth which even the Vedas cannot seize, the Word that ushers divinity in a tranquil poise of unfolding phenomenality of this creation. But when the Lord comes he comes not only as a Teacher with the executive Word; his dynamism is there in full operation of an active person who can accomplish the world-fulfilling task. The Avatar takes directly the charge of all the thousand forces raging here in a complex play of possibilities pulling in every direction. He stands on the battlefield in his winning might. The Wielder of the Wheel of Right Seeing—sudarshana chakra—as a weapon of sure victory, he is in the midst of warring nations to decide their fate and the fate of the world. When in the cycles of Godward march Time arrives at an epoch-making moment, he indeed assumes a terrible form to destroy the past standing in the way. But the Lord is also a Friend and a Comrade-in-Arms. He can be very intimate and obliging to the one who is his favourite, who loves him unreservedly, who identifies himself with him,—as in oneness of sunshine with the sun. Arjuna would address him in endearing terms as “O Krishna, O Yadava, O Comrade;” he would speak to him in jest and be informal “at party, on the couch, and the seat and the banquet.” Now he makes himself bold and asks him to show him his universal Form. No doubt he is present in essentiality and in every detail in this creation and there is nought but he,—as the inner experience recognises it to be so. But at this crucial stage for Arjuna that experience does not seem to be sufficient; it ought to become perceptible and concrete as a working proposition; it is necessary that the giver of the experience become visible to the seeing eye as well:
(Jnaneshwari:11.29)
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He has already been told about the Power that upholds dynamic omnipotence in the manifold nature of its being; he knows also about the Vibhutis, the special souls who take birth to accomplish special works in this world, transient and unhappy, full of sorrow and suffering as it is. But now it is imperative that Arjuna should see the supreme Person; the Time-Spirit should stand in front of him, in great glory, ready to strike and destroy all that is wicked and evil, the one aim being the establishment of the Law of Righteousness. The Avatar also considers that there is, in a way of speaking, a certain necessity to fulfil the wish of the accepted soul for the good of the work itself. Of course, and more importantly, there is an occult dimension to it and whatever is to be done bears in it its connotation and its significance. In the interest of that work command to the chosen instrument to go into world action has to come from the world-active spirit itself. In fact, it will be a supreme command and the revelation of its absolute supremacy will thus prove its undefeatable inevitability; then only will it turn out to be a direct action of the Transcendent. Such a moment has now arrived for the high involvement and only in that high involvement will this world be carried forward in a decisive way. The Transcendent’s action is going to yield the Transcendent’s result. Arjuna is called, explains Sri Aurobindo,
…to self-knowledge; he must see God as the Master of the universe and the origin of the world’s creatures and happenings, all as the Godhead’s self-expression in Nature, God in all, God in himself as man and as Vibhuti, God in the lowness of being and on its heights, God on the topmost summits, man too upon heights as the Vibhuti and climbing to the last summits in the supreme liberation and union. Time in its creation and destruction must be seen by him as the figure of the Godhead in its steps,—steps that accomplish the cycles of the cosmos on whose spires of movement the divine spirit in the human body rises doing God’s work in the worlds as his Vibhuti to the supreme transcndences. This knowledge has been given; the Time-figure of the Godhead is now to be revealed and from the million mouths of that figure will issue the command for the appointed action to the liberated Vibhuti. (Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 362)
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When the battle was about to begin Arjuna had succumbed to an unusual infirmity, had fallen into the Slough of Despond; in that state of dolour he wanted to renounce everything, flee from the terrible action of killing his own kith and kin and his elders and his preceptors who had taken their positions in the opposite camp. But the divine charioteer first rebukes him and then, putting him gradually in a proper frame of mind, exhorts that he cannot run away from the dharma of his soul, the dharma of the individual in which alone is his true salvation and his fulfillment. Arjuna has come around and the delusion in which he was trapped has been dispelled. He says so, that by the profound words of the Teacher he has regained his original sense of proportionality, recovered his native consciousness; he has become adhyatmasanjnavana, aware of the spiritual basis of things and actions. Arjuna, as put by Jnaneshwar, says:
O rich Treasure of Graciousness, you have for my sake spoken what is beyond speech. Where the great senses dry up, in the Eternal, and where the central being and the first executive power stay without activity, in that supreme Person indeed is the last form to be seen. Until now it was held back from view, like a miser’s hoard in the region of the heart; it was kept away even from the Word of the Veda, for which Hari gave up all his rich and splendent royalty; that precious thing, O Lord, you have given me without another consideration. It was boastful, and egoistic, of me to have said that even if the heavens were to fall, and the universe to sink, or the seven seas mingle and merge into one another, I would not take weapons against my own kindred and relations. But you have woken me up and I have come to my senses. Now, entering into the sanctum sanctorum of your Temple, I am getting the true and full experience of the Delight of Existence, brahmarasa. It is your victory and fame, your glory that the Vedas wear as a piece of strong and durable cloth. Presently, a keen desire has possessed me and for its fulfillment if it is not to you, then to whom do I turn? to whom else can I frankly express it? Can a fish feel shy of water, or does a babe have embarrassment in suckling from the mother’s breast? So let me request you to show me your form eulogised
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by the Upanishads, from which you come to remove obstacles in the paths of the gods, the form which can be likened to capital, muddala, out of which is paid their interest, two-armed or four-armed as you come. I am impatient to behold that shape of yours which is indeed a fathomless mystery to all.
In a sequel to this supplication of Arjuna, Jnaneshwar writes:
And lo, the wonder! As if the ocean rose up in waves under the full moon, the Lord let himself surge in divine love to satisfy the wish of his fond and very dear friend, exceptional as he was amidst others. When a person leaves behind the waking condition and enters into a dream state, he identifies himself in it with all its objects; in the same manner the Avatar on the battlefield became all that is, brahmakataha. That is the richness, the plenty, the luminous opulence of his yogic action, yogariddhi, and Arjuna had the good fortune to be given a glimpse of it.
In brief that is how Jnaneshwar expounds, in about one hundred and twenty-five owis, the first four shlokas of the eleventh chapter of the Gita. While the presentation runs smoothly with calm unperturbed spontaneity, and there are at a number of places yogic intuitive flashes caught in perfect language, we cannot say that the poetry is throughout overhead. In fact, one starts wondering whether the text did not get corrupted in the hands of lesser composers or reciters. This is an aspect which needs to be further looked into and properly researched.
Take an example. The last shloka of the chapter is an invitation to Arjuna, and so to us, for complete surrender to the Lord who resides everywhere and in everything. When a Bhakta sees me in such a manner, assures the Teacher, he finally comes to me. Jnaneshwar expounds upon it and says that the devotee, even as his three elements disappear at the end, attains oneness with me, becomes me:
(Jnaneshwari:11.699)
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Commentators take the word tridhatu, the three elements constituting the bodily existence in the Ayurvedic sense of phlegm, wind and bile. Not that this is totally baseless; but it cannot be the whole spiritual or occult sense intended by the poet who is also a Yogi. Mere dissolution of the chemical substances of the body can never be sufficient for such a high attainment as oneness with the supreme Person. There are a number of sheaths of the human body and these have to be abandoned before that state is reached. Behind the gross physical form, sthula, is the subtle body, sukshma, and then is the causal body, karana. When the evolutionary soul merges into the Eternal these forms have to go away and it is this fact which Jnaneshwar must have intended in the use of tridhatu. The term tridhatu has a Vedic connotation also; it describes the Transcendent in the triple state of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda, but that cannot be the sense in the present context. The problem of editing Jnaneshwari is therefore still an open issue. Homogeneity of style, the character of high spiritual substance, the freshness of idiomatic form, the revealing power of the phrase and the symbol, all these will have to be perceptively recognised if we are to expunge what is weak or goody-goody, or immature, lacking the vigour of the breath of the spirit. We should of course bear in mind that the young author had never revised his work at any later stage—he lived only for six years more after the composition was completed—and what we have is only whatever had come in the first flush of the inspiration. At present let us, however, take a few examples of the great poetry that we have in this chapter.
The Lord of the universe has presented himself in the universal Form. Arjuna is given the divine eye—divya chakshu—to behold its splendour, proverbially put as brighter than that of a thousand suns. The infinite Godhead’s endless and middleless and beginingless majesty is everywhere in its magnificence and in its beauty,—and in its terrible aspect too. All the wonders of existence grow in him, in his wideness, in the likeness of his own person. Arjuna wishes to know who this person is and what his will is in this present working. Whatever that will be, he knows, it will bear the full charge and will have the power to achieve the intended result, the purpose of divinity in the Time-process. It may forebode destruction; but it will be a “reassuring
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reality behind this face of death and this destruction,”—avows Sri Aurobindo. Arjuna bows down and offers his prayers to the Lord, whom the gods and the fulfilled beings and the Rishis give praise, chant hymns of benedictive glory with the swasti-utterances. Even as the Vision in front of Arjuna grows more and more wide in its transcendent dimensions, we also hear in Vyasa the ring of Overmind poetry manifoldly expressing that unseizable Greatness:
(The Gita: 11.36-40)
Rightly and in good place, O Krishna, does the world rejoice and take pleasure in thy name, the Rakshasas are fleeing from thee in terror to all the quarters and the companies of the Siddhas bow down before thee in adoration. How should they not do thee homage, O great Spirit? For thou art the original Creator and Doer of works and greater even than creative Brahma. O thou Infinite, O thou Lord of the gods, O thou abode of the universe, thou art the Immutable and thou art what is and is not and thou art that which is the Supreme. Thou art the ancient Soul and the first and original Godhead and the supreme resting-place of this All; thou art the knower and that which is to be known and the highest status; O infinite in form, by thee was extended the universe. Thou art Yama and Vayu and Agni and Soma and Varuna and Prajapati, father of creatures, and the great-grandsire. Salutation to thee a thousand times over and again
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and yet again salutation, in front and behind and from every side, for thou art each and all that is. Infinite in might and immeasurable in strength of action thou pervadest all and art every one. (Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 374)
We very briefly present, by way of illustration, relevant verses from Jnaneshwari, verses that so feelingly and superbly render these shlokas into Marathi, in which poetry rises to another grandeur of the gracious and felicitous spiritual:
(Jnaneshwari: 11.504-506; 511-536)
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O Lord, the living world, even livingly instinct as it is with life, does hold you endearingly in adoration; and more and more do you destroy them those who are evil-minded and wicked. There is a great fear of you, O Hrishikesha, in the heart of the demons of the three worlds and, because of it, beyond the ten directions they are fleeing. And others, the gods, and human beings, the celestial musicians, the realised souls, the sages and seers, as well as all that is fixed or moving, every object and creature,—I see that they are very exultantly bowing to you... . From where issue forth manifold universes, in various lines, spreading out as creepers of the great formative elements, in that primal existence has the Will of the Divine conceived. Lord, you are the measureless Quality, without an end in any extension; Lord, you are the calm and even Spirit, the same in each and every aspect, in all the aspects; you are indeed the Supreme, God of gods. You are the abode of the three creations, you are the ever-auspicious and benign, you are the imperishable substance and cause of what is; you are the Being and the Non-Being; verily, you are beyond the reach of them all. In you is the origin of Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti; what defines the creative principle in its power of manifestation, that you are; you yourself are without a beginning, O Ancient of Days. You are the life-breath of this entire universe, in you is the manifold treasure of the human soul; the knowledge of the past and the future, and the works of Time, all that is at your command. Pleasing and happy is your person to the eye of the revealed Scripture, O Indescribable, O Undifferentiable, and in you repose those three worlds, O you its splendid Abode. That is why at the end of the cycles of creation she, the Executrix, the most Excellent, withdraws into you, her retreat and her dwelling place. In other words, O Lord, you are the originator of this whole cosmos, one in infinite forms, and therefore who can really extol your vastness and your grandeur and majesty? Is there a thing in which you are not, or a piece of ground or stead or site vacant of you? Therefore, in whatever way you be and in whichever manner you abide or conform, it is to you that such a praise do I offer. O Lord, unbounded and eternal, you are Vayu the All-Pervasive
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and you are Yama the Ordainer and, living in creature-kind, you are Agni. Varuna the Ruler over the Waters you are, and Soma the Moon-God. You are the Creator as Brahma and even beyond him, that Supreme, you are; you are yourself the begetter of the great Grandsire. O Master of the Universe, besides this existence, all that is visible or invisible, all that has taken shape or is without it, to you I offer my obeisances.
Continues Jnaneshwar:
In this way, and with a heart full of devotion, and with loving respect, did Arjuna bow and express his feelings, saying “Obeisances to you, O Lord, my obeisances, again and again.” Looking at that gracious incarnate form in every detail, he repeatedly said, “Obeisances to you, O Lord, my obeisances, again and again.” One by one as he beheld the several parts of the deity, and with a pleased and calm unperturbed mind, he said once more, “Obeisances to you, O Lord, my obeisances, again and again.” Seeing the entire creation in him, inanimate and animate beings in a like manner, he said, “Obeisances to you, O Lord, my obeisances, again and again.” Amazed, such wonderful forms as he saw in the Infinite, to them, to them, marvellingly, he said, “Obeisances, obeisances.” He could neither gather memory to praise more nor, dumbfounded, could he just remain quiet, without uttering a single word; instead, in a strain of fond affectionate intimacy, he simply sang, proclaiming that glory and that greatness. Or else, in this emotion-filled state, he bowed a thousand times and said, again and again, “Obeisances to you, O Srihari, whom I see standing before me, face to face. It perhaps serves no purpose to know if there is anterior or posterior, that God has front or rear, and therefore, O Master, my obeisances to you that you are at my back. It may so happen that you would be on my backside and hence I would speak of it that way; but it cannot be really said that there is a front or rear for you in the world. It is impossible indeed to enumerate your several limbs and parts and aspects and that is why, yet making a count, obeisances to you residing
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in all. You are the ardour and the forward-moving will, O Almighty, and your triumph is interminable; you are the same essentiality, always and in all, and obeisances be to you, O one having all forms. It is in the wideness of the sky that the sky itself becomes space, at the same time pervading it fully; in that way are you present here in every respect. Or else, like the ocean of milk that bears only the waves of milk, so in all, or in the whole, there is nothing but you. That is why nought is there different from you, O Lord; you cannot be separate from what is. My good sense now recognises that, indeed, you are everything.
If we compare the original Sanskrit verses with the Marathi owis, we at once recognise the new element that has entered into spiritual poetry. There is sublimity in both. But one is solid and luminously dense, the rhythm coming from the oceanic movement of sound, infinitely widening in its gleaming surges of meaning and sense with their massiveness, yet remaining subtly fluent in its greatness and in its gracefulness; the other is lyric-delightful. In one is the spiritual force, Tapas Shakti; in the other the upward winging of the happy psychic, the soul of adoration freely breathing ethereality of deep blue spiritual skies. To the language of the Spirit has now been made available the beauteous song of the Psychic.
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The fifteenth chapter of the Gita begins with a description of the astounding tree of cosmic existence, having its roots in the infinite above and its thousand branches plunging and spreading here around. But it is not possible for us to know the true nature of this strange Ashwattha tree, with its foundation fixed in the timeless Eternal; it is an ever-widening movement carrying the ancient urge to act and grow, in activity to give shape and form to the manifestive Spirit and in growth to bring and establish more and more of its Light, Knowledge, Truth, Love, Beauty, Joy in the workings of a ceaseless process. The whole secret of this tree, with its roots in heaven and its branches and its thick green foliage in the world of men, is in the triple personality of the Supreme, his three poises or statuses of consciousness, the outward-going or the externalising, the passive or retiring from action, and the trans-creational that holds together birth and non-birth and all that is in them and beyond them. In the language of the Gita we have Kshara, Akshara and Uttama Purusha in the greatness of what is and what shall be as the expressed Truth of the Absolute. Such is the unimpaired basis of the formulation worked out by it.
It is therefore necessary to see the problem of phenomenal creation in the context of this fundamental postulate; in it alone can our dilemma arising out of discordant perceptions find its complete resolution. The Gita handles it in terms of cyclic movements of the dynamic Self, Kshara, witnessed and supported by the quiescent immutable Self of Silence, Akshara, potent in its aspects of manifold becoming; transcending and yet holding all this vast becoming there is ever present the supreme Lord, Purushottama, indivisible, without beginning and without end, from whom arise these countless universes and in whom they live or into whom they merge when they fulfill his will which has brought them into birth.
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This is the great doctrine, the esoteric Shastra taught by the Teacher on the battlefield of life to his fond friend and dear disciple; he has been gradually prepared to receive this occult-spiritual knowledge which alone can unravel the mystery of this existence. It is a sure means to overcome the travails of this earthly life, a path that leads the seeker-soul away from all conflicts and clashes and takes him to the truth of divinity in creation. In it all his understanding and action and feeling find their perfection; he then lives always working out his swabhava, his characteristic nature, in the ideality of the eternal Dharma. Thus indeed he comes to know the meaning and marvel of the great Ashwattha tree.
Arjuna was given the psychological basis to arrive at a point at which he would be in a position to free himself from what is mundane and binding. The description of the Kshara Purusha may appear to take him away from all world-action, fleeting and blameworthy as it is. If what is, is nothing but a semblance, an appearance, then the only way available would be to get out of it. The spirit working in these short-lived insubstantialities cannot offer any redemption to man bound to the inferior play of the lower Nature. But there is also the immutable Being, itself without activity though supporting activity. This Akshara Purusha leads us away from creation, this phenomenal becoming, to the condition of self-existence in its immobile impersonality. If so, the injunction of the Gita “to fight and conquer” would appear to come as a contradiction for the warrior on the battlefield of life. The Gita, however, reconciles these two opposing tendencies in its formulation of the Uttama Purusha who simultaneously holds these both together in his nature of luminous manifestive activity. Arjuna is enjoined to recognise this and act in the dharma of his soul.
The introductory verses of Jnaneshwar apropos of the world-tree run as follows: “One who is in possession of knowledge is the master of his being and has the merit of performing a hundred sacrifices
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to get the abundant wealth of heaven. Or, he is someone who has taken birth a hundred times to do the work of the Eternal, the work by which the Eternal himself acquires his status of being the Eternal; for, there is no other method. Or, the way the light of innumerable suns becomes available only to one who has a seeing eye, in that manner does the soul which is in possession of knowledge attain liberation.” Having thus asserted the supremacy of knowledge, the Preceptor shows the path of enlightened detachment by which the ardent seeker of truth gets rid of the things and happenings of this transient and sorrowful world. In the present context, the Path of Relinquishment, nivritti, seems preferable to the Path of Affirmation, pravritti, as a necessity for the entangled creature to free himself from the bondage of this mortality. Viewed exclusively from this angle the world-tree takes a distinct form of phenomenality of the Kshara Purusha, mutable as if without the support of the Immutable behind and above him. Thus alone would perhaps prosper the worldliness of the world.
With this preparatory groundwork Jnaneshwar expounds in great detail, and with high élan, the fundamental propositions emanating from the first shloka of this chapter, the discourse running into some hundred owis. The terse rather the dense and yet luminous expression of the original is rendered here into a language that is lyrically sweet and enchanting without becoming metaphysically irrelevant; in the process, in that joyous expansive mood, least does it suffer distortion. Not only do we have the substance of spiritual philosophy in its trueness; there is throughout the authenticity of overhead poetry with its genuine power of revelation coming from beyond the mental consciousness. Let us have a quick look at this Ashwattha tree depicted by the Yogi-Poet.
(The Gita: 15.1)
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With its original source above, its branches stretching below, the Ashwattha is said to be eternal and imperishable; the leaves of it are the hymns of the Veda; he who knows it is the Veda-knower. (The Message of the Gita, p. 213)
You have taken the path,—expatiates Jnaneshwar on the Teacher’s words spoken to Arjuna,—leading to the house of the supreme Being; but then what comes immediately as an obstacle in your way is a certain illusory sense of this universe. You begin to take its apparent character, the semblance, this mundane life and these futile rounds of birth as the whole meaning and substance of existence. But it is not really so. Instead, here grows and flourishes the Great Tree, mahataru, planted by that Being himself. However, you should not make the mistake that this tree is just like any other common tree with its roots drawing nourishment from the soil, and branches shooting upward. Its origin is in the Above and what is amazing about it is that it spreads and spreads downward. No words can describe this marvel. All that we might simply say is that an axe cannot hew this cosmic tree, nor can fire burn it. Does not the sun shine at a great height in heaven and yet scatter abroad in all directions the network of its rays? The way the Flood at the end of a cosmic cycle, pralaya, inundates everything, so has this tree occupied the entire creation. If you are looking for a fruit to have its taste, or a flower to smell its fragrance, then you will find none there; for, indeed, whatever is, is this tree alone. The sky has become the cause for the rich and thriving expanse of its foliage, and the wind blows because of it, and the triple process of creation-sustenance-dissolution arises and abides in it. Such an Up-rooted tree, strong and majestic, thick and sprawling widely, has appeared here now in its universal form and it is from this tree that we desire to gather all merits.
But why at all do the well-versed in spiritual lore call this tree the Ashwattha? Actually, as far as the Eternal is concerned, it has no beginning and no middle and no end; there are no divisions in it, no
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boundaries, no directions marked for it in space and time, it being beyond them. But by the fact that it is above this tree, urdhva, we recognise it to be so, self-existent in its delight of awareness. Imagine a stringed instrument,—and it is but the original sound that is really present in it even before the string is plucked; imagine a flower,—and it is but its fragrance before the flower blooms. It is the self of bliss even long before the sense of enjoyment is born out of it. It has no here and there, and no spot specific to it, and no event tells anything about it; it has no front and no back and, remaining invisible, it can yet see though it doesn’t seem to have an eye. By its attributes and qualities, its descriptive and discriminative faculties, with several names and several forms is it known to us, even as in its manynesses it grows and expands in the sky. It is neither the knower nor the known, but only the knowledge; it has occupied the whole creation by being there as an all-pervading subtle presence. It is neither cause nor effect, duality nor non-duality, but it is comprehending and apprehending consciousness,—such is that Eternal. Out of that Eternal, the supreme Brahman, has come into existence by its conceptively creative power, by its mysterious Maya, this astounding tree itself, known as Ashwattha. In that Maya is the reality of this enormous tree holding a cosmic purpose in the Will of the Eternal.
Speaking about this Ashwattha tree Tilak in his remarkable Gita Rahasya brings out several references from the ancient scriptures. We may mention en passant that Tilak wrote his commentary on the Gita when he was given “compulsory rest” in Mandalay Jail from 1908 to 1914. There is an inspired directness and clarity in his style, indicating a wide-ranging mind and a will that affirms itself in life. Referring to the inverted tree of the first shloka of the fifteenth chapter, he says: “It is a description of the Eternal Tree, Brahma Vriksha, which otherwise is known as the World Tree, Samsar Vriksha. Samsar here means the world as is visible to us, the phenomenal world or the creation we can perceive and cognise, and not just the trivial rounds of our daily life. Sankhya calls it the multifold wideness of the active
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Prakriti and Vedanta the sprawling expanse of God’s Maya. Anugita names it Brahma Vriksha and Brahmavana or Brahmaranya. The way an imposing sky-embracing tree grows from a tiny seed, so appears out of the unmanifest Supreme Lord this tree in the nature of a visible creation. This metaphor or conception about the tree is present not only in Vedic literature, but also in other old writings of Europe. Ancient India calls it Vishva or Cosmic Tree. In the Rig Veda (I.24.7) there is a description about a radiant tree in the World of Varuna; while the source of its rays is above, the rays emanating from it spread here down below. In the Thousand Names of Vishnu the Tree of Varuna is one of the names of Vishnu. Under this tree (Supalash Vriksha) Yama and our forefathers sat together to share a drink (X.135.1); two birds of beautiful plumage dwell on it (I.164.22); this is the same tree whose leaves rustle as the Winds blow (V.54.12). In the Atharva Veda this Ashwattha tree is located in the third celestial world, the World of Varuna. Once Agni, in the guise of a horse, Ashwa, stayed under this tree for a year and hence it is called Ashwattha... . In the Katha Upanishad we have the eternal Ashwattha tree whose root is above but whose branches are downward. The Gita has undoubtedly lifted up this image and brought out its true significance in several details while incorporating it in its revelatory discourse... .”
Tracing the origin of the World-Maya in Brahman, Jnaneshwar proceeds to describe it in relation to the phenomenal creation. We can neither say that she exists, nor can we maintain that she exists not; she is neither sat nor asat, and thought cannot figure her out, or give to her a name by defining her in any way. She is so, primordially ever there, without any beginning, Energy of the Supreme in the act of creation. As it is wrong to speak of the children of a barren woman, so is she known to us—known only in ignorance and appearing unreal in knowledge. Indeed, there is no illusory Maya in Brahma Jnana, in the Knowledge of the Eternal. Elaborating further on the nature of this mysterious Maya, Jnaneshwar gives a number of examples. She is a chest of drawers containing innumerable doctrines and principles
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and propositions; she upbears this mundane existence which is just like a drifting and inconstant unsteady cloud in the wideness of the sky; only because of her, everything here looks like the folds of a piece of cloth.
So, in the immediate view, what we have here is, after all, just the growth and vigorous blossoming of Prakriti, Prakriti Vistar, the imaginative-creative display and functioning, the daily trivia, the rut of household affairs and matters of Maya, Maya Prapancha. Such is she established in Brahman the Spirit, working in its potency. She is a tiny seed from which issues forth, as the Vedantist says, this world-tree. Hers is the theme for human action in the theatre of human life. She is a lamp of contradictive and misleading light that does not give true knowledge. Coming out of the Eternal and yet as if throwing a shadow on the Eternal is she; she seems to make even that Eternal forget itself. Jnaneshwar explains this with the help of a vivid example. Think of a person who has fallen asleep and in that sleep experiences a dream: A beautiful young woman is seen sharing his bed; after a while, as she gets up in that dream, she embraces him and excites his passions which he carries with him even when he is awake. In this way we can understand the infatuation of the Eternal that it becomes self-oblivious under her sway. Therefore whatever is here is all ignorance, avidya. In the Pure Existent is now carried on the play of this strange inexplicable Maya. We witness her as lower Nature or Apara Prakriti, cut off from the supreme Source. It even gives us a strong sense of abiding illusion. Non-cognisance of that supreme Origin in this wide functioning of hers is at the root of this world-tree’s appearance as non-Brahmic.
Jnaneshwar then proceeds to link up her works with the Sankhya description of this vast material creation. It essentially follows the Puranic tradition of the gross physical universe as a product of the eightfold Nature, ashtadha prakriti, emanating from and working in the power of Maya. Out of the Consciousness-Force, chidvritti, shoot
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out, like twigs and branches of this cosmic tree, the three subjective principles and five objective faculties. Primordial matter as Prakriti is unmanifest, eternal, exists both as cause and effect, is undifferentiated and as the source of all categories gives rise to this creation. There are twenty-four categories or tanmatras defining, in a way, the aspects of the Qualified Eternal, saguna brahma; these evolutes are made of five gross elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether), five subtle elements (smell, taste, colour, touch, sound), four internal senses (mind, understanding, ego, reason), five senses of perception (hearing, touch, sight, taste, smell) and five organs of action (tongue, hands, feet, organs of generation and defecation). But Prakriti by herself cannot proceed in her works without the agency of Purusha activating her. Purusha as Kala or Time therefore becomes the twenty-fifth evolute. The Creator by his own Energy or Maya abides, unaffected, in living beings as the Purusha, the Inner Controller, and outside them as the dynamic force of effectuation that is Kala. The nature of this Kala is seen as a constant change occurring in the cosmic tree called Ashwattha. Tracing the etymology of the word ashwattha, Jnaneshwar says that shwa means tomorrow and therefore ashwattha means that which does not stay the same until tomorrow. Yet it is imperishable, does not disappear in Time. Its perpetuity is the aspect of immortality in the mortal world. It is always there. Its steadfast constant and unceasing motion presents itself in the nature of stillness; its stability lies in the eternal recurrence of movement. A spinning-top appears stationary while whirling rapidly on its axis; so does this world-tree. Jnaneshwar gives half-a-dozen examples to illustrate the point with the intention of bringing out the changing if not evanescent feature of this phenomenal existence.
The general drift of these verses of Jnaneshwar is towards the exclusive approach of the man of knowledge, Jnani. His Maya-Yoga essentially highlights the ephemeral or fleeting character of the Ashwattha tree, upadhicheni pade kshanikatva is what this world is, which is in quite sharp contrast to the featureless and impersonal
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immutable Self of Silence. The Lord of this constantly changing formation of Maya, Kshara Purusha himself, thus seems to acquire the character of impermanence. This is a natural consequence of the acceptance of the Path of Relinquishment, Nivritti Marg.
In order to get out of this phenomenality it is necessary to use the strong sword of detachment; asanga shastrena dhridena chhitva is the injunction of the Gita. While this is perfectly valid in the pragmatism of the process, and without it there cannot be any real spiritual progress, it must be considered only as the initial step, as a functional aspect in the recognition of parameters of the present existence. We must withdraw and sever ourselves from what is false. But there is another complementary sequence also, promoting action, Pravritti Marg which indeed should change this nature. And could that not be the real intention behind the process?
Jnaneshwar, however, following Nivritti Marg, is practically subscribing to the Shankarite Theory of Maya as an illusory power and not as a conceptively creative force in world-manifestation. Not that this interpretation is altogether indefensible. Nor is such a spiritual experience entirely invalid. The first few shlokas of this chapter of the Gita can very easily lend themselves to such a possible point of view or explanation of this cosmic tree of existence.
The branches of this cosmic tree extend both below and above (below in the material, above in the supraphysical planes), they grow by the gunas of Nature; the sensible objects are its foliage, downward here into the world of men it plunges its roots of attachment and desire with the consequences of an endlessly developing action. The real form of it cannot be perceived by us in this material world of man’s embodiment, nor its beginning nor its end, nor its foundation; having cut down this firmly rooted Ashwattha by the strong sword of detachment, one should seek that highest goal whence, once having reached it, there is no
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compulsion of return to mortal life; I turn (says the Vedantic verse) to seek that original soul alone from whom proceeds the original sempiternal urge to action. To be free from the bewilderment of this lower Maya, without egoism, the great fault of attachment conquered, jitasangadosha, all desires stilled, the duality of joy and grief cast away, always to be fixed in a pure spiritual consciousness, these are the steps of the way to that supreme Infinite.
(The Message of the Gita, p. 214, edited by Anilbaran Roy, based on Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita)
But, at a later stage, the Gita speaks of the three Purushas, synthesising the Kshara and Akshara in the Uttama. In fact, transference of the attributes of the drifting and unsteady phenomenal Nature, the play of inferior Maya, to the ever-existent Kshara Purusha who presides over the works of this Nature, is not acceptable to the Aurobindonian experience and philosophy of the spirit. That which belongs to Nature, and for whatever reason or purpose it be there, cannot be considered directly as a part of the Being. We have to fully understand and appreciate the working of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind Maya. Jnaneshwar,—or for that matter the ancient esoteric seer and thinker,—was not really concerned with the physical universe and hence always a hiatus remained between the material and the spiritual. However, we should also remember that the scriptural poetry is never a metaphysical treatise and we have to understand its shades and nuances in their full richness. The language of the poet which is always a suggestive language does not necessarily bind him to any specific system of philosophy and it is his Word of Revelation alone which we must accept.
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Jnaneshwar was essentially a Yogi-Poet and not a philosopher or metaphysician dealing with abstruse problems of creation. His expression is that of a mystic who uses the poetic language of symbols and metaphors while giving form to his ideas and concepts. He piles simile upon simile, example upon example to make a certain point of deeper import, the technique being in the nature of an address to a devout gathering. But this is a technique which a strict logician will not accept. According to him any serious discourse ought to be carried out in a rigorous manner. However, the poetic method has its own convincing validity, particularly when several shades of meaning can emerge from the intuition it bears. Jnaneshwar was not a darshanakar, a founder of a school of mystical thought; he had not formulated any system of causes—the first and the subsequent pragmatic or natural causes of things and happenings. We must also remember that he wrote his work only at the age of fifteen when he must have just studied and acquired the traditional lore that had come down to him as a part of the mediaeval upbringing. His father Vitthalpant himself was a man of deep learning and must have seen that his children were taught scriptural and yogic literature in its proper context necessary for a truer wholesome religious life. The Brahminical rituals and their strict observations must have moulded his outlook, coming as these did from the seats of learning at Paithan and Kashi. Apart from adherence to routinised customs and practices, it was also the age when the intellectual spirituality was primarily dominated by the Adwaita Philosophy of Shankara; indeed, we may well take that Jnaneshwar had come under its full sway and in these matters did not exercise his own judgement. The dialectical persuasiveness of the powerful Acharya—who had vigorously defended and propagated the Vedantic knowledge against the Buddhist doctrine—had held in grip the religious society for several centuries.
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The earlier cult of Yajnic sacrifices, sacrifices not too infrequently made to dubious gods,—the pre-Buddhistic over-burdened Karma-kanda approach,—had already served a great purpose and the deeper questing urge was yearning for another breath of life. Vedicism had to halt, to make its transformed appearance later on. In the meanwhile, it made room for another adventure of spirituality. But, apparently, this spirituality posited only the frightening bareness of a nihilistic retreat, dismissing all that was Brahminical. Nonetheless, it turned out to be yet another, and perhaps necessary, extension of the wide-ranging spirit to tackle the problem of phenomenality by first denying it completely.
The Buddha saw this world filled with sorrow or duhkha with human craving that is trishna as its cause; but then he also proclaimed that this sorrow can be removed and the way to remove it is by following the Eightfold Path of Righteousness. The entire issue thus reduces to the release from the universal Law of Action or Karma which could be accomplished by extinguishing the fire of desire and finally disappearing into the utter state of Nirvanic Non-Self. But then the ferry-boat,—to use the Mahayana image,—that takes one to the Shore of Silence, away from this shore of ignorance and craving and death, does not do the return trip; consequently, whatever gets left behind remains in the same state of suffering. In fact, this ‘behind’ remains totally dismissed—as in the Vedantic argument in which we cannot know ignorance while we are in ignorance and no more there exists ignorance, and its world, when we have the knowledge of Reality. Everything gets extinguished in Accomplishment of the Transcendental Wisdom, prajna-paramita. But trying and strenuous is the path, hard and painful and full of danger. The quest of the goal itself becomes a trap. “Difficult to be attained through Awakening is the Perfect Transcendental Wisdom,” says the disciple. The Teacher answers: “That is the reason why no one ever attains it through Awakening.” The effort itself is the limitation. Howsoever puzzling or Zen-like the statement be, the notion of this-ness or, for that matter even of that-ness, ought no more haunt the serious seeker. “Hence Buddhism denies,” in the words of Zimmer, “the force and validity of everything that can be known.” In the final analysis, which derives a
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certain spiritual support also, there is “neither the realm of life and death nor that of release. Moreover there is no Buddhism and no boat, since there are neither shores nor waters between. There is no boat, and there is no boatman,—no Buddha. The great paradox of Buddhism, therefore, is that no Buddha has ever come into existence to enlighten the world with Buddhist teachings.” (Philosophies of India) Powerful metaphysics it indeed is.
Such extreme negations of whatever is, phenomenal or essential, is the boldest step taken by the Enlightened. Occult-spiritually, this is an experience of paramount importance in which the last vestiges of superficial personality that we fondly cherish and value in our life get eliminated. It is only when this knotted individuality is dissolved that there can be the leap into the utter Blank where all manifestation characterised by pain and misery and death ceases to be. This is the faultless solution offered to get out of the composite and sorrowful existence driven by desire and bound by Karma as it is. For that reason the compassionate Buddha himself had refused to enter into Nirvana while the world behind lay suffering. He proposed to take man to a state of pure and perfect non-egoistic selfless transcendence. However, in it there is a shortcoming of a serious nature: its empty spaces do not become available to establish the manifestation’s true primaevality. In it the world disappears altogether.
But then, paradoxically, under the ascetic and life-abnegating sway of Buddhism flourished great kingdoms and orders, tranquil art and literature and exact reason and occult sciences. The path of Non-Existence led to an intense state of existentiality. Negation asserted itself vehemently in a million ways of expression. However, this activity of the Monk must be considered to be entirely different from the dynamism of the ancient Rishi who had posited and promoted positive values in life, the life which is a rich and fruitful field for performing works to claim celestial felicities. One shows the door of escape, the other opens out the possibility of a happy fulfillment. In one there is total immergence and disappearance, in the other the life of immortality in the splendour of the gods.
The spell of Buddhism on the collective life had to end and in that task we witness the greatness of Shankara. “Philosophy is the self-expression,” writes Radhakrishnan, “ of the growing spirit of mankind, and the philosophers are its voice. Great thinkers appear in all great ages, and are as much the creatures as the creators of their era. Their genius lies in the power to seize the opportunity of the hour and give voice to the inarticulate yearnings that have been for long struggling in the hearts of men of expression. A creative thinker of the first rank, Shankara entered into the philosophic inheritance of his age, and reinterpreted it with special reference to its needs. Though Hindu thought had practically triumphed over Buddhism, the latter had instilled its secret strength into the people. The shadow of distrust which Buddhism threw over cherished beliefs did not completely vanish... It was a critical period in the history of the Hindu nation, when there was a general sense of weariness with the wrangling sects. The age needed a religious genius who was unwilling to break with the past and yet open to the good influences of the new creeds, one who could stretch the old moulds without breaking them and synthesise the warring sects on a broad basis of truth, which would have room for all men of all grades of intelligence and culture. Shankara ... announced his Adwaita Vedanta as offering a common basis for religious unity.” (Indian Philosophy, Vol. 2, pp. 466-67)
We may well ignore the rhapsodical element in Radhakrishnan’s assessment of the work of the great Adwaitin, but it did prevail in our consciousness for more than a thousand years. But what was the real nature of his contribution “to all men of all grades of intelligence and culture”? While it dismissed Nihilism with a new system of powerful and impeccable spiritual dialectics, sharp and keen in its logical exactness, it succeeded only in asserting the reality of another negation in the exclusiveness of the passive Brahman. It robbed the dynamic Absolute of its legitimate existence in activity. “Do the souls inhere in Brahman or Brahman in the souls? Every attempt to bring Brahman into connection with the world of becoming ends in failure.” Ultimately the world itself becomes an illusion which gets dispelled only in the reality of the static Eternal. Therefore, according to this Theory of Brahman, there is no possibility of any real becoming, no
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prospect for enlightened life here; in fact, our only concern ought to be to get out of this illusory world by the practice of the Yoga of Self-Knowledge.
Shankara had taken the Shruti, the Revelation of the ancient Rishis, as the basis for his formulations in the context of his own spiritual realisation, of the blank featureless actionless Absolute. He saw only that and discounted what is around as fleeting and false and mundane. Effectively, he threw away God from this world. He saw everything in the scriptures only from this point of view and interpreted these accordingly. The haunting problem of the ultimate reality, “of the unreal there is no being and of the real there is no non-being”
(The Gita: 2.16)
he chose to tackle in his own way. Finally he arrived at the unreality of this changing world in contrast to the immutable unchanging reality which alone exists. In the words of Radhakrishnan: “The world is said to be unreal since it is sublated by true knowledge... The objects of the world are changeable. They never are, but always become. Nothing that changes is real, which is eternal transcendent being... In this sense the changing world is not real... The realisation of the Atman is the final end (avasan) of all worldly activities, which is not reached so long as the world as world persists... The relation of being and non-being is one of exclusion, of contradiction, and the former tries to overcome non-being, negate it by transforming into being. This is the aim of the process of becoming presided over by Ishwara, who is ever active in pushing non-being out of existence and bringing forward an eternal procession of existence out of it; but, at the logical level, it is an impossible feat to force non-being into the equivalence of being... Brahman alone is pure being, possessing whatever there is of reality in all things, without their limitations or elements of non-being. Whatever is different from it is unreal. The nature of samsara is always to become what it is not, to transform itself by transcending itself.” (Indian Philosophy, Vol. 2, pp. 563-64)
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The Shankarite upshot of all this excessively fine argumentation is: “The world neither is nor is not, and so its nature is indescribable, tattvanyatvabhyam anirvachaniya.” Indeed, it goes even a step farther, lending a kind of illusiveness to Ishwara, to the personal aspect of the Eternal. This extreme position lands the Adwaitin into a difficult situation when he comes to the three Purushas described in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita.
Take a brief example of the verse hinting at the nature of Jiva, the individual soul: “It is an eternal portion of Me that becomes the Jiva in the world of living creatures and cultivates the subjective powers of Prakriti, mind and the five senses.”
(The Gita: 15.7)
Sri Aurobindo, while commenting on the phrase “an eternal portion of Me,” writes: “This is an epithet, a statement of immense bearing and consequence. For it means that each soul, each being in its spiritual reality is the very Divine, however partial its actual manifestation of him in Nature. And it means too, if words have any sense, that each manifesting spirit, each of the many, is an eternal individual, an eternal unborn undying power of the one Existence. We call this manifesting spirit the Jiva... But in truth it is something greater than its present appearance... And when this soul arises above all ignorant limitation, then it puts on its divine nature of which its humanity is only a temporary veil, a thing of partial and incomplete significance.” (Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, pp. 430-31)
The difficulty of the Adwaitic philosophy lies in the apparent contradiction of the partless having parts, in the division of the Indivisible. Radhakrishnan himself points out that Shankara “is not faithful to the intention of the author of the Gita when he says that amsa, or part, indicates an imaginary or apparent part only.” (Indian philosophy, Vol. 1, p. 549) Certainly then, à la Shankara, there are no future prospects available to the soul which according to him is a fiction.
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But it is not only here that he is going contrary to the sense of the Shruti; he does not recognise the implications of the image of the two birds found in the Veda as well as in the Upanishads, the vivid metaphor of the Soul and the Oversoul connecting in an organic way the individual and the cosmic in their works here. In the process, he also dismisses the Puranic experience of Nara and Narayana, of Man and God. No doubt the world is full of falsehood, but is certainly not false and there is a chance for it,—because the amsa, the Immortal in the Mortal of the Veda, is present here.
Jnaneshwar had grown in this milieu of Brahminical Adwaitism and generally accepted its formulations. Indeed, he is interpreting the Gita in the Shankarite way in which there is no place for a personal God, in which there cannot be parts of the Partless. Not that this is his position throughout; but in the discourse whenever metaphysical issues pop up, he happens to lean more towards the prevalent ideas and concepts of his age. In Jnaneshwari he says that he is following the great Acharya while presenting his commentary on the Gita. We witness this at a number of places, even to the extent that the Mayavadin’s symbols and analogies keep on coming at regular intervals. Very frequently we are given the examples of the famous snake-and-rope, experience in a dream in which everything appears real, the mother-of-pearl, the mirage, the children of a barren woman, the pot and the sky held by it and yet not getting limited by it, and so on. Through all these what is hammered into us is that the reality of the world is unreal, mithya.
But the remarkable thing is that the spiritual quality of Jnaneshwar’s poetry never suffers. There is always the inspired freshness and genuineness of word-value and sound-value with the rhythm faultlessly bearing them in the breath of the spirit. This authenticity is so powerful, and ever so appealing, the breath of the spirit so satisfying, that its own sense tends to ignore the sense and substance of a philosophical discourse that has the ring of a doubtful conclusion. There are always very profound utterances true to the yogic intuition and invaluable are the insights these bring to us. For the purpose of our immediate discussion, however, we shall keep aside
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the aspect of poetry and focus the attention only on a few issues of thought. It is necessary that the vastness of a spiritual experience, particularly as we experience in the Gita, does not get confined to a specific sectarian or logical-metaphysical formulation. The Scripture far exceeds the Adwaitic Doctrine of the Quiescent Eternal, the Revelation far transcends the Argument of Knowledge, brahmavada, which is but one of many systems to describe the ultimate Reality. We may take here Jnaneshwar’s relevant commentary which inevitably makes this world an unredeemable product of ignorance, avidya, and see some of its implications.
The question of the Individual and the Eternal, the Personal and the Transpersonal, is of fundamental importance in the metaphysics of this creation. If the formless featureless uncreated and uncreating Absolute were the only reality, then what we term becoming, having names and forms and qualities, with all these thousand aspects, would lose its substantiality and everything would appear as a shadow floating in a shadowy place. This appearance would be due to the mysterious working of Maya, the power of illusory formation, this Maya itself being indescribable. Naturally, therefore, it would be illogical to speak of the Lord of the Universe, Ishwara, who would have no locus standi here, or for that matter anywhere else, as there is no real universe to lord over. By dismissing the saguna-aspect, the Divine with qualities, the Presence with name and form and the will to be, to enjoy manifestation, the phenomenal world or becoming would become an inferior product under the sway of the all-powerful Nature or Prakriti, she casting her illusory spell over everything.
And yet there has to be a way to get out of this Mayic play of ignorance and attain oneness with the One who alone is. The first step is to be free from the bewilderment of this all-powerful lower Nature who is the moulder of the mortal’s lot, who has made this world full of falsehood, distortion, egoistic assertions, infatuation, attachment, lust, jealousy, the dark hankering for possession, the cause of suffering and pain. “Throw away desire,” says the Gita, “conquer the fault of attachment, overcome the dual sense of happiness and sorrow,
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and other dualities, and abide always in the primal Self, adhyatmanitya.” This is a verse which stipulates certain rules in the manner of practical guidance in the sadhana of the seeker of the Truth and is of direct concern for his progress; without it the real journey cannot begin. Only when all ties of phenomenality are unstrung is the Enduring reached and from it then there is no return; that is the true abode of rest, padamavyam tat.
Jnaneshwar goes into a kind of poetic rapture while enumerating these yogic prerequisites in any spiritual discipline: “At the end of the rainy season the dark clouds take leave of the sky; in that manner, with the arrival of knowledge, disappear from the spiritual seeker arrogant self-regard and foolishness and infatuation. Relatives avoid him who is cruel or is without fame or fortune or wealth, without good manners; so does one of merit remain away from all that disfigures and taints and distorts, that which causes disturbance. A banana plant topples when heavy with the weight of its own fruits; likewise, with the gaining of the powers of the self, vanish one by one all actions bearing their consequences. The sense of duality, of opposition, doubt and doubleness of intent or regard stay no more with him,—like the birds that fly away from a tree which has caught fire. The wild grass that sprouts vigorously in the soil of disunion and dissension does not grow in the nature of such a man. From him go away, along with ignorance, his haughtiness and pride and conceit of the bodily existence,—as does the night depart with the rising of the sun. With the declining of the life-spirit the way the body suddenly abandons the Jiva, so is by him discarded duality... Winning a kingdom in a dream or seeing our own death in it assumes no meaning when we get up; precisely in that manner the pairs of opposites, like pleasure and pain, stay not with the awakened. A serpent can never attack an eagle and therefore merit and demerit that flow from duality dare not approach him... The sun pours on the earth its own essence, in the nature of rain, and takes back the water using the network of its rays; in precisely such a way does one gather everything back in the illusionless sight of knowledge that which appears scattered here, in twelve different directions, because of self-delusion, atmabhranti. The stream of the Ganges plunges into the sea and attains oneness with it, so does he
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whose power of discrimination of the essential from the phenomenal becomes established in the Self. Indeed, because of the self-sameness everywhere, there can remain no wish with such a person to reach anything else.”
(Jnaneshwari: 15.300)
See, the sky is present everywhere. And it does not desire to go anywhere else to some beyond. We cannot say that it travels from one village to another village.
To continue: “On the hillock of fire no life can sprout; in that way in the mind of the seeker no disturbing movement can spring up... The full moon does not lack any phase to make its roundness complete; so is he who has become free of want and desire and attachment... The speck of dust gets blown off by the wind and likewise the objects of sense remain not with him who has offered himself in the sacrifice of knowledge, the brightly kindled jnanagni; gold is poured into gold, hemi hem. Such is that place, padamavyayam tat, which cannot be particularised, nor can it be envisioned or cognised by the faculty of our senses.”
This is a straightforward stipulation of universal yogic preconditions which ought to be strictly followed to make a beginning on the spiritual path. Naturally, therefore, there cannot be any dispute about Jnaneshwar’s commentary on the fifth shloka of this chapter. But when he comes to the next verse, pragmatically Upanishadic with the force of the Mantra, asserting the greatness of the Abode of the Supreme, parama dhama, we at once notice the Shankarite interpretation entering into the description. That place, that Abode of the Supreme, says the text, the sun illumines not, nor the moon, nor the fire, but is itself the luminous light of the eternal Being.
(The Gita: 15.6)
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In Jnaneshwari we have:
That which is seen with the bright flame of the lamp, or which is illumined by the moon in the night, or which the sun makes radiant,—all that seeing is after all not its seeing, nor is seeing it, but only the appearance of the universe, concealing that itself behind it. The immediate view of whatever is consequently turns out to be only a formation, a perception of the percipient and not the true reality behind the perceived. When the sense of the pearl-shell becomes less and less insistent, more and more starts appearing true the silver form; when we forget the fact of the rope, the illusion of the snake riding on it assumes a convincingness in our minds. In that way, the moon and the sun and the great bright objects shine here brilliantly, deriving their splendour from the one who is the piled mass, the heap of light, tejorashi, who illumines all that is formed. When that shines the sun and the moon fade away, even as on all objects they cast only the shadow of that Brilliance. Perhaps just in such a manner can we speak of them as its organic parts, the aspects, the limbs of its indivisible body, the waves on the surface of the ocean.
The beating of the kettledrum heard in a dream falls silent on waking; the mirage disappears with the coming of the evening. So is, tells the Teacher of the Gita, my house of dwelling, nijadhama, that place where vanish all hallucinatory perceptions, where exists no nescience. Having reached it, there can be no return to this ignorant life; for, the streams when they merge into the sea go not there whence they came. The salt image of a female elephant, kunjari, when put in the salt water dissolves and can never recover her lost shape; or the flames that have climbed to the sky cannot come back; or else, as does water evaporate and disappear when poured on a piece of red-hot iron, so do they return not who reach my Abode. For them there is no coming back to resume the worldly rounds. In this way, and that is the only way, and purely in the merit of knowledge, those who come to me cease from the cycles of life:
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(Jnaneshwari: 15.307-20)
Such is the excellence of that Abode of the Supreme, param dham. There is no fall into the ordinary mundane existence when that faultless and incomparable excellence is reached. One becomes one with the Godhead. But, at this point, a question of great occult significance may be raised,—vis-à-vis the very existence of the individual who is going to have such a relationship with the indivisible Godhead, with the relationless partless Absolute. In this union does the individual lose his individuality, or does he still exist in oneness with the single One? Does he remain distinct or does he get obliterated in the Eternal? Also, for the Eternal, is there that sameness throughout or are there differences? Does God see himself to be different from his creation?—devesi bhinna ki abhinna? (Jnaneshwari: 15.322) If they have been always distinct from each other, then it would be absurd to speak of oneness. On the other hand, if they are sempiternally identical, this talk of attainment and union becomes meaningless. Union with whom when all is one?
Jnaneshwar resolves the dilemma by first asserting the validity of both, that they are distinct as well as not distinct. In fact, according to him, this perplexing situation bearing a self-negating character is not at all present in any true spiritual awareness; it is a projection of
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our ignorance on the unseverable reality of the One. This separateness or this division is an appearance and it has really no foundation to stand upon. In knowledge distinctions totally disappear. It is only by the power of Maya that prevail these manynesses which have no substantiality of their own. When knowledge gets limited only to the bodily existence, then it loses its trueness and there is the ignorant sense of separation from the Indivisible. The distinctionless Self accepts the authority of Prakriti and conducts itself according to her wishes and her moods and methods; it is her commerce which is really witnessed in this entire hubbub and turmoil. It cannot be said that there is a square or a circular piece of sky, though the sky takes the shape of the container in which it is confined; otherwise its repose is always in the limitless which has no confining or defining boundaries or forms.
Such is the uncompromising position of the Adwaitic philosophy, holding firmly to the concept that duality is entirely due to ignorance and that, with the arrival of the dawn of knowledge, no divisions can arise in the Indivisible. Perhaps we cannot even speak that One is all or is in all or all is in One.
But then such a position leaves many issues unanswered. The necessity of God’s Vibhutis doing his works here, or he himself taking birth from age to age as incarnate divinity to establish righteousness and destroy the dark agents who cause the decline of the Dharma, the identity with the golden Purusha chanted triumphantly by the Upanishad in the assertion of so’hamsmi, the Puranic relationship of Nara-Narayana, or the two famous birds dwelling on the same tree as we see them in the ancient Shrutis, or else the vivid parable of Kutsa-Indra so convincingly presented by the Vedic Rishi showing the oneness-with-a-difference in the manifestive splendour of the higher Nature, Para Prakriti—all these remain totally unrecognised. Jnaneshwar himself, in a certain sense, speaks of duality in non-duality that is needed for relationship. There has to be Arjuna-ness for the being of Krishna to have a friend “in party and banquet” and a warrior doing his will on the battlefield. Asks Krishna to Arjuna in Jnaneshwari: “How do I embrace you?” Indeed, if there were not to be this two-ness, who is going to embrace whom? But then exclaims the Friend:
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“To enjoy your friendship, let me for a moment create this duality; otherwise this happiness, this delight, I will miss.” Otherwise the play will become impossible. Jnaneshwar, however, adds that it is only a thin veil thrown with a specific intent. (Jnaneshwari: 6.114) A certain difference between God and Man, as if for the purposes of a joyous relationship, is thus accepted. But this is a relationship of “the sky in the sky”, gagani gagan laya jaye. (Jnaneshwari: 6.310)
What this means is that Jnaneshwar is not exactly working out a comprehensive thesis or disposition of spiritual philosophy, but is only offering comments apropos of each shloka in the immediate context. This also he is doing in the light of the tradition which he has inherited. It is in this tradition that we should see his discussion of the Triple Purusha of the Gita. Here we may also mention en passant that Maharashtra produced great Yogis or devotee poets, but has given no Shankara or Sayana or Ramanuja or Madhva or Vallabha bringing with him the originality and power of intellectual penetration which we find with remarkable abundance in the Southern spirit.
Apropos of the Jiva in a world of birth and death, the problem of Brahman being without a second haunted the Adwaitic metaphysicians over the long and weary centuries after Shankara. It can be well summarised in the language of Radhakrishnan as follows: “Badarayana says that the soul is jna, which Shankara interprets as intelligence, while Ramanuja takes it as an intelligent knower. Vallabha agrees with Shankara, while Keshava thinks that the soul is both intelligence and knower. The individual soul is an agent (karta). Birth and death refer to the body and not the soul, which has no beginning. It is eternal. The Jivatman is said to be anu, of the size of the atom. Ramanuja, Madhva, Keshva, Nimbarka, Vallabha and Srikantha accept this view. Shankara is of the opinion that the soul is all-pervading or vibhu, though it is considered to be atomic in the worldly condition. Badarayana holds that Brahman is in the individual soul, though the nature of Brahman is not touched by the character of the soul. As the Jiva and Brahman are different as the light of the sun from the sun, and as when the light is covered by clouds the sun is not affected,
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even so, when the Jiva is subject to pain, Brahman is not. The embodied self acts and enjoys, acquires merit and demerit, and is affected by pleasure and pain, while the highest self has an opposite nature and is free from all evil. The statements ‘That art thou’ and ‘This Atman is Brahman’ attempt to show that the two, Brahman and Atman, God and man, are in reality one. If Brahman be the cause of everything, it must be the cause of the individual soul as well. The absolute divine essence is present in all its manifestations. Every individual shares in the spirit of God. It is not clear, from Badarayna’s account, in what exact manner the individual is related to Brahman, as a part (amsa) or reflection (abhasa) of the universal self... The passage saying that the Jiva is a part (amsa) of the highest reality is taken by Shankara to mean ‘a part as it were’ (amsa iva). Since Brahman, who is not composed of parts, cannot have parts in the literal sense, Bhaskara and Vallabha assert that the Jiva is a part of the Lord because there is difference as well as identity between them. Ramanuja, Nimbarka, Baladeva and Srikantha think that the Jiva is a real part of Brahman... The view that the Jiva is both different and not different from the supreme, even as a serpent is both different and not different from its folds, is refuted. Ramanuja, however... disputes the view that matter is only a different posture of Brahman and not different from it... both Jiva and matter are parts of Brahman... There is strong support for the view that Badarayna looks upon the difference between Brahman and the individual soul as ultimate, i.e. something which persists even when the soul is released.” (Indian Philosophy, Vol.2, pp. 439-40)
Keeping this background in mind let us in a rapid way see Jnaneshwar’s interpretation of the relevant verses from the fifteenth chapter of the Gita.
Jnaneshwar calls the Upanishadic Brahman That Thing, te vastu, thus giving to it a certain happy substantiality which has the merit of bringing closer to us its form and figure. But immediately he slips into Adwaita Vedanta and takes away all its defining qualities, relegating it to the featureless impersonal Alone. If such is that Reality then our main concern should be to get out of this phenomenality and live
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elsewhere, unperplexed, without any activity, without any issue troubling us there. It is in that direction that all approaches should orient themselves. Company with the saints, practice of yoga-yajña, detachment from things of bondage, devotional service at the feet of the Guru, and doing righteous work are some of the means by which is removed the endless hold of me-ness and ignorance that mislead and pervert our life. Man’s happiness lies in recognising this and in following the path undeterred. There is no way of seeing the sun in the night; but with the sunrise we come to know the sun by the rays of the sun itself. The knowledge of the Eternal brings illumination by which the Eternal reveals itself to us in that respect. We generally remain tied to our corporeal state and, at the most, follow ritualistic prescriptions in an exclusive dogmatic way, thinking that we will get the fruits of heaven; but what always lies in store is only misery. However, the Gita’s Teacher does not quite disown or condemn even this defective thinking and this behaviour of ours; he avows that he is the Originator of everything, including this nescience of ours. The cloud covers the sun but actually it is the same sun which, by its illumination, shows the contours of the cloud. All our attempts to know the Brahman are simply governed by our faulty sense of cognition. By speaking about it our hesitant speech only indicates what really is ungraspable. Peroration over the Attributed is only a way to tell of the sheer Unattributable. The Scripture attempted to speak of the Eternal but, in doing so, it shot out into a thousand branches of the tree of knowledge. It proclaimed the Great Principle, Mahasiddhanta, but it got totally baffled while describing its threefold status of purity, trishuddhi, as Jnaneshwar says. The breeze carries away the fragrance of the flower and disappears with it in the sky; so do all utterances even as they approach the Ineffable. Expression gets lost. Once this happens the very notion of duality also disappears and what remains is only the Adwaitic One. With the dawning of knowledge no darkness is left behind, nor flame nor soot nor snuff when camphor is set ablaze. That conception which had given rise to nescience also vanishes. As a matter of fact there is no scope for ignorance then. The two-ness of Nara and Narayana, of Man and God, in its essentiality exists no more. We need two lips to talk, but the speech is one; we need two legs to walk, but the act of walking is one,—dohi
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vothi ek bolane, dohi charani ek chalane. What is experienced is the indivisible Brahman, the featureless qualityless Undefinable, without any activity. Yet, tells the Teacher, though attributeless, it has a form which can only be inferentially cognised in terms of qualities; it can be addressed by a thousand names, though it is nameless. In that sense we may cognise that which has actually no determinative character. Skimming of butter from butter-milk, removing the dross from molten gold, pushing aside the moss to collect pure water on the bank of a river, or else dispelling the cloud to get a clear vision of the sky, sifting of grain from the husk,—these are just indicative of the fact that, after describing it in so many ways, what remains behind is only the Indescribable. But, being beyond our understanding, it transcends all categorisation. There is only the relationless Absolute or the utter Unmanifest.
With this preparatory background Jnaneshwar comes to the following famous verses of the fifteenth chapter of the Gita describing in its own metaphorical language the triple status of the Supreme in poises of the individual, the cosmic, and the transcendental.
(The Gita: 15.16-17)
There are two Purushas (spiritual beings) in this world, the immutable (and impersonal) and the mutable (and personal); the mutable is all these existences, the Kutastha (the high-seated consciousness of the Brahmic status) is called the immutable.
But other than these two is that highest spirit called the supreme Self, who enters the three worlds and upbears them, the imperishable Lord.
(The Message of the Gita, pp. 218-219)
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Jnaneshwar talks about these three Purushas in great detail but in a very intimate homely way. In this city of life, samsara-patana, there dwell just two persons and, being inhabitants of the same city, they know each other well. They live in it together, as do day and night in the same sky. One of them is a blind and lame and stupid fellow, whereas the other is of strong build. There is a third one also but he is aloof from them and lives elsewhere; when he arrives he draws into himself everything, including this city. The one who exists everywhere, right from the Great Principle or Mahattatva down to the humblest blade of grass, who has name and form, is tied by the three Gunas and sees eigthfold differentiation of Prakriti, who is under delusion in this transient world, he the cultivator of this field with its thirty-six constituents, who is asleep and in the dream sees all relations, father, mother, child, or friend, and feels happy in their company, or otherwise miserable,—he is the Mutable or Kshara Purusha. He looks at his own reflection in a well full of water and gets excited about it; in this state he experiences duality and ignorantly adheres to it. In the world of living creatures, jiva jagat, he is called so, Kshara, because of imposition of its attributes on him. When the water in the well dries up, there is no more that reflection and with it also disappear all impositions.
On the other hand, the Immutable or Akshara Purusha stands unconcerned about every relation, of nescience as well as senscience. He does not see differences and does not get, like a silent witness, entangled in knowledge or ignorance. Like the moon devoid of phases on the Amavasya or no-moon night, is he unknown or unseen. His condition is that of a dried-up sea without a wave, without shape or form. Wakefulness has gone out but the dream-condition has not yet arrived; illusory perception has declined but the knowledge of the Self is still far away. In such unknowingness as he stays, he is called Akshara. The fruit on the tree has ripened and the seed is ready to turn into a tree,—such is, as the Vedanta says, this seed-state, bija-bhava. From it springs up the jungle of ideas and concepts and notions in this living world of the Jiva. All ascriptions and attributive features have disappeared in the unmanifest state of deep slumber, ghana
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ajnana or sushupti, which is just next to the state of the attainment of the Brahman, brahma prapti. In it meet the two states of wakefulness and dream, jagrita and swapna.
These two states, of waking and dream, arising out of the perversions produced by the illusory power of Maya, get dissolved in the state of deep sleep; but in the knowledge of the supreme Self that state of sleep itself disappears,—in the way fire ceases to exist after using the fuel completely. What remains behind in that perceptionless condition is then That Thing only, te vastu, entirely different from these two states. If these are Kshara and Akshara Purushas belonging to the City of Life, samsara-patana, then the third, independent of and beyond them, is the Transcendental Being or the Best Person, Uttama Purusha. He is distinct from these two in the manner fire is distinct from tinder wood.
At the time of Pralaya or the Great Cosmic Deluge no trace of Jagrita, Swapna, and Sleep exists; in its fiery splendour, pralaya-teja, day and night disappear—and stays behind neither monism nor duality, neither the sense of companionlessness nor of companionship, ekepana na duje. Nothing remains and what stays is only the Unmanifest. It is that, so to say, where speechlessness is the speech, and perceptionlessness is the perception, and eventlessness is the event; That Thing, te vastu, is that wherein even the experience of He am I, so’hamasmi, is no more present; of it, therefore, whatever comes should be taken as its form. Such is the form of the Formless without attributes.
He is illumination but there are no objects there to be illumined; there is nothing there to be lorded by him, the Lord; there, in the wideness of that space, he is the only wideness occupying it completely; he is the melodious to listen to melody, nade aikijata nadu, and the flavour to taste flavour, and joy to enjoy; he is the fullness of the fully perfect, and retreat and rest for the restful; of brilliance he is the brightness, and a vaster nothing into which sinks this nothing. Greater than greatness he is that greatness; he devours the devourer and, more than these several manys, innumerable he is:
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(Jnaneshwari: 15.546-550)
He is yet the one who supports appearance without actually becoming so; of gold an ornament is made but that does not mean that, because of it, it suffers diminution. He becomes the world but, when the world is dissolved, he does not get dissolved with it. He is a companion to himself, jayache sangade jayasi, and there is indeed nothing else that he can be compared with. He is superior to Kshara and Akshara and is the one single reality proclaimed in the world of the Veda as Purushottama.
Such in great poetic style is the exposition in Jnaneshwari about the Gita’s Theory of the Triple Purusha. But it is unfortunate that the author has opted to remain in the company of the powerful Monist philosopher. To speak of the Supreme as one who illumines himself is perfectly Adwaitic, but to say that he is illumination sans objects to be illumined, prakashyevina prakasha, is to follow Shankara, denying the possibility of a manifestation in the Transcendent and dismissing it, if there is elsewhere any manifestation, simply as an illusion. This situation arises primarily because of accepting the passive Brahman as the sole reality in which there is no scope for activity. It is a complete non-recognition of the dynamic Absolute. The same difficulty is encountered regarding the eternal portion of the Supreme that becomes the Jiva in the world of living creatures, the indivisible Brahman dividing itself into parts, mama iva amsa sanatanah. This Debate of Monism, Adwaitavada, takes great pains to reconcile with Scriptural statements a particular and perfectly valid experience of the relationless attributeless inconceivable One. According to it its relationship with the phenomenality of this existence, of this world of birth and death, Jivaloka or Samsara is, so to say, via the mysterious working of Maya.
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Which simply means that this Shankarite Monism does not admit the possibility of real individualisation and, of course with it, of universalisation. In it the Eternal’s triple poise of the individual, the cosmic, and the transcendental, or Soul, Spirit, God, does not exist. There is no scope in it for the World-Power or Para Prakriti carrying out her multifold activities in the Will of the supreme Being who would, according to this experience, be only another appearance. That there can be very legitimate and meaningful differentiation in the One has no locus standi in it. While this Monism rightly posits the Absolute above all relation and non-relation, it wrongly denies to it the opportunity of having both. It makes Brahman a contentless void.
But if from Reality a real creation has to issue out then, to participate in that creation, there has to be an individual being living by virtue of the universal being which in turn becomes meaningful by virtue of the individual being. “This means that cosmos and individual are manifestations of a transcendent Self who is indivisible being although he seems to be divided or distributed; but he is not really divided or distributed but indivisibly present everywhere.”—asserts Sri Aurobindo. (The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 18. p. 372) Apropos of these issues he writes in a letter as follows:
The word Jiva has two meanings in the Sanskritic tongues—“living creatures” and the spirit individualised and upholding the living being in its evolution from birth to birth. In the latter sense the full term is Jivatman—the Atman, spirit or eternal self of the living being. It is spoken of figuratively by the Gita as “an eternal portion of the Divine”... the multiple Divine is an eternal reality antecedent to the creation here. An elaborate description of the Jivatma would be: “the multiple Divine manifested here as the individualised self or spirit of the created being.” The Jivatma in its essence does not change or evolve, its essence stands above the personal evolution; within the evolution itself it is represented by the evolving psychic being which supports all the rest of the nature.
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The Adwaita Vedanta (Monism) declares that the Jiva has no real existence, as the Divine is indivisible. Another school attributes a real but not an independent existence to the Jiva—it is, they say, one in essence, different in manifestation, and as the manifestation is real, eternal and not an illusion, it cannot be called unreal. The dualistic schools affirm the Jiva as an independent category or stand on the triplicity of God, soul and Nature.
(Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 266)
In another letter he writes:
Purusha in Prakriti is the Kshara Purusha—standing back from it is the Akshara Purusha. The psychic being evolves, so it is not the immutable. The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in evolution.
(Ibid., p. 291)
The integral Brahman holding the quiescent and the kinetic in its manifestive fold, and yet transcending them, is a spiritual experience which comes in a very definitive way from the assertion that Brahman itself enters, directly or indirectly, into this progressive material creation. If Matter is such a testing ground then its denial can throw a strange shadow of illusion on the ethereal Spirit’s substantiality itself making it devoid of any contents, as much as the exclusive admission of the Spirit can make the world of Matter illusory. Shankara’s theory threw the universe of commonsense perception out of the window of the house in which we live, that house itself being an appearance produced by the magic of Maya. However, it does not tell us as to who he is, if there is one, occupying this house, experiencing this unreality or, for that matter, experiencing the atomic Brahman when the illusion is gone. In fact, such a self-existent Brahman without the power to be in existence cannot be of any concern to us. But, along with the undeniable truth of the creative Maya, there is also accompanying it the truth of Para Prakriti, the higher executive Nature, sufficiently well indicated by the Gita’s phrase ‘by my Nature’, svam prakrtim,
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which for the purposes of cosmic manifestation has become the Jiva. But then in Jnaneshwari we do not see the integralism of a completer and truer Adwaita philosophy and therefore what we get is, as far as metaphysics is concerned, only the Shankarite interpretation of a great and revelatory synthesis which otherwise the Scripture is. Its quick traditionalist view, even while it sings in sweet melodious strains the song of intense devotion, has no room for an unfolding divinity in the earthly life. But perhaps this spiritual vision was meant for another millennium.
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(Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, pp. 250-306)
In the Indian system these [the three fundamentals of the present manifestation] are Ishwara, Shakti and Jiva, or else Sachchidananda, Maya and Jiva. But in our system which seeks to go beyond the present manifestation, these could very well be taken for granted and... the three highest, supermind and overmind might be called the three Supernals. (p. 250)
Jivatma individual self, an individual centre of the universe, Atman individualised is Jivatman... psychic being a conscious form of the soul growing in the evolution. (p. 267)
The eternal Divine is the Being; the universe in Time and all that is apparent in it is a Becoming. The eternal Being in its superior nature, Para Prakriti, is at once One and Many; but the eternal multiplicity of the Divine when it stands behind the created existence, sarva-bhutani, appears as (or as we say, becomes) the Jiva, para prakrtir jivabhuta. In the psychic... there are two aspects, the psychic existence or soul behind and in front the form of individuality it takes in its evolution in Nature. (p. 268)
According to the Adwaita of the Mayavadins this Jivatman, like the Ishwara himself, is simply an appearance of the Brahman in illusory Maya. There is no Ishwara, Lord of the world, because there is no world—except in Maya; so too there is no Jivatman, only the Paramatman illusorily perceived as an individual self by the lower (illusory) consciousness in Maya. Those, on the other hand, who wish to unite with the Ishwara, regard or experience the Jiva either as a separate being dependent on Ishwara or as something one in essence with him, yet different, but this difference like the essential oneness is eternal—and there are also other ideas of the Jivatman and its relation to the Divine or Supreme. (p. 271)
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It [each Jivatman] is one, yet different [from other Jivatmans]. The Gita puts it that the Jiva is an amsah sanatanah of the One. It can also be spoken of one among many centres of the Universal Being and Consciousness... (p. 280)
Purusha in Prakriti is the Kshara Purusha—standing back from it is the Akshara Purusha. The psychic being evolves, so it is not the immutable. The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in evolution. (p. 291)
The psychic being is described in the Upanishads as no bigger than the size of one’s thumb! (p. 306)
We have a very similar philosophy of negativism in the Chinese tradition of Wu Wei. Spontaneity or the naturalness of experience is a way of living that has to be attained by a kind of strenuous effort which is not really a contradiction in terms. Lao Tse explains: “There exists an absolute Reality, without beginning and without end, which we can’t understand and which, therefore, to us resembles Nothing.” It is the Indian analogue of neti neti, not-this not-that, and stands still in the face of the sheer Ineffable. No positive conception of this Nothing is possible.
The moment we postulate such an exclusive Nothing we land into the Adwaitic difficulty of reconciling this phenomenal world with that sole Reality without contents in it.
“Tao is there in what you see, but Tao is not what you see.”—tells us the sage. Between these two seeings there is an unbridgeable gap and we have no clue as to how this gap has arisen. This is also the dilemma of the mysterious appearance of Maya which makes
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this world itself an appearance. As a natural consequence of it death, like life, also becomes illusory. When there is no death, then there is no scope for pain and suffering which also become fictitious. There is no issue and we stand on the verge of extinguishment in the total Nothing. Everything ceases to be and the entire purpose of this appearance, by whatever method it might have arrived here, becomes meaningless, a strange creation which has no issue and no solution even to invoke the indescribable Nothing. There is then no Tao, no divinity, no Divine Will, no Divine Grace. By a strange process we land into the most frightening kind of a desert in which even that perception has no perceiver. If this is so there is nothing much to choose between Mayavada and Nihilism.
Yet there is a certain occult necessity for such an experience. To be such a Nothing is to fully open out spaces for the dwelling of the Divine in its full manifestive glory in the Delight of Existence. If with life death were also an illusion then both get dissolved in that Nothing, making room for God’s immortality in God’s way. That was the culmination of Savitri’s Yoga, in Sri Aurobindo's epic, in the conquest of God who had become Death in the twilight world of this enormous Void of Consciousness.
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The sixth chapter of the Gita begins with a description of the Sannyasin-Yogin who, though engaged in action, is without the expectation of returns from it. He desires no fruit and is not like men hankering after rewards and trophies. Certainly, he is not like those who never light the sacrificial fire and make no offerings to it. As a matter of fact, the real meaning of Sannyasa is to remove the desire that binds the doer of the works with work. The purpose of asceticism and renunciation is only to get rid of the bondage of the lower nature, so that the enlightened will can have its free play in him. By overcoming the sway of the lower nature and subduing the ego-sense does he prepare himself to make progress on the spiritual path. By action does the Yogin climb the difficult Hill of Yoga and acquire self-mastery. “By the self thou shouldst deliver the self,”—says the Gita. All that is gross and crude and degrading has to be rejected and replaced by what is subtle and fine, noble and elevating. When the Yogin has self-mastery and self-possession, then indeed the Self becomes his friend and from him disappear all conflicts and dualities, dualities of heat and cold, pain and pleasure, love and hatred, honour and dishonour, life and death. In all circumstances he remains calm, standing aloof and unperturbed, standing above these thousand distracting and troubling demands of the world. Established in the Knowledge of the Self or atmajnana he sees everything with an equal eye and, even as he recognises the essential truth of things and objects in their intrinsic nature, all superficialities and differences vanish from his vision. He is simply given to the moods and modes of the spirit in its wide-ranging splendour of manifestation.
But how to get this siddhi, acquire the true merit that comes by doing yogic action alone? The Gita in just a few verses, as usual brief and terse in their character, expounds the Science of the Yoga of Meditation, Dhyan Yoga, as follows:
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(The Gita: 6.10-19)
Let the Yogin practise continually union with the Self sitting apart and alone, with all desire and idea of possession banished from his mind, self-controlled in his whole being and consciousness. He should set in a pure spot his firm seat, neither too high, nor yet too low, covered with a cloth, with a deer skin, with sacred grass, and there seated with a concentrated mind and with the workings of the mental consciousness and the senses under control, he should practise Yoga for self-purification. Holding the body, head and neck erect, motionless, the vision drawn in and fixed between the eyebrows, not regarding the regions, the mind kept calm and free from fear, and the vow of Brahmacharya observed, the whole controlled mentality turned to Me, he must
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be firm in Yoga, wholly given up to Me. Thus always putting himself in Yoga by control of his mind, the Yogin attains the supreme peace of Nirvana which has its foundation in Me. Verily this Yoga is not for him who eats too much or sleeps too much, even as it is not for him who gives up sleep and food, O Arjuna. Yoga destroys all sorrow for him in whom the sleep and waking, the food, the play, the putting forth of effort in works are all yukta. When all mental consciousness is perfectly controlled and liberated from desire and remains still in the self, then it is said, “he is in Yoga.” Motionless like the light of a lamp in a windless place is the controlled consciousness of the Yogin who practises union with the Self.
(The Message of the Gita, pp. 98-100)
This way, without wavering from the path, steady like a flame and fixed ever in the Self of Knowledge, proceeds the Yogin. He grows in the awareness that the supreme Self is present everywhere and he sees all in it and is never lost to it, nor does it lose him; he lives and acts in it. Such a Yogin is dear to the Lord of Yoga, Yogeshwara, and in it is his entire fulfilment. “He is greater than the doers of askesis, greater than the men of knowledge, greater than the men of works; become then the Yogin.” That is how the Teacher of the Gita exhorts his disciple facing the harsh and difficult battle of life. In it he triumphs over all obstacles.
Become the Yogin,—such is the imperative. But how to become so? What are the prerequisites or stipulations for the seeker of Knowledge of the Self to proceed forth?
Jnaneshwar comments upon the relevant verses of the Scripture in considerable detail. Utilising this occasion he also gives a fairly long description of the traditional Hathayogic-Rajayogic sadhana. It is a spiritual discipline that leads to the awakening of the dormant life-force, the occult-vital energy, pranic shakti, lying coiled up and asleep in us, the power of Kundalini. One who is jitendriya, has conquered the senses, and who makes no distinction between the big and the
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small, between a tiny speck of dust and a huge quantity of gold heaped like a mountain, of the size of the mythical Mt. Meru,—he is to be recognised as the Yogin. In him never arises the feeling of jealousy or passionate friendship; for him there is none as a foe or an expectant guest and friend; nor is he deceived by outward appearances. He is one who is firmly established in the idea that this whole universe is like a single piece of cloth woven from one length of a thread, the Brahman. Indeed, he is a sacred ford, tirtha, a bath in which washes all our sins; his presence arouses in us benign reverent happiness; association with him leads us to the realisation of the Self; his speech is a confirmation of the possibility of living a life of truthful conduct; on him attend the great riches and gains, the exceptional yogic riddhis and siddhis; he always inspires in us the spirit of the Perfect. The Sun of Knowledge never sets on this Adwaitin, the knower of the One. He himself becomes full of knowledge.
About the greatness of such a Yogin Jnaneshwar says:
He is the father-king of the knowers of knowledge, and of the sight of the seers he is the flame-vision; it is by his resolve that into existence comes the order of the worlds. Even a full length of the cloth made from the yarn of the great creative-expressive Word will fall short if his glorious majesty is to be wrapped around. It is because of the brilliance embodied by him that there runs the commerce of the sun’s and the moon’s brilliance; without it the transactions of the universe will come to a standstill, or be reduced to nought. Oh the wonder! In that name’s marvellous infinity even the vastness of a blue sky appears no bigger than just the size of a small patch. Indeed, his innumerable qualities escape all our comprehension.
(Jnaneshwari: 6.108-111)
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In these owis dealing with yogic sadhana we first get a good authentic account of the kind of ascetic life a seeker of the Knowledge of the Self is enjoined to follow. It also corroborates the scriptural stipulation as to how the inner being of the doers of askesis is purified by the Yoga of Renunciation, sannyasayogad shuddham. (Mundaka Upanishad, 3.2.6, The Upanishads, SABCL, Vol. 12, p. 285) We are then told that while proceeding on the Path of Yoga wherever does such a seeker put his step, there opens out for him the rich mine of liberation. In the worst case if he should encounter an obstacle and fail to attain the goal, even then is assured for him the happiness of heaven. Go he may towards the east or towards the west, in whichever direction be the journey taken by him in calm steadfastness, faltering in the least, for him the fruition of effort is always there. Truly, when he approaches the village of his destination, that village moves towards him and presents itself to him, becomes him.
The poetry as we have in these owis is pure gold, bearing the mintmark of what Sri Aurobindo calls as the sheer overhead. But, then, immediately following it is a singsong description, most probably inserted later into the text by some lesser composers or copiers of Jnaneshwari. Such interpolations are not infrequent and a proper editing of the work still remains undone. One of the methods could be to go by the stylistic coherence of the composition itself, though it may appear to be somewhat subjective and hence dangerous. More importantly, an appeal more to the spiritual character of poetry, the overhead inspiration, than to the doubtful nature of the substance or the metaphysical details could prove to be profitable in several respects. It may, in spite of the hazard of such a procedure, turn out to be the only satisfactory way to approach the otherwise intractable issue. At the moment, however, we shall restrict ourselves only to the aspect of the yogic discipline Jnaneshwari is expounding in the immediate context of the Gita’s verses.
It has been firmly held by every spiritual discipline that the yogic path can prove beneficial to the seeker of the knowledge of the Self only by constant study and practice, abhyasa. However, in order to
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set oneself on the path and commence the journey first a certain preparation is necessary. But how should one get ready for it? The answer as given by Jnaneshwari is along the traditional lines, recommending the ascetic method of meditation and awakening the Kundalini Shakti, the occult-vital energy lying asleep at the base of the spine in the subtle-physical. To briefly paraphrase Jnaneshwari:
The seeker of the Self should first select a quiet and lonely place proper for meditation. It should inspire in him feelings of detachment from the things of the world, vairagya. It should be a cloistered dwelling which will further strengthen his resolve and bring to him more of tranquil happiness. In such a lonely place the practice of Yoga will become spontaneous and in its beautiful surroundings the spiritual experience will flow unimpeded. Even an agnostic or a heretic or a nonbeliever, should he chance to go by this place, would get attracted towards it and engage himself in askesis. While there, in that holiness, in that spotlessness, in the company of the seekers of the Self, intuitive sight will reveal to the aspirant that such a place, adhishthan, is indeed like the Abode of the Supreme himself.
In selecting the place care should be first taken that throughout the year the trees bear rich and sweet nectarine fruits; that at easily approachable distances there are flowing springs of crystalline water; that the sun is always mild and the low gentle breeze is fresh; and that it ever brings coolness. It should be a thick forest difficult for wild beasts to prowl or move around, a deep recess where is heard no disturbing sound nor any voice. Only at times may visit there, by the waters, swans or female cranes or, with an occasional lonely cry, cuckoo-birds. But if the peacocks should prefer to come and stay in the vicinity, it may be quite all right and acceptable. Somewhere there, hidden and cloistered, may exist an anchorite’s small shelter or a little fane of Shiva. In these surroundings the aspirant should select a good comfortable spot where the mind can easily fall silent. Always in that solitude must he remain, unmoved and unperturbed. There
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he should prepare for himself a proper seat, first by spreading criss-cross, and in an even careful way, soft holy grass; then on it he should put folds of a suitable white cloth and a clean and shining deerskin. The seat should be neither too high nor too low and it must be sufficiently firm and convenient for a continued steady meditation.
Having thus established the yogic asana in a secure and resolute manner the seeker of the Self, by meditating upon his preceptor, should gather his faculties inward. When the mind becomes calm and the sense of ego and all the outward-going movements cease, in that state of concentration as the body remains motionless, the life-breaths hold themselves together. Taking the firm posture of mulabandha, by pressing the heels between the anus and the testicles, control over the lower breath is obtained. As the meditation proceeds, eyes remain half-open and sight settles on the tip of the nose. In this deep self-absorbed Hathayogic state all mental and bodily perceptions disappear and the Kundalini Shakti awakens. Until now she lay there asleep, coiled up like a small female cobra, making three and a half turns. In this state she appears like a ring of lightning, or a rounded fold of fire, or a thick bar of pure shining gold rolled around. Under yogic pressure she presently stirs up and stands erect at the navel centre. But pushing her hood upward as she surges just then the mythical lake of the moon-nectar, chandramrutache tale, tilts a little and pours a bit of itself in her mouth. At this stage even the outward appearance of the Yogin undergoes a very a perceptible change. His limbs begin to shine like pure saffron, gleaming with its own lustre; or they seem like the seeds of jewels that have struck roots and sprouted; or else we may say that they could have been formed from the pleasing innumerable shades and hues of the setting sun. It is more likely that this emblematic figure of splendour could have been made from some intense and blazing inner flame, yogagni. The Yogin’s body appears filled with lustrous vermilion; or it could have been a thing cast from the very essence of his yogic attainment and perfection;
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or it could be that some calm and shining icon of tranquillity had been sculpted out in this figure of him. Imagine several pigments and colours used for making a picture of personified bliss, or a bright form that holds the greatness of joy, or a well-cared sapling of happy contentment,—and indeed all these steady themselves in his person. Or he could be a bud of the golden champa flower, or a solid statue of ambrosia, or a lush flourishing field of plantation. We may say that he is the disc of the moon moistened by the autumn; or else, seated on the asana, he may look like an image carved from the substance of brilliance itself.
Such a Yogin soon gets distant sight and he begins to see things that are far away, even beyond the other shore of the sea; he can hear the subtle sounds that arise in the sky, as much as he can know the intent and inner thoughts of even an ant. He rides the wind, taking it like a horse; and he walks on water without ever getting his feet wet, and many such siddhis or supernatural powers does he acquire.
That Kundalini, the Mother of the Worlds, is the imperial greatness and glow, the majesty of the Lord of Consciousness himself. She is the one who takes care of the shoot that has sprung up from the little seed, the seed that bears within itself the whole cosmos. She is the body of the creative Non-Existence; she becomes a casket to hold the Great Self that is Shiva; manifestly, she is the birthplace of the expressive Word.
As the Yogin advances on the path his gross physicality also starts slowly disappearing. His limbs present an appearance as if they have been made from the sky itself; indeed, he moves in the sky in complete freedom. In him the subtle elemental constituents of earth, water, fire and air successively turn into higher grades and finally merge in the last, the ethereal substance. At this point Kundalini loses her name as Kundalini and she is simply called Maruti or Vayu, Wind. However, she yet remains
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apart as Shakti, without the union with Shiva,— until such time when she will attain complete oneness with her Lord. But, then, crossing the stage of pashyanti vak or vision-speech she surges upward in her yogic ascent. Presently, she has the experience of That am I, so’hamasmi, and even as she embraces the Supreme Begetter, paramatmalinga, she becomes one with him. The earlier sense of two-ness or duality disappears in the ineffability of such an identity. We may quite well say that she has moved past the town of all description. When the sky fails to find any place for itself in the deep of that great void, mahashunyache dohi, then speech is bound to fall short in describing it.
Words return baffled; the will has no sway and it exercises no power any more; the wind cannot penetrate it; thought gets dumbstruck. That excellence of absorption, that state of in-drawn silent mind, is where the Yogin now arrives. Yet beyond this state is the ever-youthful fourth state, turiya, beauteous and charming, originless and incomprehensible, the supreme essence of everything. To that which is the province of forms and figures and shapes, where is the happy solitude of liberation, and where subside or are absorbed the beginning and the end, who is the root of the universe, the fruit of the tree of Yoga, the delight of conscious existence, who is the seed of the great elements, and who is the bounteous lustre of lustres,—it is to that extraordinariness does he come.
( Jnaneshwari: 6.319-323)
But exceptional are the souls who practise this arduous discipline. It is not a path which is easily accessible to each and every one.
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There is a definite preliminary requirement to be fulfilled, a certain fitness, a certain capacity and a capability, a certain qualification needed to turn towards this Yoga, an endurance that can bear the demands of its hardship. A long preparation in the nature of control over senses, detachment from things worldly, non-indulgence, regulated habits including control over sleep, control over eating, control over action are all necessary. When these initial conditions are strictly followed can then open out the easy way of Yoga. This indeed leads the Yogin to oneness with Yoga; he remains engaged or yoked to it ever, becomes yogayukta. Thus in all states, in every circumstance, he will be in Yoga with the Supreme. This union we can call a happy confluence of holy rivers, kshetrasannyasa, a place of utter renunciation where mind steadies and from there departs not. And of this oneness with Yoga what are the gains? When Lady Fortune smiles upon a person engaged in great commerce or activity, she walks with all her excellent gifts of prosperity into his house. Likewise are bestowed upon him the gifts of the spirit when with full determination and steadfastness he pursues the path of Yoga. He becomes a Siddha.
Jnaneshwar has well utilised the opportunity of the Gita’s brief mention of the Yoga of Meditation to elaborate in considerable detail the process of awakening the Kundalini Shakti lying otherwise asleep at the base of the subtle-physical. These few shlokas of the Scripture are taken up by him and expanded into a description of some two hundred owis. He himself says that it would not have been possible, quite obviously, for the Teacher of the Gita to speak about all these details on the battlefield; but he maintains that the main purport of the reference is sufficiently well hinted even in these quick statements.
It is also asserted that it is actually the quintessence of the Yoga as propounded and followed by the practitioners of the Nath Sampradaya. However, if both the spiritual and historical considerations are to be taken note of then this assertion becomes some what arguable. But this may as well be connected with the fact that Jnaneshwar’s
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elder brother and guru Nivritti belonged to the Nath Sampradaya; just a few years earlier at Trimbakeshwara he was initiated into the discipline by Gahininath. As an expression of gratitude and respect for his preceptor Jnaneshwar might have added this note also.
But what is perhaps more likely is that this particular owi (6:291) was added later by some ardent follower of the Sect, the Nath Sampradaya. In fact, a suspicion to this effect does arise at a number of places and one wonders if the present version of Jnaneshwari was not heavily interpolated during subsequent transcriptions over centuries, particularly during the long Muslim domination when its study was generally carried out privately. Even from the point of view of poetry, there is a certain unevenness which can well strengthen such a suspicion. Not that unevenness is uncommon in a work of this magnitude; but the quality of expression can well betray another hand entering into the composition. Notwithstanding the fact that occultly glowing phrases charged with an exceptional power are present everywhere in this Kundalini-description—such as gagani gagan laya jaye (sky getting dissolved in the sky), shabdacha divo malawala (the lamp or day of the word has set), mahashunyache dohi (in the deep of the great void), antarjyotiche linga (the creative organ of the inner fire), ratnabija nighale kombh ( the sprouting of the seeds of jewels), amrutacha putala ( the image made of ambrosia)—we have a good deal of mixed stuff also; very often this stuff does not come up to the expectation of Jnaneshwar’s composition. In fact, at a number of places the description about the awakening of the Kundalini Shakti looks more like a practitioner’s manual than a literary creation belonging to the province of yogic poetry.
But, at the same time, we must admit that the manual is authentic and perfect in details. We must also remember that Jnaneshwar himself was a master of the arduous and difficult discipline and had acquired its several merits or siddhis. Not that this acknowledgement or certification from the contemporary Yogis and Siddhas or Commentators is needed for him. He had at his command great occult
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powers and had control over things material and psychic. There are any number of legends, current even today, about the performance of ‘miracles’ by him. It is said that he was chased and solicited everywhere for worldly boons by the common mass faced with the problems of daily life. His obliging them would have led to his own yogic downfall and therefore he had decided to take early Samadhi, at the age of twenty-one, by leaving his body in a yogic manner. This could not have happened without complete understanding and practice of the Kundalini Yoga. Yet the soul of Jnaneshwar was the soul of a Jnani-Bhakta, filled with knowledge and devotion. In fact, this element stands out more prominently in him than the element of Hathyogic-Rajayogic sadhana which was perhaps only a preparatory means towards the Sunlit Path of Yoga.
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Which is that supreme word the Gita declares to the bewildered warrior on the battlefield? Which paramam vachah has it to offer for the highest good of the soul now ready to receive the revelations of the Spirit? Arjuna wanted to renounce all the holdings of the world and all the trappings, all actions associated with it. He wanted to follow the path of ascetic self-abnegation, even as he saw in front of him his preceptors and his own people ready to enjoy the “holiday” of life by killing each other. Better to stay back from such a cruel and frightful sanguinary deed, ghora karma, than commit the sin of universal destruction. He desired no victory, nor empire, nor the pleasure of possession, not even the kingdom of the three worlds, trailokya rajya. But the Teacher of the Gita rebukes him in harsh terms and tells him that he should not deviate from the path of nobility and righteousness, the Aryan Path, and in every way he must uphold the dharma, the dynamism of one’s own inner truth in the conduct of daily acts. Arjuna must cast off the infirmity that has overtaken him, something which is foreign, something calamitous to him as well as to other men and to the order of society. It is necessary that he should follow the law of action pertaining to him and tremble not while engaged in the gory task.
Puzzled, Arjuna is unable to decide the sure course of action he must follow in this conflicting situation. However, at this particular moment of queer psychological weakness of his, there is yet something splendid and admirable, something wonderful within him that comes to his aid. He may not be quite aware of it or may not be directly in contact with it, with his deep and earnest inner soul; but his nature is well-prepared to receive its promptings, perceptive enough in thought and feeling and will to respond to its command and to put it into living practice. His trust in the Guide is implicit; it is pure and candid, unshakeable, and he speaks to this effect to him. In fact, he goes to
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the extent of telling him that he is his disciple and that he will follow whatever he is going to be told to do. He seeks complete refuge in him, sadhi mam tvam prapannam. Indeed, that moment of crisis turns out to be, we may as well say, the most extraordinary moment in his life, a meritorious moment. In the sequel, Arjuna is told that the doer of the works has the right to work but not the right to claim the fruit of it, that ever remaining in Yoga he must engage himself in action and that, surely, skill in works is Yoga itself. Arjuna must possess poised yogic equality and in it act according to his nature.
Thus what Arjuna had shunned to do in the beginning, ghora karma, it was exactly that he was finally made to do. In the sanguinary war he had to perforce face his kith and kin, his elders and all the revered teachers; he had to get ready to win the victory at the bidding of his Mentor. It was also pointed out to him that he could not have but done that,—his nature would not have allowed him to act or behave otherwise. The guide knows his follower very well.
The psychological crisis and ambivalence arising out of the difference between the inner and the outer nature are aspects that have thus been well focused in this episode taking place in the thick of battle. Through it the deeper sense of action has been brought out in a most dramatic way to make that drama in the individual’s and through him in the collectivity’s life a living moment, a moment of action in the truth, action in the supremacy of dharma of the being itself. It is in this totality that we must witness the mighty power of the Gita’s Theory of Karma Yoga. What is most appealing about it is its positive luminous dynamism which does not negate this world howsoever transient and sorrowful it may appear to be.
Arjuna is advised to harbour not the least doubt; he should be free and spontaneous in the conduct of his life-assigned tasks. He must be without any fear and should not have any reservation, neither in his heart nor in his mind. Instead, he must always do what is for him his sahaja karma, unencumbered and natural work performed according to his true or inner character, according to what is inborn or innate to his being. It should not be the work determined by birth, nor
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heredity nor tradition. In its universal context this sahaja karma becomes a part of our personality because of the several factors that belong to the three divisions of time in which we live; it is then that it proves to be the shaper of our destiny. Certainly, when we come to this world we do not come with nothing of our own, not just a blank sheet of paper, tabula rasa. On the contrary, we bring with us all our worthwhile achievements of the past in order to promote them further,—as much as to mould by their merit our future, the future fulfilling the promise in the glory of the spirit. We carry the encumbrances too, samskaras and karmas, which we have to tackle even while facing every prospect and every problem of life; we have to encounter them without ignoring or running away from them. Whatever is conducive for this progress and in whichever way we respond and act, it should be always in the inner freedom and inner perception of ours; it is that which becomes our sahaja karma. In it is the true excellence of our action and in it has Arjuna been enjoined to live and be. Life's gainworthy pragmatism is in it.
Indeed, at a certain point in our growth this sahaja karma becomes swabhavic karma which is not governed by the outer qualities of Nature but, as Sri Aurobindo explains, by “a force of inner being in movement, the truth of the fourfold active power of the spiritual nature.” (Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 506) It is in this context of the inborn or natural or innate swabhavic or swabhava-based action that we must read the supremely revelatory verses of the Gita occurring in its last chapter. While preparing the disciple for this grande finale the Teacher tells him:
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(The Gita: 18.49-56)
An understanding without attachment in all things, a soul self-conquered and empty of desire, man attains by renunciation a supreme perfection of naishkarmya. How, having attained this perfection, one thus attains to the Brahman, hear from me, O son of Kunti,—that which is the supreme concentrated direction of the knowledge. Uniting the purified intelligence (with the pure spiritual substance in us), controlling the whole being by firm and steady will, having renounced sound and other objects of senses, withdrawing from all liking and disliking, resorting to impersonal solitude, abstemious, speech, body and mind controlled, constantly united with the inmost self by meditation, completely giving up desire and attachment, having put away egoism, violence, arrogance, desire, wrath, the sense and instinct of possession, free from all I-ness and my-ness, calm and luminously impassive—one is fit to become the Brahman. By devotion he comes to know Me, who and how much I am and in all the reality and principles of My being; having thus known Me he entereth into That (Purushottama.) And by doing also all actions always lodged in Me he attains by My grace the eternal and imperishable status.
(The Message of the Gita, pp. 264-70)
Jnaneshwar’s commentary on these shlokas runs more or less on traditional lines. No doubt there are yogic and poetic descriptions and there are deep spiritual insights present everywhere; but the thrust generally remains what we may call dharmic-religious. Liberation or
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moksha has been set as a single objective in life and the recommendation is that the whole endeavour should be directed towards this alone.
But liberation should not mean riddance of the world. Certainly it is necessary that we should avoid action which more and more binds us to this mundane existence. We must go beyond this stage and make freedom the true basis of all our activities. In it will be the fulfilment of the supreme or the divine purpose in this creation. It will be anterior to the manifest spirit’s greatnesses in the conditions of mortality. Its interpreters in the Adwaitic or Monistic past unfortunately missed that such could be the real intention of the Scripture. The possibility of transcending death even here was never conceived by them, never recognised and fully worked out in the spiritual functioning of life. Actually, that question didn’t arise for them when they considered this phenomenal world to be an illusion. But the radical departure came only with Sri Aurobindo. In his hand the issue of this world’s present Brahmanlessness in search of a growing and happier Brahmanhood showed the scope, as well as the prospects, of truth-conscient depths emerging out of the dynamism of the Spirit itself. Let us, however, restrict ourselves to the exposition as we have it in Jnaneshwari. In the following we briefly paraphrase its general line of approach to connect it with the supreme Word the Gita is about to give as a benedictive assurance to the ready soul carrying out the divine task in the battle of life here.
Jnaneshwar pertinently introduces the key idea of yogic lack of difference between various kinds of work, and makes this the first condition for progress on the spiritual path. According to it among all the works there is one underlying common factor, that whatever be these works they are all intrinsically of equal significance, none too small or big, none inconsequential or particularly exceptional. Therefore by recognising their essential oneness, their equality and the sameness of their value, karmasamyadasa, the doer of works must perform them in the spirit of a yogic quest itself.
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Jnaneshwar then elaborates with a number of examples the necessity of remaining in work; but then he also adds that, while doing so, it is good to make a practical distinction between what is truly desirable or beneficial, sreyas, and what is harmful, ghataka. Whether you do works according to the dharma or not, whatever you are going to do or you ought to do, the amount of effort you will put in them is always going to be the same and in none will the labour and physical exertion be any less. Therefore your criterion for selecting an activity should be based not on the comfort you will derive from it, nor the ease of doing things; but the consideration should be fully in consonance with the quest itself. Indeed, as a pursuer of values of existence and as a seeker of the Self the grounds for selection should be psychological, more subtle in terms of proper spiritual gains. What promotes sensuous passions, what aggrandises egoistic fancies or desires will invariably carry more and more of demerit to you. Hence this papa you should scrupulously avoid, as you would avoid taking a dose of poison. The occupation that causes degradation of consciousness, that invariably leads to misery and sorrow and suffering entangles you more and more in the network of life’s thousand evils, traps you without any hope of escape from all that is sinful,—all these without any second thought must be kept at arm’s length.
In this regard one safe rule of conduct a beginner should follow is to go by his own dharma, by his own law of being; he should go by it even if that law should be found wanting in any respect. He should entirely rely upon it as an injunctive and effective Word, siddha-mantra. (Jnaneshwari: 18.950) It is particularly so because this mantra has the kingly authority, purushartharaju, to help the seeker of the Self overcome every opposition and every obstacle; it has the superior endowment which can save him from every calamity or mishap. In it is uchit as well as param fulfilment, the most appropriate and supreme satisfaction of the purpose for which is taken the difficult and arduous spiritual path.
Thus engaged in proper activity you remain undisturbed and unencumbered; you indeed attain a high state of perfection. You no longer get caught in corporeal transactions of the world, dehadic
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samsara. As the wind cannot be held in a netting of wire, so do you escape all these entanglements. Your ascetic renunciation cuts you off from all complexity and enmeshment and it is that which unerroneously leads you to the experience of oneness with the spirit. True knowledge begins to dawn upon you and with the arrival of this knowledge disappears from you the sense of illusion; you become free from faulty understanding and faulty perception. Even the triple division of the doer of work, karta, the work itself, karma, and the act of doing work, karya, gets killed. At the very root of things the problem is eliminated; it is as if a pregnant animal, gabhini, herself has been slaughtered. You justly escape all the shortcomings and all long-term or immediate consequences that are incumbent in this divisive state of your approach and your perception. There is no doubt that when ignorance vanishes, with it also ceases the very act of knowing and what remains behind is the sheer calm and passive senscience.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.977)
By any reckoning this is a great achievement and it is by that that you abide in a state of unruffled and perfect actionlessness, naishkarmya siddhi. In that condition no action will bind you to the past. The way night takes her leave with the sunrise, or camphor becomes a smokeless flame when brought in contact with it, or a lump of salt just dissolves when put in water, or else as sleep and dream disappear from you when awake, so you stay free from the consequences of your actions. The sense of duality haunts you no more, even as does happy fortune help you to find a preceptor who tells you of this extraordinary gain of yours. Asceticism, the grace of the spiritual teacher or Guru, the sprouting of the seed of right discrimination, the sense of futility of the worldly existence and its illusory character, the recognition that the Eternal is everywhere and that in it ends even the urge for liberation, in which exists no more the worldly triad of knowledge-knower-known,— that is what you eventually secure; you become that.
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(Jnaneshwari: 18.1001-1006)
Such is the outstanding siddhi you get and with it you start discovering the marvellous Riches of the Self, atmariddhi.
But then in order to arrive at this marvellous realisation, tells the Yogi-Siddha, you ought to ride the swift and strong Horse of Rajayoga. Ascetic renunciation, vairagya, removal of dualities, dvandvabhava, making a cave or a thick impenetrable forest as your dwelling, keeping yourself away from the crowd, with silence only as your speech, mind fixed in deep contemplation, holding always together both meditation and union, dhyana and yoga,—with these should you unwaveringly proceed on the path. With this preparatory groundwork the Kundalini soon gets awakened. You experience the rising of the occult life-force or pranic energy from the base-centre, muladhara, and it pervading the entire subtle-physical, sukshma deha. It surges upward and, passing through the centre of subtle vision, ajna chakra, reaches the thousand-petalled lotus above the head. With it you acquire very many sharp and keen exceptional siddhis or powers. You are set on the path of progress.
That far a distance where the sight can reach when the light of the lamp is available, it is there that without delay comes to you all-round liberation in the condition of Brahmic consciousness. From you then go away pride, lust, the sense of possession, ego, haughtiness, arrogance, wrong assertiveness, self-will, ambition and all those who are the proud members of the clan. You no more make discrimination between a foe and a friend; indeed you become brahmarupa, like the Eternal. With this Selfward progress achieved, your ride on the Horse of Yoga becomes steady. You discard all the instruments of work, all the tools and means and aids, and all your accomplishments
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too; your trials and tribulations and struggles, your labour and effort and your striving,—everything gets left behind and you remain poised in the state of assured oneness. However, there is still a stamp of separateness on it; as yet this calm state of oneness does not quite obliterate your own unique and characteristic individuality: it is as if a river entering the sea were seen to be apart from the vastness of the waters stretching ahead of it. Beyond is only the ocean in its wide uniform expanse to which you have arrived, but you are as until now quite distinct from it. You get there, at the state of the supreme Brahman, but you do not become one with it; you do not as yet merge into it. An element of duality or two-ness is still present in this condition of yours.
There is no doubt that a difference between the two still exists at this point, the difference between the Yogin who has perfected himself to be Brahman-like and the wide immutable Brahman itself. Nevertheless, we may say that he has already qualified himself well enough so as to soon become one with it in its oneness; it will not take him much time hence to identify himself with it, to disappear in the infinity of its changeless unending peace and calm.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1090)
After having acquired this qualifying brahmabhava or brahmapana or likeness with the Brahman, you will get firmly established in happy understanding of the Self, atmabodha prasannata. In its excellence, and in its serenity, will come to you the knowledge of the Eternal. All ignorance will disappear in it and you will not see anything but that alone.
Though you may be living in the state of waking or that of dream, and you may still be possessed by inferior knowledge, not too long from this moment afterwards shall everything get dissolved in that which had until now remained unexpressed or unmanifest. But then even that unexpressed or unmanifest shall gradually wear itself out and finally disappear into the realisation of the ultimate Brahman.
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At the end of a cycle of creation, kalpa, made of one day and one night of Brahma the Creator, all gets drowned in the great Cosmic Flood and there stays neither the sea nor the river. There exist no more these differentiated entities, but is present everywhere only the Brahman. You see or experience nothing else, nothing but Brahman, the Supreme alone. Yet in reality what you actually experience is just its elemental state, its innate natural condition, sahajasthiti. It is this Brahmic state of the being which throws its own light on non-knowledge and reveals in it what that itself is.
Jnaneshwar further points out that when you arrive at such a realisation then, according to the Teacher of the Gita, you also get true devotion for Him, for the Lord of the Universe. There is no more then any division between the seer and the seen, between the object and the observer. You go much beyond the understanding that had come to you through the narrow gates of knowledge. Of this far-reaching kind is the merit of Yoga practised through Bhakti. The devotee who approaches the Lord of his Adoration with such knowledge is recognised as a Jnani Bhakta. It is the Jnani Bhakta who becomes one with Him. Those who follow exclusively the Path of Knowledge call this attainment or this siddhi as the state of self-awareness or self-recognition, svasamviditi. These Yogi-Siddhas always remain in this most exceptional and beatific realisation. Likewise, the followers of the Occult-Tantric Method, the worshippers of its presiding deity Shiva, associate this state with his dynamic Energy or the supreme executive Shakti who then takes them in her hand. They see everywhere nothing but her play, her presence and power in the building of these thousand worlds, chidvilas. But then the reward one gets through the supreme devotion to the Lord, parama bhakti, is also received by the doer of the works when in Karma Yoga he attains union with the Master of the Works.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1133)
By saying so Jnaneshwar has, we may mention en passant, almost suggested a synthesis of the various Paths of Yoga, of Bhakti,
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Karma, Jnana and Tantra. He may not have fully worked out the several details and consequences of this synthesis, but the drift of his experiences and his expression is clear enough. However, it would turn out to be a synthesis directed only towards the attainment of Brahmanlike consciousness for which perhaps this multifold synthesis may not be absolutely essential. Any one of these Paths would be perfectly all right for such a transcendental gain. Its spiritual basis would not as yet take into account its own dynamism in possibilities of the worldly manifestation. In that sense, while it would remain quite true to the intent and purport of the Gita, there would be no prospect at all of its going anywhere closer to the supreme realisation of Purushottamahood itself entering into these thousand aspects of the cosmic operation. Transcendence, and not its play in the phenomenal world, would still remain the high goal of all these yogic-spiritual endeavours.
However, let us proceed with Jnaneshwari, restricting ourselves only to the spiritual approach it is propounding for us.
The seeker on the path even as of now is merely fumbling and looking around for his way. No doubt he has renounced the little things of life; but his renunciation is still of the undiscriminating kind. He is still in the strange paradoxical condition of fettered liberation, of actionlessness which is yet encumbered with activity, of quietism loaded with intense dynamism. Partial self-abnegation is still the way of his being and the decisive spiritual change has not yet taken place in him. But then with the attainment of the state of silent and passive Brahmic consciousness everything from him will disappear and he will become truly free. When all that had so far appeared to him unapproachable will come closer, then he will not say that there is yet something that exists in the distant beyond. He will rather find that there is nothing which is not reachable. In realisation of that supreme oneness the doer of works will enjoy his works. He will enjoy them the way a well brought-up and beautiful girl enjoys, in natural elation, the young charm and exuberance of her own youth:
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(Jnaneshwari: 18.1147)
Everywhere the wave kisses the water on which it rides; the orb of the sun spreads throughout its own illumination; in the sky there is the all-pervading ether, utterly and in its entirety. “So do you become Me,”—tells the Teacher of the Gita to Arjuna. Does not in every respect an ornament enjoy the gold from which it is made? So should he live in Him. Such indeed is the perfection a karmayogin gets by following the Path of Action.
When you happen to be in such a state you discover that, really, you do not possess words to speak; you become mute, fall speechless. You further recognise that this speechlessness itself is the best form of adoration of the Lord who is there in each and every expression of his. All divisions and differences vanish and you get a sight that goes farther than the objects of sight, even far beyond the very act of seeing. You always remain firm and steadfast in the Self. You may liken this condition of yours to that of a compressed sky which was as if fixed in space, that space itself having become it. The general language of the doer of the work, he thinking himself to be different from the work he is engaged in, is no more applicable there. In fact, such a work or work done in such a state cannot even be called work, Karma; you are actually engaged in non-work. Your doing nothing then turns out to be a great worship, mahapuja, of the Lord.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1179)
You move in meditation, you praise him, you see him everywhere, you chant his name,— that indeed is samadhi, that is the true adwaita, self-absorption and non-duality.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1181)
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At this stage, then, to speak of Brahman or Soul or God is to strike incongruity. Even the act of refraining from speech or holding back any description, that itself becomes its eloquent description. Saying nothing about it is after all an extensive commentary on it and in those very terms do you describe it. The notion of knowing as well as non-knowing becomes meaningless. It is in such knowledge that you then take your position. In it understanding understands understanding, bliss embraces bliss, happy spirit lives in nothing but happy spirit. When you are in this state you see that benefit adds to benefit and all gains grow together only to increase and augment them further. Wonder and the sense of utter disbelief drown themselves in themselves and lustre gathers itself within itself. Peace becomes peace, rest finds rest, experience gets intoxicated with experience. It is then that to you comes this pure and blameless I-ness; even as do you attend with proper care the green healthy creeper of Karma Yoga, so does it come to you with its fruit. “O Arjuna,” assuringly reveals the Teacher, “just as this karmayogin sets Me like a jewel of senscience in his diadem so do I, in an intimate manner of household exchange of gifts, put this mighty emperor in My crown.” Imagine an immense and spread-out temple, or a majestic palace of Karma Yoga, and you will discover that of it liberation or moksha is a high-rising tower; above it stretches only the skylike expanse of this remarkable doer of works. Such is the oneness reached.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1214-20)
Thus in this karmayogin the stream of knowledge and the stream of devotion have joined the stream of work. It will now be soon that the swift triple stream will reach the ocean of the blissful One.
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Therefore, when this simple and easy path of Karma Yoga is available for the Oneness-seeker there is no need for anyone to undertake harsh austerities, no vows need be made, no elaborate and formalised rites observed, no rituals performed. It is through work that the karmayogin worships; out of that worship and devotion comes to him knowledge which in turn further increases his devotion for the supreme Being.
Significant and yogically charged as these verses of Jnaneshwar are, they also prepare the needed ground for the definitive word or the highest truth the Teacher is about to give to his chosen disciple. But, before that is done, Arjuna as the doer of the works must give up everything; in carrying out his actions all the laws of conduct, his imperfect will, his egoistic life-motivations, his desires, his ideas and notions of things, personal prejudices and preferences he must abandon. Further, and most importantly, he should simply take refuge in the supreme Being alone. Solely in it is there for him the deliverance from sin and evil and grief; in it is the Dharma of all the dharmas. This great and salutary helpful Dharma shall undoubtedly prove to him, even in the transactions of the world, most benign; it shall be the righteous and hence the best conduct. This course of action indeed has its own precious reward. Arjuna must constantly live in it, in that inalienable union obtained through Dharma; that is the kind of integral and fulfilling Yoga he must ever practise.
Then, as a happy desirable culmination of this practice Arjuna is enjoined to renounce all his actions and all the dharmas, all that is prompted by the quick and nature-grown awareness. Instead, he must resort to the Yoga of Intelligence, Buddhi Yoga, and in his heart he must ever remain one with the Lord of Yoga, Yogeshwara. Grace of the Lord of Yoga shall take him safely through the difficult and perilous passage of life; in it shall be every fulfilment of his spiritual pursuit. In it will disappear all illusion. There will be no more the unavailing egoism. His earlier stupidity and stubbornness, his refusal to do his innate-natural, the appointed swabhava-based work, shall not come in the way of his progress. What Arjuna has to do is to let him go himself freely into the activity of his true and fundamental character. He should also feel assured that his whole action is as natural and
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spontaneous as is the surging of the Ganges towards the sea. It shall give him serenity and supreme peace. He shall forever abide united with the Lady of Tranquillity and, like a person of high and noble bearing, he shall always hold in his possession the kingdom of the Self. Thus shall he come to that place where birth is born, and rest is in the rest, and experience gets further enriched in the experience itself.
Arjuna may think that he would not engage himself in the Battle of Kurukshetra,—as it happened in that sudden and impuissant mood in which he was caught, the enervate mood of despondency and weakness unusual to a warrior and a hero. But then, at the same time, with his Kshatriya build-up he would not find it acceptable to stay away from it. His fighter qualities or prakriti dharma as well as his soul qualities or swabhava dharma moulded for performing brave gallant actions would not even allow him to remain aloof from and unconcerned with the demands of society whose one pillar of strength he was. His valour, daring, fearlessness, commitment as an exceptional soldier to what is in hand, his conquering spirit,—these would not let him rest in non-action. It is necessary for him to recognise his own prakriti dharma and swabhava dharma and accordingly shape the course of his life. Howsoever much he may like not to be concerned about these issues, the imperative of his birth as a warrior he just cannot obliterate or dismiss: Arjuna cannot but fight. Not only the external circumstances of war and life and society, but Prakriti herself would make him do what he ought to do.
But then what is really important is that, in order to derive full spiritual gains out of it, he must convert this unavoidable situation or this rare excellent occasion, this very action into an opportunity. He must make it an aspect of soul-prompted and soul-guided endeavour. By making the action a spiritual action he would greatly progress on the path of Karma Yoga. The key to it lies in the manner of doing the action, the manner that does not bind one to the mundane nothing, to the daily inconsequential humdrum, not even to the rewards and fruits of action. What is to be well understood by him is that by performing such an action in the freedom of the spirit and by offering it to the
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Master of Works, Arjuna must become a true karmayogin. He must surrender himself to the Lord of his soul because, very truly, it is at his bidding that for him whatever has to happen is going to happen. The lower Nature under whose sway Arjuna presently is should not be allowed to determine the attitude and disposition, the manner of his work. Instead, he must go far beyond it; indeed, he must take this opportunity to acquire a yogic poise. Such should be his approach in all the works and in all the dealings.
With this background ready, and as a culminating part of the exhortation, the Teacher of the Gita is now on the verge of disclosing to his chosen disciple the great secret of active life. To receive that secret, the supreme revelation, paramam vachah, the disciple has by now been well prepared, in every respect. He is told that he, for his sempiternal good, should attend carefully to what he will be soon advised to do:
Make your attention keen and receptive, amply wide, and hearken to what exactly I am going to tell to you. Get these simple and direct straight words fixed in you. Let their import be determined in a positive and certain manner in you.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1341)
The supreme word or paramam vachah is going to be spoken. The secret of all the occult secrets, sarvaguhyatamam, the lofty truth of spiritual life in action, the great decisive injunction, the most excellent divine assurance is presently going to be made,—so that the well-prepared disciple, who is actually the ready Soul of Man, establishes himself firmly in the dynamism of the Spirit’s multifoldly fulfilling freedom.
But then what exactly does the Avatar of the Gita desire his fond dear friend and brave warrior on the battlefield, his constant human disciple, to hear that he may so obey him? What is the pre-eminent secret, the secret of secrets, the most esoteric foundation for
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the Godward endeavour that he asks him to build? After getting the experience of the selfsameness everywhere, of the unique oneness which is sans action, sans duality, sans associations, sans sorrow and suffering, the experience of the ultimate passive Brahman, what indeed can remain there for the liberated soul to achieve? Arjuna is to make his mind and his heart an exclusive home for the dwelling of the Lord. His ears have to be eager and fully attentive to hear his praise and his glories, ever and always. He should see and experience the all-pervasive presence in his inner and outer dealings, in each and every transaction of life. And all this he should do the way air associates itself, in every respect, with the entire sky. That presence is the shelter or refuge for all creatures, a place of residence, a habitation for each and every thing, sarva vastuché vasouté. All the while and in all circumstances Arjuna is to live and move in it, act in it, talk about it. It is likely that he still sees the lurking two-ness between himself as a disciple and his Teacher, between Man and the supreme Being, between Nara and Narayana. But then that two-ness, he is told, happens to be there only on account of the nature of the bodily existence, dehadharma, which, with its dissolution, will also get dissolved. By worshipping the supreme Being in every creature and in every object, in every senscient and insenscient entity, Man will realise that the supreme Being is indeed present in each and every thing, that there is nothing else but he alone. Man will have the knowledge of the Self; the sense of ego and of me-ness shall fade away from him. Arjuna has already made extraordinary progress and has well qualified himself to receive the supreme word from the Teacher. In it the Avataric mission shall be fulfilled.
Arjuna is promised that by following step by step the spiritual Path of Action, Karma Yoga, he shall obtain closeness to the supreme Being. Indeed, in its happy benignancy he shall finally obtain him. By doing works and offering these to him the doer of the works shall get the knowledge of him and by that knowledge become one with him.
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(Jnaneshwari: 18.1381-84)
Having arrived at this state any doubt regarding desirable or undesirable works, as to what is to be done and what to be shunned, that kind of clumsy uncertainty which haunted and disturbed him so far will no longer trouble him in any way. Arjuna is now told in a most assuring manner to leave everything in the hands of the Master of Works who ever guides the karmayogin and who controls all his actions:
(The Gita: 18.66-67)
Become My-minded, My lover and adorer, a sacrificer to Me, bow thyself to Me, to Me thou shalt come, this is My pledge and promise to thee, for dear art thou to Me. Abandon all Dharmas and take refuge in Me alone. I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve.
(Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 536)
Jnaneshwar’s exposition of these most important shlokas of the Gita runs as follows:
Desire is the cause of unhappiness, slander and fault-finding give rise to sin, ill-fortune and want of luck lead to utter helplessness; in that way, and out of ignorance, are born for life’s progress dharma and adharma, misconduct and gainful conducive action. These are the ones which, when fallen under their sway, cause heaven and hell to take birth in us. Therefore, tells the Teacher to Arjuna, by dismissing all these notions of things, these unavailing ideas, prejudices, misconceptions, individual preferences, this ignorance itself, should he take refuge solely in him. He should take refuge in the supreme Being by
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surrendering to him alone, that surrender being in full awareness and knowledge of everything. That is indeed sharanam, true protection and shelter for him,—living in him without dissolving himself in him. In that manner, and without abolishing their two-ness, did Krishna make Arjuna one with him, dwaita na modita kele apana aise arjuna:
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1421-22)
The sea got mingled with the Sea and rose to the sky.
Everywhere is the presence of the Lord himself, the universe filled by Narayana alone. In this way, through Bhakti Yoga, does the true Karma Yoga lead the doer of the works to the knowledge of the Eternal in whom is complete liberation. This is the most ancient and cherished primordial knowledge proclaimed by the Gita.
Indeed it is this knowledge which we call the Gita, the Knowledge of the Spirit, of the Self, the Knowledge of the Eternal. It is actually the Song of the supreme Lord, bhagavadgita. It puts the aspirant firmly on the forward-leading path and dispels everything that is retrograde. Its greatness is such that in it are founded the Vedas themselves. In this statement of Jnaneshwar there is a great and very unusual perception which again bespeaks his unique spiritual attainments. The supreme secret of the Gita has been truly revealed in its supreme greatness.
The message has been given, the supreme word uttered. The bewildered soul of man facing the battle of life, and meeting the conflicts of values in its daily conduct, has been divinely assured that now everything for him will be taken care of. He is not to have any fear and he is not to grieve. He is only to take refuge in him alone who is the Lord of the Universe. Such is the promise and pledge made by him, the Bhagavan of the Gita. Arjuna shall attain oneness with him
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and in his eminence and suzerainty win all, by his grace move for ever in his happy tranquil delight. That is the truest deliverance from this mundane existence and its thousandfold entanglements and evils, deliverance for doing action in the Spirit’s freedom. Indeed, it will lead the doer of the works to perfection in the “light and splendour of a divine and infinite nature.” After giving up works altogether, whatever he shall be doing in this state will be the muktasya karma, the action that will not bind him to anything. Such is the secret of Karma Yoga by which the seeker of the Self will discover the Self, realise the Self, fulfil himself in the Self. That is the finest boon and the noblest victory offered by the Yoga of the Gita to the human soul, the Aryan spirit living and acting in the nobility of life. That is the merit of the Yoga of the Gita which holds spiritual transformation as its most desirable siddhi or attainment.
Rising well above the tamasic or inert mechanical actions, crossing the stage of actions governed by the egoistic-vitalistic impulses and determinations which are held under her sway by the lower Prakriti, discarding the inferior determinants, doing things without recoiling in any way and doing them with skill even while attending to their minute details, stationing himself in the Spirit and performing works in its tranquil freedom and finally making all works a Yajna, a sacrifice to the Master of Works, does the karmayogin really come to the state of perfect felicity of taking refuge completely in the Divine. Here is for him the crowning achievement of the Yoga of the Gita. In the words of Sri Aurobindo this is what the Teacher of the Gita tells Arjuna:
All this personal effort and self-discipline will not in the end be needed, all following and limitation of rule and Dharma can at last be thrown away as hampering encumbrances if thou canst make a complete surrender to Me, depend alone on the Spirit and Godhead within thee and all things and trust to his sole guidance. Turn all thy mind to Me and fill it with the thought of Me and My presence. Turn all thy heart to Me, make thy every action, whatever it be, a sacrifice and offering to Me. That done, leave Me to do My will with thy life and soul and action; do not be grieved or perplexed by My dealings with thy mind and heart
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and life and works or troubled because they do not seem to follow the laws and Dharmas man imposes on himself to guide his limited will and intelligence. My ways are the ways of a perfect wisdom and power and love that knows all things and combines all its movements in view of a perfect eventual result; for it is refining and weaving together the many threads of an integral perfection. I am here with thee in thy chariot of battle revealed as the Master of existence within and without thee and I repeat the absolute assurance, the infallible promise that I will lead thee to Myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit.
(Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, pp. 537-38)
The supreme Mantra is given to the seeker soul:
An omniscient consciousness will take up our knowledge and our ignorance, our truth and our error, cast away their forms of insufficiency, sarva-dharman parityajya, and transform all into infinite light. An almighty Power will take up our virtue and sin, our right and wrong, our strength and our weakness, cast away their tangled figures, sarva-dharman parityajya, and transform all into its transcendent purity and universal good and infallible force. An ineffable Ananda will take up our petty joy and sorrow, our struggling pleasure and pain, cast away their discordances and imperfect rhythms, sarva-dharman parityajya, and transform all into its transcendent and universal unimaginable delight. All that all the Yogas can do will be done and more; but it will be done in a greater seeing way, with a greater wisdom and truth than any human teacher, saint or sage can give us. The inner spiritual state to which this supreme Yoga will take us, will be above all that is here and yet comprehensive of all things in this and other worlds, but with a spiritual transformation of all, without limitation, without bondage, sarva-dharman parityajya. The infinite existence, consciousness and delight of the Godhead in its calm silence and bright boundless activity will be there, will be its essential, fundamental, universal stuff, mould and character.
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And in that mould of infinity, the Divine made manifest will overtly dwell, no longer concealed by his Yogamaya, and whenever and as he wills build in us whatever shapes of the Infinite, translucent forms of knowledge, thought, love, spiritual joy, power and action according to his self-fulfilling will and immortal pleasure. And there will be no binding effect on the free soul and the unaffected nature, no unescapable crystallising into this or that inferior formula. For all the action will be executed by the power of the Spirit in a divine freedom, sarva-dharman parityajya.
(Ibid., pp. 540-41)
We may thus say that, according to Sri Aurobindo, the Mantra of the Gita is the Mantra of Spiritual Transformation. The yogic vision and intuition of Jnaneshwar also comes pretty close to it, which is quite surprising when we remember that his Shankarite thoughts and metaphysics pertain essentially to the passive Brahman alone, the quiescent Eternal devoid of any activity. The Yogi stands taller in him than the Adwaitic Thinker.
In this context we may also note in retrospect that the highest siddhi or perfection, that of the spiritual transformation held for us by the Gita, is characteristic of the Overmind working in life here in the mortal world, mrityuloka. Overmind dynamism in the hierarchy of the Planes of Consciousness comes from the topmost plane standing above the mental consciousness in its widest sense. Which also means that the Gita itself is an utterance of the supreme transcendent being standing on the Overmind plane, Krishna as the Overmind Avatar. In the evolutionary process of the Earth his chief concern was to establish this dynamism, it leading to the completest possible spiritual transformation. Until this work is done the absolute dynamism of the Absolute that comes only with the Supermind or the gnostic Truth-Consciousness, Vijnana proper, has to wait for its Avatar to arrive. To the yogic Jnaneshwari, true to the vision and work of the Gita, no hint of him is available.
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On the banks of the calm and stately Pravara at Newase people hailing from different walks of life have gathered in the temple of Mhalasa. They have come to listen to Yogi Jnaneshwar’s discourses on the Gita. In the assembly there are children and women and the simple-minded villagers of the Deccan in the late twelfth century. There are also scholars and learned men, devotees, sages and saints who are keen to listen to his sweet and enchanting composition in their own homely vernacular. His yogically powerful and revelatory poetry in the new language is not only a great attraction; it is also an experience for them. The poet is endeared to the audience.
The tongue of these people is the unsophisticated candid and plain Marathi. Very few of them know Sanskrit and still fewer the text of the Gita in any depth of its contents. It is to these people that Jnaneshwar has to explain the rich and marvellous Scripture in its many shades and nuances. But there is something more to it than just that. He has to expound the yogic philosophy of the Great Dialogue the sage of the Mahabharata has given to us in majesty of the classical diction and speech. He is also quite conscious of the fact that Vyasa’s work is not an ordinary dialogue at all; it is the supreme Word, the benedictive Assurance coming from a person no other than the Avatar of Kurukshetra himself. It is the most benevolent Word for the individual’s as well as for the collectivity’s wide and benign progress. It is a teaching full of spiritual lore, rich in substance, rich in thought, rich in poetry, rich in literary style and expression. But these are very formidable qualities,—and add to them the dignity and sublimity of Sanskrit with its quantitative massiveness,—that have to be rendered in a local or provincial language which has yet to demonstrate its capability and merit to handle such a difficult theme.
Will Marathi stand up to that demand of the Gita, come up anywhere close to the measure of excellence and aesthetic flawlessness that is there in the ancient speech?
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Such is essentially the question posed by Jnaneshwar to himself. Apart from the difficulty of finding the effective and expressive word, if not the inevitable word, there is a much greater difficulty presented by the deep metaphysical and esoteric issues themselves. These are issues of a very fundamental character and the poetic word of the Gita has raised and tackled them with such mastery that to recreate it with that abounding and liberal expository power is well nigh impossible. It has a certain epic sweep and vastness, a certain sovereign power and majesty with so many moods and manners that it cannot be easily grasped and much less rendered into any other language. In fact it has created its own vocabulary as well as idiomatic form for the needs of its presentation and therefore is an utterance self-effective for its own great purpose. Its images and figures, its symbols, its thoughts are bright nationals of the world from where comes inspiration. The mantric and revelatory affirmations cannot be easily shifted elsewhere or transplanted to another soil. This is particularly so when the language happens still to be very green in her age, undeveloped and without any literary background upon which it could build up its structure, without the richness of subtlety, of hints and suggestions that would carry with them the corresponding shades of meaning and understanding. The creative delight has not yet found the sublimity of its voice in it.
Furthermore, the set of circumstances under which Jnaneshwar is presenting us his work contains additional complexity. His audience is a mixed audience and he has an immediate problem regarding the level at which he should address it. The speaker is fully aware of the fact that it is going to be a very onerous undertaking with people of different backgrounds and qualifications, and having different expectations, attending the talks.
To get the Gita or even a bit or part of it in another medium may prove a formidable task. Perhaps only by going to that world of inspiration where the mantric voice finds its first utterance it may become possible. It is only by listening to its original sound and by seizing the original sense and by seeing the original form of its beauty in the sheer joy of creation, that something of its greatness may be received in the new expression.
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Jnaneshwar has to a great extent done that in Marathi. It is a feat that was acknowledged and applauded not only by the people who attended his sessions, but also later by thirty odd generations that came in the long centuries after him. Those perceptive ones who had gathered around him were stunned by his accomplishment and those who came afterwards in the succession of time praised him and rightly adored him as the first poet of Marathi, Adi Kavi. Everyone spoke of the work with veneration but more so in sheer astonishment and admiration that such a thing could have been done at all in their tongue:
(Jnaneshwari: 6.133-34)
See what a marvel this is! Surely this language could not have been the language spoken by common ordinary people. It would also be wrong to say that this utterance, this extraordinary articulation is at all plain and simple Marathi. Its art and its literary qualities enhance further its sweetness and its charm. These are such that diverse shades and hues spread by it in the sky easily inspirit more and more of the difficult subjects, subjects such as the nature of the oneness of the Self everywhere. Knowledge shines in it with soft and pleasing whiteness of moonlight. A cool and soothing esoteric sacredness is present in its living idiomatic expression. With its happy abundant gifts the lotuses of the teaching of the Gita bloom in these waters in fragrant profusion.
By the import of the words in the delight of truth and by the sweetness of the flowing rhythmic measure, by its oratorical power and great eloquence in the warm intimate language, the language of their hearts, the serene and saintly yet alert audience got swayed and started nodding in its joy,—even as Jnaneshwar derived encouragement from them while giving his presentation of the Gita.
They all heard Jnaneshwar with rapt attention. The one single point of their interest and absorption was the revelation made to
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Arjuna by none other than the supreme Lord himself, the Avatar who stood on the battlefield as the Teacher of the Gita. To his chosen one did he give the knowledge of his Being and the knowledge of his own Self. He showed to Arjuna his universal form whose brightness surpassed the brightness of a thousand suns put together. Not only that; to him was disclosed the secret of secrets, guhyatma guhyam, the secret of life in the great Spirit’s freedom. Arjuna had fallen into the Slough of Despond, as some unmanly and awkward clumsy weakness had overtaken him. But by the occult power of the words of the Teacher all this ineptness and all this ignorance got dispelled; that unnatural infirmity which had crept in and kept him under its influence got completely eliminated. Now he was free from every bondage and free from the inferior Prakriti’s misleading enterprises and moods. He recovered his true self.
Arjuna has come to know what the right action is and how to perform it and turn it into an offering to the Master of Works. Through it he would identify himself with the supreme Being and win inalienable oneness with him. He would get the fruit of the Adwaitic Yoga, of ever remaining in union with the great partless Self, the supreme Self, Paramatman. Indeed, that state would become his normal state of consciousness, with no sense of possession haunting him, no want, no tinge of desire, no passion troubling him; he would no more be swayed by the buffeting winds of enthusiasm, anger, excitement, commotion, ferment, hostility or exasperation. His firm and immediate gains would be those of self-controlled mind and tranquil heart. He would have purity of feeling and calm poise for doing works according to his inborn nature, his swabhava.
By this merit Arjuna would get yet closer to the Teacher. But that would not be an ordinary kind of closeness. In it there would be something more than that, something very meritorious, deep and intimately spiritual. There on the battlefield of Kurukshetra the warrior would be urged by his Charioteer to take up arms and fulfil himself in the war, the great sanguinary War waged for upholding Righteousness in the world.
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Jnaneshwar is actually suggesting that special inwrought and inborn fundamental relationship which in fact is ever present between Krishna and Arjuna. Quite appropriately he is driving home the point that here is a devotee who has practised in an excellent manner the eighth type of devotion, of friendship and emotional closeness, sakhya bhava, with the supreme Lord himself. And in that respect all merit is indeed his,—as well as is his great rare fortune which comes on account of such fondness with the divine Friend. The receiver of the rewards of the three worlds claimed in that happy and admirable inheritance the best of rewards, the reward of oneness with his marvellous Companion. Not only the devotee but the Lord too enjoys the deep-seated identity which no sorrowful transience can ever touch. So with all the eager spontaneity and openness he expressed his loving and sweet longing for the precious seeker-soul. Though he is formless, amurta, he took a form and became murta. This he did precisely because only so could he delight in the wonderful relationship that is possible between the two. The divine has to become human to have human relationship in which he still keeps his native divinity unaffected, undiminished and undispossessed.
(Jnaneshwari: 6.130-31)
If a language can rise to the occasion and prove itself capable of describing such an extraordinary relationship, of friendship between Man and God, the quintessential happiness of identity between the worshipped and the worshipper, then that language too must be an exceptional language. It ought to be an utterance and articulation of sweetness itself. If this miracle has been accomplished in Marathi, then it will be wrong to say that it is a simple and plain unrefined vernacular without the appeal, the richness and subtlety of the Sanskrit tongue. If it can handle even an abstruse topic such as Non-duality of the Self, and that too with great flourish and exquisiteness, with great élan, in a literary style with another kind of fluency and excellence, surely it must be considered as something very unusual, something praiseworthy and aesthetically acceptable for the creative spirit itself.
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Such was the sense conveyed by the new poetry and such were the feelings carried by people who attended Jnaneshwar’s Gita discourses in the Mhalasa temple at Newase. They became more and more eager to listen to him, even as in their inspiring company the composition proceeded apace. Of this reciprocal gainfulness Jnaneshwar speaks with appreciation and acknowledgment at a number of places in Jnaneshwari. At every important step of the exposition he quite proudly tells how indeed his Marathi can be an admirable vehicle to bring to them the profundities of the spirit, the wisdom and sagacity which had until then remained for them a sealed book in Sanskrit. There are at least a dozen places in the work where he expresses this confidence of his,—not as a mannerism but as a genuine admission and affirmation of the help he received from them. His gratitude is for all those because of whom he could achieve this remarkable success. He is happy with the inspiring dynamism, with the grace and lyrical freshness of this gifted language that can speak of things of a deeper reality, things of the heart and of the inner being. This is not just a hasty misplaced poetic enthusiasm displayed in immediate and direct response to his own composition, but is genuine and is also luminously felicitous in its quality.
In the following we shall take some of these assertions of Jnaneshwar in their brief contexts to illustrate the accomplishment and perfection that the Yogi-Poet achieved in his magnum opus. We really begin to wonder about the exceptional nature of this creation and that too just at a tender age of fifteen or so. Not only is his poetry esoterically of the first order; it also abounds with any number of references to the secular and household modes of life. His minutiae of social observation and the thoroughness of metaphysical basis only go to show the readiness of his tools and faculties in the service of inspiration that had its direct origin in some overhead world of expressive utterance. This very well indicates that he had directly opened himself to some high source of mystic-spiritual poetry. There is no doubt that he attributes this whole miracle to the grace of his Guru, but then there is also the element of preparedness, the readiness of tools of the remarkable disciple.
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Take the humility of Jnaneshwar with which he speaks while comparing his composition with the original of the great sage. He says that he is going to offer to the Lord of the Gita only some insignificant leaves of grass and not a rich and meritorious garland of flowers, as was prepared by Vyasa to worship him. But the Lord is candid, courteous, affable. Will he then despise his humble offering, ridicule the presents he has brought for him with such tender love and devotion? He has already accepted the words spoken by Vyasa, and will he then reject or say no to him just because of the lowly gifts that are unworthy of his majesty? His glory and magnificence surpass this whole creation and how can a crude and rustic vernacular tongue approach anywhere near the nobility and dignity of the classical expression? It will be wrong to compare the Marathi composition with Vyasa’s revelatory narration that has the elevated deportment of Sanskrit itself. But then there is consolation, even a possibility of fulfilment. It cannot be surpassed and there is no doubt about it, but there can be another lyricism with the sweetness of another soul.
A big herd of elephants goes to the shore of a lake and will that lake refuse the coming of a mere sand fly to drink its water? Where a swift and graceful eagle speeds majestically, will the same wide sky deny a fledgling with its new tiny wings to flutter in it? The stately lounge or saunter of a swan is pleasing indeed, but does it then mean that others should not even walk here on this green and beautiful earth? A pitcher may according to its large size hold in it a great quantity of water, but can I not take just a small mouthful of it? True, rolls of an oil-soaked cloth fixed at the end of a rod may burn with a bright flame, but should not a wick in a small claylamp shed its little light around? The sky reflected in a broad expanse of the sea surely looks very large; yet is it also not present even in a small roadside pool or puddle of water, making itself of that size? In the same way, it does not stand to reason that we should look at this work only with the great mind of Vyasa and others like him and remain quiet without doing anything at all. If immensely large creatures of the size of the legendary Mandar Mountain can live in the wide spaciousness of an ocean, should not a tiny and insignificant fish swim with
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freedom in it? No doubt Aruna the Charioteer of the Sun-God is always very close to his Master, but then can not an ant though wee little in size and crawling at this far distance on the surface of the earth even look at him? That is why it is not appropriate to say that we simple people should not have the Gita in our common country language.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1711-20)
In justification of his enterprise to render the Gita in a simple and undeveloped unrefined provincial tongue many such poetic arguments did Jnaneshwar pile one upon another, the drift being the possibility of its rising to the demands of the task. Perhaps that nobility and dignity of the original may not come in the vernacular language, but such cannot be the reason for not making an attempt at all. On the contrary, it is very likely that the new attempt may bring another kind of sweetness to us in the felicity of the spirit’s another expressive delight. Jnaneshwar has a conviction that the grace of the preceptor is a sufficient assurance for the realisation of this proposition of his. He is certain that his guru Nivritti is always there to inspire and guide him, to give him help or advice, to give him instructions. Nay, there could be, something more than that. In particular and more importantly for him in the endeavour is the spiritual support from his Guru. He is certain that its merit alone would count as the finest gain, the gain for the good of his soul. He need not therefore harbour any apprehension.
In fact he feels that with the grace of the Guru even his ordinary action of breathing can give rise to extraordinary treatises or
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masterpieces. These will be rich in meaning and rich in literary value. In the richness of their lilt and music newer and newer creations will flow with sweet cadence and rapturous gracefulness. In their silent songs there will be the knowledge of the One, the very delight of the Self. That is why Jnaneshwar has undertaken this task of putting the Gita into Marathi. He has a conviction that through it even common people will be able to grasp its general sense and get some idea of its teaching. Not only that; they will profit from the mystical lore and the creative essence or rasa that makes living worthwhile. Their heart will be full of feeling for the Lord whose concern is always there for them. They do not know Sanskrit and they have still remained in the dark when the marvellous sun of spiritual illumination has been greatly made available to this wide world.
Jnaneshwar even goes a step farther. He makes himself bold and asserts the superiority of his composition. He has a reasonable feeling that if it is set to tune and sung, then it shall not be wanting in any way in its sweetness and charm and it shall be quite comparable to the classical song. In fact these qualities shall rather make the song itself more adorable and enchanting. So, says he, sing this Gita in the vernacular in a true melodious voice and let it prove to be an adornment to the singer himself. Even if it is spoken in a plain simple manner it shall offer everything,—happy feelings, and the power of its substance and truth, and the joy that is akin to the very expression that originated from its soul.
The exquisite craftsmanship of a piece of ornament may make it look very beautiful, but does it not become more beautiful when it is actually worn by a beautiful woman? Surely a pearl by itself does appear pretty, but then its value does get very much enhanced when it is studded with gold. The large white and roundish jasmine flowers of the spring, whether they are on a plant or strung together in a garland, scatter fragrance everywhere; so whether read or sung this composition of Jnaneshwar shall spread brahmarasa, the sweet essence of the Eternal; it shall scatter abroad in all directions, all where and all wise and in every measure its full abundance of happiness. On hearing the song the listeners will simply slip into deep
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meditation. But if there is an erudite scholar also he will ponder over its text and meaning. Its enjoyment shall prove to him to be greater than that of even enjoying the nectar. He shall be so much in harmonious rapport with its superb poetic substance and quality that it shall become a dwelling place for him, making it a natural abode of rest and tranquillity. When you shall live in that house it will be no more necessary to reflect or intently brood upon anything else; for, that itself shall give the desired experience and knowledge. It shall offer the best of self-bliss which shall foster pleasures of the senses in their true import and significance. Like the mythical bird chakor, which subsists only on the soft and cool radiance of the moon, even ordinary common people will enjoy the cheerful richness and skill of its expression, the felicity of its poetry. This may not be to the same degree or to the same depth as the Gita would offer to those who are advanced on the spiritual path; yet it will certainly put one in intimate contact with it.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1738- 49)
Jnaneshwar owes much of his success to the excellence of some of the people in the audience who attended his discourses regularly and for several months; among the simple village folk, and children and women, there were also saints and devotees and yogis and they all participated in the sessions with a keen sense of exhilaration. Here they saw not just a literary composition, but a whole world of the spirit opening out to them. In fact he pleaded for their indulgence and
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asked to be forgiven if he should fall below their expectations. He made it clear to them that he was attempting something very unusual, that he was putting the great work which the Gita is in their simple vernacular language, their very rugged and domestic Marathi, in their colloquial idiom. There was a certain diffidence in accepting such an undertaking and yet something prompted and drove him to do it. In justification of this enterprise of his he gave, with considerable poetic fervour, arguments in several respects.
He feels himself to be a small firefly showing its little insignificant glow to the great sun that spreads brilliance everywhere and illumines everything. Can an ornament be really embellished by another ornament? Is it at all possible to make the primal music hear the composition of a song that originates from it? Is there any superior fragrance or another exquisiteness of scent which can be taken and offered to that pleasing sweetness of a flower? Do you need a fan to blow with it soothing air over the very giver of gentle and affable coolness? Can there be any better drink than ambrosia, the drink that has already been served in an exquisite bowl? Can one imagine a place deep enough for the ocean where it can have a luxurious bath or a joyous dip? Or is there an expanse that is sufficiently vast to hold the sky in it?
(Jnaneshwari: 9.9-11)
All this may be perfectly true but then Jnaneshwar puts forward a series of counter-arguments. One may consider it inappropriate if not funny to ceremoniously wave around the sun the little flame of a wick-lamp; one may offer water as oblations to the sea with the small measure of palms; one may even ridicule such attempts. Yet these are the very methods and means by which we can worship the great gods. Howsoever defective this whole enterprise of putting the Gita
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in Marathi may therefore appear to be, yet it has its own intrinsic and enduring worth. Then, there is the discerning audience who will ignore the blemishes and even the blunders,—as the faults of a little child are ignored by thoughtful and well-disposed elders. Entreating his listeners thus, Jnaneshwar continues further:
(Jnaneshwari: 9.20)
Can anyone really hold or circumscribe the sky, or can anyone sway or direct the blowing wind the way one would like it to blow, or can the moonlight be ripened as does one ripen the raw fruits by putting them in a bed of straw?
Why have fear then? why desist? But even the Veda Purusha, the Eternal in the form of the Word, finds himself ill at ease in describing the Gita. If such is the diffidence for him, that he should prefer to retire rather than speak about it or characterise it, then surely it would be very audacious on the part of Jnaneshwar to attempt rendering it in the simple language that Marathi is. But the genuine and kind-hearted appreciation from the listeners can assuredly be warm and enthusing. It can be more encouraging, or else more cool and soothing than even the moonlight. In fact it can be more efficacious than ambrosia which gives to its drinker the full breath of living life. Therefore Jnaneshwar does not see any reason for hesitation in carrying out the undertaking. A knowledgeable and discerning congregation of this kind has the power to inspire the speaker and the words of eloquence that are then uttered can begin to reveal and unravel the great premises and truths that operate in this world. With meaning flowing in natural spontaneity the occasion then turns out to be a happy feast for everybody. Many are such things that can be won precisely because of the zeal and sincere generosity of the competent in the gathering, even as they would be fond of pure and frank true-tongued speech. When there is such a gracious disposition, then the discourse itself attains a greater height of sublimity:
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Eloquence bears the weight of the first principles in their several connotations. Meaning waits for the words to come out and the implied sense carries in it innumerable shades and nuances, enhancing their implications further,—as if in their tenor and drift has blossomed a wreath of sweet and fragrant flowers.
(Jnaneshwari: 9.27)
Jnaneshwar does indeed possess such a remarkable confidence in the very potentiality and capability of his vernacular that he can wield it for his purpose. In the great tranquil repose he feels that it is assuredly lending itself to express the bhavas and rasas, it is able to present or deliver the perceptive feelings and rhythmic essentialities of the original Sanskrit poetry that are there everywhere in gleaming abundance in the verses of the Gita. Thus, towards the end of the fourth chapter of Jnaneshwari we have the following:
(Jnaneshwari: 4.211-14 )
Soon the narrative of the Gita will arrive at a point where poetry will be full of Shanta Rasa, the feeling of wide and happy calm, of deep tranquillity. There, at that point, the wise and virtuous shall find a true resting place for all their seeking and their pursuit. It is this Rasa of Tranquillity that I shall try to get in my words of Marathi, though direct and simple in their nature these may be. Yet the words shall bear the full profundity of sense and substance, shall be full of meaning and shall be deeper than the depths of the ocean. The disc of the sun in the sky above may appear to be pretty microscopic and insignificant in size when reflected in a puddle; but then even the three worlds prove to be too tiny and diminutive to use up its illumination. Rather this Marathi expression
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of mine, this poetic creation, shall turn out to be an excellent wish-fulfilling tree or kalpavriksha that ever yields every kind of desirable fruit.
Jnaneshwar speaks about Rasas or the subtle essentialities of a literary creation at the beginning of the eleventh chapter. He likens them to a confluence of three streams, the streams which in the manner of the Ganges, the Jamuna and the subterranean Saraswati join at Prayag. The three rivers in the Song of the Lord are Shanta Rasa, Adbhuta Rasa and the third invisible which we may call as the Gita Rasa. By them other Rasas also find their happy fulfilment. The Tranquil, the Wondrous and the hidden Meritorious of the celestial Song come at this triple holiness and pour their sacred waters for the good of those who are full of faith and who long for liberation from the worldly life’s worries. The devout go there to have a dip for the benedictive delight which flows from it. But this Gita Prayag is a place difficult to reach and deep knowledge of Sanskrit is required if one has to benefit from it. Too profound and esoteric is its expression and one has to be a very learned master, a master of the language to understand and grasp the truths it proclaims. However, Jnaneshwar has by the exceptional grace of his guru Nivritti made it simpler in the provincial tongue of Marathi.
(Jnaneshwari: 11.9)
The great statements of the dharma have been rendered into common speech and the easy flight of words on this riverbank can now be very conveniently used to step down into the water to have a pilgrim bath at the confluence. Not only that. The listeners of this remarkable composition will realise that in it also participate other Rasas or the subtle essences of poetry in their full abundance and that these will make the enjoyment yet completer. It is with this confidence that Jnaneshwar is proceeding to put the Gita in a plain lucid country or household dialect, clear and unsophisticated, that it shall yet possess the creative originality which always comes from the expressive spirit itself.
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Those devotees who make the Lord himself as “their supreme aim and follow with a perfect faith and exactitude the immortalising Dharma” are exceedingly dear to him,—so declares the Gita at the end of the twelfth chapter. But what exactly is that Dharma-immortality or dharmamrita which the Teacher is speaking about? that shining amulet or protective charm? There is no doubt that this stream of immortality or amritadhara irrigates the well-prepared field for a golden harvest in the abundance of life and therefore it cannot be any inferior occult-vitalistic talisman, or a thick and dark sedative to make one dull-witted; but it has to have the very quality of the Spirit itself, luminous and ennobling that can breathe happiness in the glory of its dynamism. Which means that the meaning of this immortalising Dharma should be seen in the unimpaired context of the Gita’s postulation of the divine works or divya karma the liberated soul is enjoined to perform in the Will of the Master of the Works. Arjuna has been asked to abide by this fact of spirituality and do the works according to the innate law of his nature. Only such desirable actions issuing from the inborn character of his soul will prove rewarding to him. But then who are those who actually take this Path of the immortalising Dharma, the bright Path of Righteousness? Who are they yearning sincerely to proceed towards their goal with faith and exactitude and confidence in the supreme Guide? Jnaneshwar comments:
(Jnaneshwari: 12.230-37)
Those who listen to this absorbing story of Bhakti Yoga, the Yoga whose nature is that of the stream of immortalising ambrosia, amritadhara, those who put it in active practice and
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thereby experience its joyous beatitude, those who grow in its faith, and keep it ever fixed in their heart and, like a field well-prepared and ready for sowing, thus cultivate the mind, those who offer the fruits of their works and are full of devotion for the supreme Being, those who consider him as everything in their life and in the entire world,—they are the true Bhaktas and they are the true Yogis for whom he ever waits anxiously and with favoured eagerness. Indeed, even as he longs to be with them without cease, without any break in relationship and contact, his concern for them is always there. They are the holy places for his pilgrimage and the sacred fords for him to have a dip in those waters, pure as they are always in the world, and true associates or companions for an affectionate and devout friendship. He stays with them, dwells with them, meditates upon them, he worships them; they are the gods of his adoration. Nought else, none else but only they are present in his seeing and in his vision. They are his obsession and they are the house of his riches and prosperity and in them is all his satisfaction. His entire happiness is in his being with them.
Such is the intimate and fond benevolent sweetness of the utterances of the Teacher of the Gita and Jnaneshwar assures that the divine felicity will also flow through his simple and household Marathi composition, that this young lyrical language in its expression shall admit all its absorbing enchantment, shall bring forth its sweetness and mellifluity. This mellifluous creation in the common man’s vernacular has its own appeal and attractiveness, its own fascination, and therefore the patronising audience present for his discourses should pay keen attention to it. At the same time with due but genuine humility the poet submits himself to the listeners and asks them to be indulgent towards him:
(Jnaneshwari: 15.594-95)
In the gusto and flourish of the composition in this Marathi there
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might have crept in a lot of inferior stuff, any number of crudities, and it is likely that the meaning given to the text might have been just according to my own sense of understanding it. But then it is indeed the black-bee herself who knows where in a jasmine flower lies concealed the pleasing fragrance; in the same manner the enjoyer of poetry will surely be perceptive to its compelling spell and to its subtle happy charm and gracious wholesomeness.
At the beginning of the twelfth chapter Jnaneshwar hymns the Goddess of Purity and the Goddess of Perfection, addressing them as Shuddhé and Siddhé. But then they are none other than the benedictve glance, the luminous and assuring gaze of the preceptor himself, gurukripadrishti. It is by his generosity and compassion, by the Grace that the singer of glory enjoys the bliss of yogic attainments in which is the realisation of his oneness with the supreme Spirit. She feeds him with the milk of her breast and rocks him in the cradle with the songs of the unstruck and unheard sound, anahata nada. She is the mother for all his wants and she is the one who inspires him in every one of his creative activities. All spiritual knowledge comes to him in great plenty even as she bestows her benignity and kindness upon him. Therefore, implores Jnaneshwar, only she the all-potent and all-affluent Mother should command him to discourse on the Gita, exceptional as this work is. Let the seas of nine delights or nine essences of poetry flood it; let it prove to be a treasure house of rare and precious wonderful gems; let it rise like a mountain of true and invaluable interpretations. Let there open out in the land of Marathi the gold mines of well-inspired and rejoiceful pleasing literature and let, in row after long glowing row, the creepers of right thinking and discernment be planted:
(Jnaneshwari: 12.12)
In this flourishing city of Marathi let there be the plenty of knowledge, the knowledge of the Eternal, and let its citizens carry in happy abundance and prosperity its commerce:
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(Jnaneshwari: 12.16)
Such is the invocation of the Yogi-Poet addressed to the Goddess of Purity and the Goddess of Perfection. He implores them to take a recognisable form of the kind and compassionate disposition of the Guru. It is then that he shall approach the Gita who may creatively reveal the marvellous spiritual secrets to him and that he may be able to speak of them in all their trueness in his vernacular. Jnaneshwar is not asking poetry only for the sake of poetry; he is asking it for the sake of enjoyment of the creative spirit in all expressions.
Towards the end of the seventh chapter Jnaneshwar once again endearingly alerts his audience, telling the attentive to get ready to listen to what the Teacher of the Gita is soon going to speak about the seven Words pertaining to things spiritual, brahma vakya. He will speak of tad brahma (that Eternal), adhyatma (the soul’s abiding in the conduct and law of the Spirit), karma (active and creative dynamism in the working of the world), adhibhuta (the manner of the mutable becoming and its thousand operations), adhidaiva (the consent for and the enjoyment of the activities of Prakriti or Nature by Purusha who is the enjoyer of all her works), adhiyajna (the offering or sacrifice of the works to the Master of Works), and how at the critical moment of death, prayanakale, is the supreme Being to be known by the one who is established in the Self. Such are the important issues to be taken up by the Scripture in its subsequent revelations. But these are all in the Sanskrit language and in their depth are very difficult to grasp. Unfortunately, therefore, these seven wonderful Words have so far remained untasted by the common people; about their secret and inner meaning they the poor lot have all along remained ignorant. They are not aware of these seven great and salutary assertions, satahi pade anuchhishthe navale ahati. These are the esoteric utterances Jnaneshwar is going to present in the plain and direct speech of Marathi. He is informing his keen watchful listeners in advance so that the vision, even before the ears receive these seven Words of Knowledge, gets ready and settles immediately on their significance:
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(Jnaneshwari: 7.206)
Although inaccessible to the eyes, it is not only the sweet perfume but also beauty of the form of flowering malati that is always pleasing to them. Quite the same way the perceptive listeners will in every respect enjoy this twofold rendering in the local speech of Marathi. Even as it shall gladden the senses, in the metaphysical town of premises and first propositions they shall also discover their originating truths; thus they shall fulfil themselves in them. Such is the expectation of Jnaneshwar, that the Gita can indeed be given to the common folk who are keen and inwardly prepared to appreciate it in order to benefit from it by living in it.
(Jnaneshwari: 7.208-09)
Vyasa the sage of boundless wisdom, aprantamati, has put the Gita in the Bhishma Parva or the Book of Bhishma of the Mahabharata and it is in the form of a dialogue between Arjuna and Sri Krishna. It is that dialogue which Jnaneshwar is presenting to us in the metrical composition of owi in his Marathi tongue. The narrative shall speak of the great propositions and shall prove to be full of Rasa of Tranquillity, Shanta Rasa. Not only that; it shall triumph over the Rasa of Sensuous Delight or Sringara Rasa and it shall win for us the Gita itself in this new composition. It may appear to have been done in an ordinary country dialect, but it will have such literary excellence or merit, such poetic fineness and superiority, it will be so living and invigorating that in comparison with its cheering eminence even the sweetness of ambrosia will taste less satisfying. This speech will be soothing and pleasingly agreeable and it will vie with the comforting softness of moonlight which always is delightful to everybody. Its melody with the gentle charm and tonal soothness, the resonance, the harmonies of its subtle strains will cause even the original sound or rhythmic surges, nada, to merge into it. Those who are evil-minded or ghostly or possessed they will immediately abandon their wickedness
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and will acquire well-poised sattwic qualities of deep and meditative serenity when they shall listen to its music. With it even the saintly people will fall into contemplative trance. Jnaneshwar has confidence in his creation that its literary idiom and eloquence, its revelatory word growing in conscient wideness, shall fill the whole world with the essence of the Gita and bring its very province of joy right in our common midst. The discerning perception and wisdom shall find in it their fulfilment; in its song the ear and in its thought the mind shall have fully accomplished the objective of their complete realisation. Through it the knowledge of the Eternal, the Brahmic lore or gnosis shall become dear to everybody. The eye shall see the supreme Reality present everywhere and there shall be always the happy festival in its celebration. In the richness of that Great Understanding, mahabodha, shall come to the universe the days of plenty and prosperity, of spiritual richnesses. The claim has been well acclaimed.
(Jnaneshwari: 13.1154-62)
In the introductory verses of the tenth chapter Jnaneshwar speaks of the superiority of Shanta Rasa over Shringara Rasa. But he also says that his composition is in a simple provincial language which, though greatly lyrical, is not yet good enough to hold this most difficult essence in the calm demeanour of its literary style and creative ardour; however, he feels that that very essence shall flow all through his owis with gentle and agreeable felicity. In fact he goes a step farther and asserts that its compositional distinction will be in every respect comparable to that of the original in Sanskrit itself. If its meaning is grasped, and its poetry felt and discerned, it will be hard to say which
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is the original text and which the commentary on it. We may appreciate this when we recognise that a beauteous form has its own beauty and it does not need any adornment to enhance it; it is an ornament to its own beauty and therefore it becomes difficult to speak of one embellishing the other. In the same manner, both the languages occupy here the same happy seat of eminence,—presenting a picture that indeed is very appealing and pleasing to sight. Whichever poetic essence shall then stand out prominently, it shall pour in abundant streams its sweetness. When this happens, wisdom blossoms forth and gets acknowledged in that composition’s unsurpassable glory. So shall the charm and youthful vigour of the homely tongue in her elegance win for herself the limitless Truth given by the Gita in all the dignity of Sanskrit.
(Jnaneshwari: 10.42-47)
In the high-soaring flight of his poetry’s lyricism Jnaneshwar, without being carried away by it, speaks glowingly about the creative-expressive possibility of Marathi. The subject of the Gita is too sublime and noble to be easily rendered in any other language; its thought is too profound and far-reaching in its implications. Its yogic proclamations as verities of the Spirit bear significances of that Spirit’s full dynamism itself. But, more importantly, the Godhead of the Gita is the Avatar himself who has come here to destroy all that is evil and crooked and retrograde and establish in Becoming the Dharma that promotes divine manifestation in the fulfilment of this creation. His word is the supreme revelation effectuating itself in the greatness of his nature and it is that which shall reshape and mould in its self these thousand manners and moods of the lower and inferior modes presently under the sway of ignorance. Its principles are the truth-principles
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and its operations are the progressive workouts of the truth-conscient in the subconscious stuff of this world. The Scripture declares such a possibility and thus proves itself to be a rich treasure-house of yogic knowledge which, even in life’s misleading directions, gives us the very freedom which is enjoyed by the Spirit. In it is the happy repose of the primal Nature; in it falls mute for ever the Word of the Veda, the expressive-descriptive Will of the Eternal, shabda brahma. Such truly is the wide and tranquil ocean of wisdom of the Gita; but for the common man that wisdom has remained all along inaccessible, because for him it has stayed sealed in Sanskrit. Now, however, Jnaneshwar has taken upon himself the task of putting it in the daily idiom and phrase. His belief, his beneficent consideration is that this rendering will turn out to be of immense value not only to him in his spiritual pursuits, but also to other aspirant seeker-souls. He has a certain kind of yogic confidence that his effort will yield fruits of very exceptional sweetness, fruitful in every respect for the well-being of the common man in search of true liberation from the phenomenality of this world. Though colloquial in character, though devoid of literary quality, and artless the vernacular expression is, as the word marathi itself means that, within he feels himself assured that it can be a very powerful as well as felicitous medium to express in its joyous self-awareness the revelatory knowledge belonging to the higher planes of reality. He says:
(Jnaneshwari: 6.14-21)
True, my Marathi tongue is simple and plain yet I shall speak in its fondness. I shall speak and endearingly gather such tasteful
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and succulent, such enrapturing expressions that it shall even win the wager of ambrosia. In comparison with the fresh gentle harmony of its rippling sounds, and its tenderness, the softest tunes of music would all appear lacking in symphonic quality. Indeed the captivating charm of its fragrance will humble even the best of the perfumes. For the delicate and sweet taste of it the ears shall put forth sudden tongues to enjoy it and different senses shall start quarrelling with each other in a friendly way to acquire it and possess it. Strictly speaking association of word-sound is with the sense of hearing, yet the sweetness of its taste would be claimed in its entirety by the tongue itself. Nose and smell are interconnected and they have nothing to do with speech, but the perfume of Marathi words would bewitch the very sense of smell. It shall then no more be a wonder that the owi-metre shall emerge in the form of a composition which will appeal to sight and please it. It will consider that a veritable mine of elegance and beauty has disclosed itself for it. And when the meaning shall issue out from these verses, mind will run in haste to grasp it and clasp it. Thus every window of appreciation will fling itself open to see it, as if each one of them will be pouncing upon it to seize it and hold it for itself. But the marvel is, these words of Marathi will satisfy each one of them according to their characteristic nature. The way one single sun in the sky illumines everything underneath it, the scope of the words in their widest sense will also prove to be extraordinary. Those who are perceptive to a fine degree of sense and sensibility, those who are awake to various shades and nuances of meaning will consider that they have quite truly won the mythical wishing stone itself, chintamani which has the strange extraordinary power to give to its possessor whatever he should wish to have, to realise whatever he should imagine to be.
And indeed whatever Jnaneshwar had claimed in his metrical composition has been amply proved to be perfectly just and right. It is not a boast or bravado of a young poet still in his teens, nor an assertion of misplaced confidence, nor a vaunting of an immature mediaeval professional or careerist in hurry. On the contrary, in it the creative
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spirit has found a new expression holding in that expression the very joy of existence, the felicity that makes life meaningful, and living worthwhile. About the inspiration of Jnaneshwari we might as well say that, to quote a line from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri (p. 39):
She brought immortal words to mortal men.
The long-sustained overhead flow of poetry in the lucidity and directness of its utterance cannot come without the high yogic and spiritual achievements of the poet. This is not the work of an ordinary kind, not the work of a man howsoever great a literary figure he might be. Nor would it run dry or turn archaic in the hastening of the ever-creative spirit that brings out newer enduring marvels in the glory of the Muse herself. Not only for the last seven hundred years is this opus Jnaneshwari a standing proof for such a unique claim; its fertilising streams have produced in the course of time rich harvests of both esoteric and secular literature. Saint after saint and bhakta after exceptional bhakta have acknowledged without the least reservation the yogic and spiritual debt they owe to the Lord of Knowledge as his name Jnaneshwar very aptly suggests.
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“I know not how to use words nor do I know how to state a proposition or premise, and I have no knowledge of the figures of speech,” says Jnaneshwar while coming towards the conclusion of his Marathi discourse on the Gita.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1767)
Whatever he has done, presenting the scripture in his language, he could do that because of the blessings he had received from his guru Nivritti, as much as by the gracious and encouraging patronage of the well-versed in the audience. Their keen understanding and appreciation of the literary composition was a reciprocation that inspired him and gave him confidence in pursuing this difficult undertaking. They were to him the proverbial magic-stone that transmutes the baser metal into pure and shining gold. In this whole process the merit of the little mountain-brook lies merely in rushing towards the Ganges and merging itself into those sacred waters. That is all he tried to do, to mingle in its holiness,—and he is happy that he could do it. It is really because he derived inspiration and illumination from the saintly elders and preceptors, that he could accomplish this miracle of giving the substance and meaning of the Gita in Marathi. He owes all to them only. Because of them he could carry out this formidable if not impossible task,—more arduous and difficult than pouring gold in the form of a huge globe of the size of the earth, or creating a mountain of the mythical chintamani gems, or of flooding the seven seas of ambrosia with sweetness, or of transforming all these little stars into countless moons, or of planting and taking care of the wish-fulfilling trees in gardens and orchards. The Gita is really a vast ocean and it is difficult to swim across it and reach the other shore. But he has been able to do it, to complete this commentary on it, precisely because of the grace showered upon him by them. This marvellous world of literary excellence that has come into existence
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surely stands out more significantly than even the mid-world which Vishwamitra, to belittle the Creator, had brought out by the power of his tapasya for the sake of Trishanku. He is certain that in the three worlds there is nothing that can bear comparison with what the saintly audience has given to the young speaker. The religious discourse praising and singing the glories of God, dharma kirtana, has now come to a happy successful conclusion and Jnaneshwar feels that his role in this creative enterprise was only that of a scribe, that of an ordinary devotee or servant attending small household matters.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1791-92)
But then while the ceremonial thanksgiving is being conducted, he also becomes a priest or Purohit making sacrificial offerings to the Fire-God, Agni. On the yajna-altar the mystic fire is bright-lit and, as it receives a handful of rice and ghee, the flames leap up in jubilation of the benedictive chant. Agni is pleased and stands luminously in front of the sacrificer to bestow whatever boon he desires to receive. The high moment of Jnaneshwar’s poetry has now arrived and he prepares himself to invoke the supreme grace that it is about to bring to him. The words have become silent and from the depths of the yogic calm rises a voice speaking for the soul of man.
(Jnaneshwari: 18.1793-1800)
Now let the universal Self as God be pleased by the offering of this literary work in the nature of a Yajna and, in that gladness, bestow upon me a favouring boon.
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Those who are wicked and evil-minded, let them be rid of the crooked ways of seeing things; let them increasingly engage themselves in happy virtuous actions; among men and men let there grow a feeling of friendship and intimacy.
May those who are unethical and sinful be free of that darkness; may the world behold the sun of one’s own righteous conduct; may each and every living creature, each one, whatever he desires or wishes to have be happy in its gainful accomplishment.
Let the assembly of those who are God-founded, steady and firm in their beliefs, shower all over and always every kind of benignity; let them arrive here on the earth in great numbers.
For they are verily the tender shoots of the tree that fulfils every kind of wish, but then they are the shoots of a tree that stays not at one place and walks and moves around everywhere; or else they are a little town inhabited by the heavenly gems of senscience and awareness; or else we may consider them to be an ocean of nectarine sweetness that indeed can talk to us.
These saintly people are like the moons that have no blemish on them; and they are the unscorching suns that pour out no burning heat, and to all they are loving and affable kinsmen in every respect.
Nay, essentially, and in their manner, fulfilling him in all the three worlds, and in that happiness, let each one worship, without cease, the first excellent Being.
Those who dwell, especially, in the spirit of this work, in the revealed Word, let them gather the merit of twofold victory in the worlds visible and invisible.
In this way, concluding his Gita commentary, the Yogi-Poet has offered his prayer and asked the Lord of the Universe for an exceptional boon. The Giver of every spiritual beneficence was immensely pleased by Jnaneshwar’s invocation for the welfare of the world and said to him: “Be it so, tathastu.”
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We give here Jnaneshwar’s Invocation, commonly known as Pasayadan, rendered into English by a few authors.
1: In his owi-by-owi translation of Jnaneshwari Ramachandra Keshav Bhagwat renders the Pasayadana as follows. (Samata Edition 1989, p. 671, first published in 1954)
Now the Supreme Self should get itself propitiated by this sacrifice in the form of a literary production and should grant me in charity the only boon (pasaya) that the evil vision of the vile and wicked should drop all its crookedness and sting and they should develop a love towards good actions, and further there should be created fellow-feeling (towards one another) amongst the beings. May the darkness in the form of sins get destroyed and may the entire universe (people) conduct itself in the light of the rising Sun in the form of one’s own (religious) duty; and may each and every being (as a class) get the fulfilment of each and every wish of his. Let the concourse of saints that shower down all that is propitious on the universe, appear and visit perpetually the aggregate of beings on this earth. These saints are as it were the blossoms of the moving (walking) Kalpataru trees, or the inhabited places (towns) of sentient Chintamani gems or the talking oceans of the nectar. May these saints who are uncontaminated Moons and heatless (cool) Suns be the constant kinsmen (soyaré) of all. In short, let all the three worlds be all happy and perfected (with the bliss of Monism), and let them render service eternally to the Primeval Male Supreme Being. And especially those in this universe that (literally) live on (the constant study of ) this work (Gita) may they have the perfect happiness temporal as well as spiritual.
2: M. K. Naik’s Prayer for Grace circulated in a seminar held in Pune sometime in 1996 runs as follows:
Now, may the Cosmic Soul Divine
Be pleased with this word-offering of mine
And grant me, in its goodwill benign
This Grace:
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May the evil-minded their crookedness shed May they increasingly turn to good works instead May all beings find themselves bonded,— By ties of soul-companionship.
May the darkness of evil dissolve, likewise May the sun of right life greet our eyes And whatever every being should prize Shall attain it.
May the host of God-loyal saints who shower Eternal goodness on the world dower Everyone always with the righteous power Of their presence.
A mobile orchard of wish-granting trees are they, A colony of live, wish-fulfilling diamonds are they, A veritable ocean of nectar are they In guise living.
A moon without a smear are they, A sun that doesn’t sear are they, To all always near and dear are they, Those hallowed saints.
What remains for me to say? May beatitude fill the universe, may Everyone worship, night and day The Being Primeval.
And may those who mostly by the word make a living Find all felicity their way arriving Both in this world of here and now of Being, And of the Great Beyond.
Then said the Lord of Earth and Heaven,
‘This Grace shall unto you be given’
And this Holy Boon did enliven
The spirits of Jnanadeva.
3: V. L. Date’s Pasayadan entitled Gift of Grace is based on Sartha Jnaneshwari edited by Shankar Waman Dandekar, 9th edition, page 824.
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May God manifested in the world be pleased by this literary sacrifice and having been pleased bestow on me the gift of his grace —
That the crookedness of the wicked be sublated. Interest in noble deeds grow, and intense mutual friendship emerge among beings.
May the darkness of misdeeds disappear, the sun of righteousness shine in the universe, whoever of the creatures desires whatsoever may achieve it.
May the assembly of god-devoted showering auspiciousness visit uninterruptedly the creatures in the world.
The righteous men who are a moving garden of wish-fulfilling trees, are mines of live wish-fulfilling gems, are talking oceans of nectar,
The moons sans spots, the suns sans heat,— such righteous men be always kinsmen of all.
What more, everyone be perfectly happy in three worlds and uninterruptedly worship primeval Being.
And particularly those earnings their living by this literary work may particularly in this world make gains seen and unseen.
Upon this, said the Lord of the universe, “This gift of grace is granted.” By this boon Jnandeo became happy.
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Jnaneshwar is regarded as the first poet in Marathi, Adi Kavi of the vernacular, who wrote his commentary on the Gita a little more than seven hundred years ago. It is a work as fresh and living even today as it was at the time of its composition. Jnaneshwari’s poetic sweetness and charm, its enchantment, its spiritual ambience, its overhead quality of expression have remained alone and unsurpassed. Its spell is cast on all writings that have nobility of thought and feeling and aesthetic delight. Jnaneshwar’s yogic excellence,—and later Tukaram’s household yet deeply experiential poetry,—is the accomplishment which no time can wane. Since then there has been a steady flood which in the overflowing of psychic-lyrical surge brought up generations of devotional songs and poetry. There have also been works of saintly and learned poets; but nowhere in Marathi do we come nearer to the inspired marvel of this revealer of the mystery of the creative Word.
There are devotees who read Jnaneshwari regularly and derive from it spiritual guidance and happiness in an unceasing way. They find it to be the best escort to lead a life in search of God of their adoration. Whenever a conscientious literary or a learned person arrives at an important stage of creative activity he appears greatly attracted towards it and, according to his capacity, feels compelled to write something about it. The wonder of wonders is that Jnaneshwari always provides him the need0ed impulsion or gives inspiration that can take him to higher levels. That is indeed the power of yogic enterprise itself and living in it is to profit from it in an endless way. That is why it proves to be enduring. In it all the diverse as well as profound demands of the seekers and learners of spiritual lore are fulfilled. In whatsoever a way one may look at it, whatever is the call, it has the merit of answering it. The sky has no bounds and unplumbable are the depths of the sea; so are the spiritual philosophy and poetry in this creation of Jnaneshwar, bottomless and without limit, agadha-ananta. In one word: Jnaneshwari is the work of a Yogi-Poet.
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Our approach towards it has therefore to be intuitive-perceptive. In it there may be an aspect of scholarship also, but it has to be in the deeper sense of understanding the scripture that has lived for centuries. It is a literary work that belongs to another era and the yardstick of the present-day appreciation may not be really pertinent or applicable, may not be binding to it. It has a vocabulary of another time, the association of words and phrases has other connotations which may not be understood or appreciated by us today. The spirit of the language carries in its breath the values of another aesthetic enjoyment. It is therefore necessary for us to enter into it to read it in its true and original sense. Yet the essential poetry remains timelessly authentic and noble, ever agreeable.
That should also mean that there is a certain obligation which we have to fulfil, that we cannot be close-minded in our approach towards it. The precaution that is necessary is to avoid criticism for the sake of mere criticism; also, engaging ourselves just in discussions of yogic experiences by taking them as problems of metaphysics for their own sake can hardly be the right method of looking at Jnaneshwari. There are in Marathi at least three hundred books published on it covering several aspects of the work. This has been a fertile field of occupation and authors and commentators have revelled in the enterprise. Naturally, this will entail differences of opinion and at times even acrimonious confrontations. But, scholarship particularly when it is a seeker's scholarship, also brings its own rewards that can be pretty valuable to the pursuer of the truth of things.
In that sense the scriptural writings always act as an infallible guide and they have the power to put us directly in contact with the revelatory spirit,—witness the Word of the Veda or the Upanishad or the Gita, and we remain secure in it. More often than not this is also true in the case of Jnaneshwari, its Word of Truth having the power that can make that Truth living. In fact it would not have braved this long passage of time had it not been so. Hence there is a chance for our perception or intuitive understanding to enter into its spirit and it depends entirely upon us how, and how much, to profit from it. The test of scholarship lies in the context of a scripture’s revelations and
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that is also a kind of internal check on the acceptability of its consequences. This method may therefore prove profitable when there are textual variations or there are dubious readings or inconsistencies or inadvertent copying mistakes or literary or stylistic differences. The sense of a particular word or phrase also has a certain bearing in the idiomatic formation of a language at the time of its composition. Such multifold factors will have to be taken into account if we have to go into the temper and disposition of a scriptural poem.
Jnaneshwari is a precious and beautiful necklace adorning the Goddess of Literature of Maharashtra. The Gita in the form of a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna has revealed the great secret of spirituality and it is that which is given to us by Jnaneshwar in the Marathi tongue. It has provided inspiration to seekers and saints, to people of wisdom and knowledge, to those who are engaged in kingly politics and governance, as well as to the creative writers down the centuries. Jnaneshwar has taken the occasion of the Gita and worked out several themes of Yoga, occult sciences, metaphysical issues, and matters pertaining to creative literature of the spiritual-devotional kind. That is why he calls the work as the Purported Sense of the Gita, bhavartha deepika, thus giving him enough scope to make detours in the contexts of the original text.
Everywhere we have genuine spiritual phrases kindled with yogic fire. However, there are variations in its quality and the poetry may not always seem to be equally elevated. At a number of places it has become flat and one wonders if the original text has not been tampered with or recast at places. This may be a difficult question to settle, particularly when we are seeing the problem from such a distance in time. The author never revised his work and no draft was made in his own handwriting. Besides, the earliest available copy of Jnaneshwari belongs to the fourteenth century and we do not know what could have happened during the intervening period of some two hundred years. Even during the later period considerable variation had occured as is witnessed in several copies discovered by the tireless researches of the recent scholars.
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One of the literary and historical problems of Jnaneshwari which has yet to be resolved is the expurgation of spurious material from the text. The status of a religious scripture it has traditionally acquired may come in the way of such an enterprise even if it were to be undertaken with a free and enlightened unprejudiced attitude. It may immediately hurt the feelings of thousands who reverentially recite or read it regularly; it may draw the wrath of Vedantic adherents who go only by the philosophy of Shankara following whom, it is said, Jnaneshwar wrote his commentary. It will even be retorted that such an arrogant if not foolish thought is typical of Anglicised or Westernised mentality. Often it is said that this mentality does not understand or respect the glory of the long-established belief or custom that has come down to us through the hands of hundreds of well-read as well as wise and worthy shapers and keepers of society of the past. Then, it may disturb the pious credulity of the simple folk for whom Jnaneshwar is the king among the knowers of the Brahman, jnaniyancha raja, without realising that in his superb work a lot of subsequent inferior admixture has also crept in. But, at this stage, we can only point out that such has not been the fate of this work alone. Thus we know too well how the great epic of Vyasa has extensively suffered the easy mediocrity of later generations. To edit and bring out the original composition from the mass of defective and at times even puerile verses is quite a difficult and responsible task which can be handled only by entering into the poetic and spiritual ambience of such a marvellous creation.
In the case of Jnaneshwari Ekanath in the sixteenth century, three hundred years after the work was composed, had done the editing. Unfortunately, he did not leave any clue behind regarding the method of his approach or the type of source material he had at his disposal. We can only say that he felt the need to edit the work. It is generally believed that he had received in a dream the command or adesh from the author to undertake the task of bringing out a properly edited version of the Commentary. In the process the editor himself acquired a kind of legendary status. He also uttered a malediction that it will be spoiling a good dish if any further attempt to look into the aspect of editing the work is attempted. The task of re-looking into the problem is therefore not only daunting; it is also hazardous, laden as it is with a curse.
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Yet this has got to be done with a rational as well as an intuitive understanding, remembering that we are dealing with a Yogi’s poetry, a fact which is rarely recognised. We must remember that there are verbal differences between various editions and there is no way to know which could really be the original version. The test is the spiritual-poetic aptness of expression. As the modern mind is antithetical to such a demand and is very likely to make a mess of the whole thing, the imprecation of Ekanath may as well stand valid.
Take an example. There is a striking linguistic study pertaining to certain words appearing in Jnaneshwari which cannot be easily understood. As the language itself was taking birth around that time, we do not know what influences might have entered into its making and given it a shape to become a literary vehicle. Influences from other vernaculars also might have affected its growth in a considerable way. Notwithstanding the lack of communication between different parts of the country in those days, the possibility of their drawing upon each other cannot be off-hand ruled out. Thus, it is suggested that the study of Kannada words entering into Marathi will shed considerable light on several obscure owis of Jnaneshwari. It is claimed that there is one-third of the Kannada vocabulary in this composition and by understanding the Kannada words the meaning of some of the otherwise indistinct or beclouded verses can become immediately clear. Maybe; but it seems to be too big an assertion. There could be an element of truth in it but the study itself is rather restricted. If the presence of such words or such an influence is a fact, then we should also find similar instances in other works of the author, for instance, in Jnaneshwar’s Amritanubhava, or works belonging to that period. But when this comparative aspect is not presented or when the historical connection between the two languages is not established, then one will have hesitation in accepting whole-heartedly such a sweeping thesis. Also, such a study might turn out to be somewhat directed or personal and hence of doubtful utility. It has the danger of robbing the naturalness of interpretation which otherwise should flow with easy spontaneity and felicity. Even from the point of view of scholarship, there are too many loopholes in our theories of Jnaneshwari and none of them is really convincing,—
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nor would a combination of these produce a satisfactory result. This is particularly so when there are too many missing data. We don’t have Jnaneshwar’s own composition with us and we do not know how Ekanath handled it. Nor was the Indian mind of those days scientific or meticulous enough to attend to minute particulars of any writing. It is well known that copyists made their own variations, their own departures which maybe at times inadvertent, as the work went from hand to hand through the successive generations.
The theory that the original Jnaneshwari was put in the Samadhi-cave and later taken out by Ekanath in 1628 doesn’t seem convincing; for, that would mean that it was not available for about three hundred years in between. But it seems to be more a belief and an expression of respect for tradition. We should remember that Jnaneshwar wrote his commentary on the Gita for the benefit of the common Marathi people who did not have access to the original in Sanskrit. Besides, he wanted to win the wager of ambrosia in this simple tongue by which the darkness of the ill-minded or the evil of the world could be dispelled. This purpose would then get defeated if the composition were taken away from men for whom it was meant. Nor would have such a thing happened without the permission of his brother-guru Nivritti. We cannot believe that Nivritti the Yogi would have allowed this to happen knowing very well its spiritual value.
Surely there were copies in circulation prior to Eknath’s edition which had prompted him to look into the matter as he thought that they had got corrupted in lesser hands. The mystery is also concerning the very disappearance of Ekanath’s edited copy itself. And then the curse upon those who would alter and disfigure the text that was prepared by him! To the modern mind it is all religious credulity to be of any use. It is more a threat, a medieval threat, than an appeal to the good sense of a knowledgeable and discerning reader or devotee or critic. For a worshipper or upasaka of the scripture alteration in its copy-text is altogether unacceptable, as it would amount to mutilation of work that was inspired by the Goddess of Speech or Vagdevi herself. And yet today we do see divergences between several versions.
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In fact we notice that there are at least ten different wordings in the very first twenty-five owis. Considerable research work has therefore yet to be got done on Jnaneshwari, a task which is indeed very arduous. But it will be worthwhile to do it.
But what we have to steadfastly understand is that the external paraphernalia a Yogi-Poet uses is after all not so important. Instead what matters is the revelation that he brings to us which undoubtedly is the most valuable aspect of his work. A spiritual creation must be seen in the spiritual context and not in any secular or exotic or analytical mode. Which does not imply that these cannot be present there, but they occupy a secondary position. Should that spiritual context be not our approach in studying works like Jnaneshwari? Linguistic considerations unmistakably have their own utility or acceptability, their own precious value; but then there are too many factors which a scholarship would demand to be taken note of. Evolution of languages, their interactions with each other, linguistics, spurious accretions in the course of time, interpolations, miscopying, personal biases entering in while dealing with the revelatory writings, metaphysical prejudices in expressing the truths of the spirit although the poetry may still be pure gold,—all these are quite important and they do deserve a completer study. Simultaneously, a comparative evaluation of the works is also very necessary. Then, we should also admit that a Yogi-Poet or a Seer-Poet or a Devotee-Poet’s creation must be seen in the light of intuition rather than intellect, a difficult undertaking for the rationalist’s approach.
We need not elaborate the point any further here except by presenting an example. Let us just touch upon the salt image of the female elephant, lavanachi kunjari, before we put it in a tub of water. (Jnaneshwari: 15.318; also see 18.986, 1380, 1414) Jnaneshwar is explaining the complete immergence of the knower of Brahman in Brahman when the identification with it is complete. One of the images he puts forward is that of salt dissolving in water. Why does the poet pick up the image of a female elephant and not that of a lioness or a butterfly if any one of them can very well serve the purpose to illustrate his idea? Indeed, why bring in an animal at all and not simply say a pinch of salt?
We may as well argue logically about it; but in doing so we shall miss the poetry whose function is also to reveal an intimate relationship, even oneness, a psychological association which brings a certain warmth and ardour that is there in its many-directional mutuality. A female, a charm, a tenderness, a sense of offering and surrender, a beloved’s joy of giving herself to the lord of her heart, the lover; not a beast of prey, but an elephant, impressive and large and majestically tangible, not insignificant in any sense, yet pretty homely, one in whose friendship we feel happy, whom we love and whose gentle nature has a sort of godliness with its massive strength which is without malice,—that is what the image conveys to us. And then add to it the subtle element of poetry borne by the rhythmic sound! How atrocious, how aesthetically unpleasant it will be to say lavanache shvan (dog) instead of lavanachi kunjari! We will be immediately thrown off from the speeding horse of joy. Even Jnaneshwar’s own lavanachi kanika or a lump of salt is not that poetic or effective.
In this connection we may well take note of what Sri Aurobindo says about poetry: “Poetry comes into being at the direct call of three powers, inspiration, beauty and delight, and brings them to us and us to them by the magic charm of the inspired rhythmic word.” (The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 216) In Jnaneshwari we have such an “inspired rhythmic word” though not everywhere but in great abundance and it is that which takes us to the magic charm of a world that is full of happy sounds and pleasing images and noble ideas. In it is the authentic flow of poetry which is both beautiful and joyous. Such is its true inspiration. Educative or didactic it may appear at places, yet it is done in the élan of revelation.
Regarding the philosophical aspects, we may have differences of opinion about the metaphysics of Jnaneshwar, metaphysics which is essentially the Shankarite Adwaita interpretation of life here in this world. It is also likely that Jnaneshwar was not able to resolve or else didn’t care to resolve the conflict of the inexplicable Maya and the reality of Brahman giving rise to an illusory creation. Shankara’s stock images of snake and rope or the children of a barren woman are
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present in Jnaneshwari at a number of places. But there cannot be any doubt about the quality of Jnaneshwar’s poetry. Is it not for the same reason that it has a wider as well as a deeper appeal than his Amritanubhava? We go to spiritual poetry not necessarily for thought, but for the power it has to put us in contact with the spirit itself. That is what Jnaneshwari does and that is why it is great. It is overhead, in the parlance of Sri Aurobindo. All other studies are only aids towards this. We ought to enter into the poetic Yoga of Jnaneshwari if we are to receive its benedictive happiness which is there in its luminous generosity and fullness.
Does it then mean that we give up the study altogether, that we abandon the scholastic approach towards it? Certainly this can never be a wise counsel. But, and more importantly, what is necessary is that we must first recognise the scriptural aspect of the work with its inspiration flowing from the fountains of the spirit, deriving its sustenance from the worlds far richer than those which our mental notions and thoughts offer to us. The stamp of its felicitous ethereality can never be ignored and any attempt to do so will always prove to be disastrous. Besides the substance, we should also recognise that the Yogin was a poet too. The language of a poet breathes differently than the language of a thinker or even that of a contemplator and the poetic word always carries with it several nuances of meaning; it always suggests, through its varied shades and colours, the happy truths of the spirit itself. And then it is the rhythm, the vibrant soul of poetry, which really puts us directly in contact with it. It is that which is what counts the most. That is why perhaps it is always difficult to translate poetry from one language into another and that is precisely why most of its charm gets lost in a prose rendering or paraphrasing of it.
Therefore any representation of Jnaneshwari, be it in Marathi or English or for that matter in any other language, be it in verse or prose form, any aesthetic appreciation or any kind of analysis must take into consideration its poetry first. If this is not done not only we will be doing injustice to the work; we will also miss the power of the
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creative word, the sheer delight of expression, the essential rasa by which such poetry comes into existence and in which it lives and by which it thrives. That indeed is the happy merit of all spiritual writings. Their language is always what Sri Aurobindo calls the overhead language, language that comes from planes above our limited ratiocinative or physical mind. The more we climb the summits of this language the more it reveals the secret truths that are waiting to take form, waiting to bestow on our life the boons of their sweetness and charm, their beauty and their widening truth. Indeed raso vai sa is the first principle of these esoteric compositions. In assessing such works we cannot therefore apply our standards of judgement howsoever aesthetically good or refined or appealing these be. Nor any fixation, again howsoever sound or convincing or comprehensive it be, can at all give us genuine satisfaction when we wish to approach and receive their spiritual revelations. One has to only grow in a kind of warm sympathetic oneness with these inspired utterances, the oneness that has its foundation in the spirit of things, that comes from the world of creative intuition itself. Indeed one has to ascend these upward slopes of intuition if one is to appreciate the play of intuition.
Poetry and Yoga should be our approach to read Jnaneshwari. That indeed is to drink ambrosia from the crystalline stream that is ever flowing from it. But then for both Yoga and Poetry Jnaneshwari itself opens out newer dimensions of the spirit in which our growth can be interminable. It has the power to lift up our limited rational mind to the levels of higher intuition. This should then really mean our seeing it with a suppler and freer luminous intellect with the possibility of perceiving the subtler shades and nuances of the spiritual experience and expression. Jnaneshwar’s work has that scope and it is only the little ingenuous mind of ours that has prevented us so long from the exploration of these worlds of the magnum opus. Our approach must be to read it with all the openness we can command and benefit from it in the best likely way. If such an approach should invite criticism from the traditional or religious quarters, calling it modern arrogance, then in the interest of a deeper pursuit it need not in any sense distract us from the pursuit, deter us from the path.
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There is no doubt that Jnaneshwar was an accomplished Yogi. But there is a problem also about philosophy which is always different from spiritual poetry or spiritual realisations. Not that it cannot be the subject matter of poetry,—as we have in the Gita itself. But in this regard Jnaneshwari tends to be very much a descriptive manual or else a simple plain narrative that does not quite aim at systematically projecting any school of thought or present any siddhanta or darshana, as is the case with the traditional Acharyas. This non-presentation of philosophical thoughts can be an objectionable shortcoming. Also whatever metaphysics we have in Jnaneshwari, with its heavy leaning towards Shankara’s Adwaitic ideas, that may not be altogether acceptable, particularly so in these post-Illusionist days of our thinking. The Gita is vaster than such an Adwaitic doctrine.
One can appreciate that there are always, and understandably so, variations in the quality of poetry in a long composition of this kind running over several thousand verses. It is not too very unoften that inspiration becomes less certain and the gifts of its spontaneity seem to be hesitant or wavering. Perhaps Jnaneshwar didn’t care about all these details or matters and left the work in the form as he received it in the first flush of his writing. The belief is that Bharati or the Goddess of Inspiration and expressive Word always gives sweetness to the sweet and elegance to the beautiful and charm to the enchanting and one can leave all finer aspects of aesthetic perfection to her. Perhaps this is what our author felt even as he didn’t concern himself about possible disinclination towards his creative writing. Alternatively, these passages got interpolated later, an eventuality which is not altogether unlikely. If the latter is a distinct possibility, as a working principle it is unfortunately beset by the lack of dependable data. On the other hand, the first is a matter of perception and subjective judgement, entirely introspective in its character, and it can prove to be risky in several ways, including the danger of running counter to the tradition and our long-established associations with it. But actually it is this approach which must be picked up in editing Jnaneshwari. When done in the proper spirit to grow in it, there is no doubt that it will draw happy approbation of the author himself.
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Jnaneshwari has in it poetry, philosophy, science of Yoga, literary criticism, inherited knowledge and it is necessary for us to profit from it. The problem will therefore be to preserve this lore, assuring that yogic-spiritual aspects will not suffer in any way. Can this be gainfully done? The answer will lie in sorting out such themes and putting them in the form of several appendixes in the nature of archival documents. But this approach will have the demerit of accepting the available versions of Jnaneshwari as fully authentic which do not seem to be so. There is very clearly a lot of inferior stuff which got incorporated into the text. One quick method could be to consider these topics as accretions and re-edit the entire work.
In this respect, however, the approach should be first to undertake the preparation of a universally acceptable draft of Jnaneshwari. This would imply removing all defective accretions which have, in a certain sense, brought down the overall quality of the scripture. Another point,—and perhaps most desirable in terms of it acting as a guiding principle,— which one has to bear in mind is the evaluation of poetry itself. People often bring in aesthetic theories of Bharata in its evaluation and therefore miss its essential significance and Rasa. This is not altogether correct and therefore the method is greatly inapplicable in this case. We have to understand in what manner Jnaneshwar was successful in making his Marathi a vernacular that could win the wager of ambrosia. The quality of the spiritual poetry in Jnaneshwari is so very genuine that it can easily guide us to prepare an acceptable text. Its overhead character should be our main criterion.
Take an example. The supplicatory verses in the eleventh chapter of the Gita are absolutely mantric and they carry a spiritual force that can really work wonders. Jnaneshwar’s rendering of them into Marathi is also an inspired marvel. It is another creation, psychic-lyrical with a powerful spontaneity which can lift up the soul to the supremacy of the vision it embodies. In it we see the arrival of genuine Bhakti exaltation and eminence of newer times bringing with it another wide dimension of the spirit. There is no doubt that the Marathi Bhakti movement was a vigorous rush of psychic-spiritual activity and that it has greatly moulded our way of life and our thinking; it has given a
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distinctive character to us and we should be proud of it. But new horizons have now to open out and we must go to the world of poetry where revelatory word comes in the absoluteness of its utterance, in the absoluteness of its mantric image and sense and rhythm. Spiritual or devotional ideas and experiences are one thing and can be the subject matter of poetry, but poetry by itself is another matter. In this respect Jnaneshwar has no peer in Marathi literature, perhaps even in Tukaram when we consider the wide-ranging nature of his composition in the richness of its sounds and colours and feelings and thoughts, its echoes and shades and nuances, its many-sided perceptions. Its reach is sublimely overhead ranging beyond the mental worlds, bearing in them at times the native expression of the overmental globality. It becomes Vedic. It is at times said that the Vedas are the expression of Nature, that their poetry is Nature poetry; but it is the inner Nature with its esotericism that expresses deeper realities which can put us in direct contact with the luminous powers of the Spirit. Jnaneshwari’s esotericism lies in its yogic lyricism. Indeed, in that respect its greatness and distinction, its dignity and importance cannot be overemphasised. The exposition of ideas is beautiful and through them shines the Sun of Truth as much as in that truth smiles the Sun of Beauty. In it is aglow the Sun of aesthetic Delight that sustains the creative ardour in the multiplicity of spiritual existence. It is another kind of mantric songlike poem that has come to us in a new way to make our life richly meaningful and happy.
To quote Sri Aurobindo: “…the poetic mind sees at once in a flood of coloured light, in a moved experience, in an ecstasy of the coming of the word, in splendours of form, in a spontaneous leaping out of inspired idea upon idea…” (The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, p. 213) This is exactly what we have in Jnaneshwari, though not everywhere on a sustained level. Jnaneshwar’s is not a philosophic but a poetic mind, alert and supple, opening out to the answering demands of the Goddess of Inspiration who has bestowed her varied boons upon him. His unpremeditated melodies issue forth from the usual mind that has fallen silent, making room for the true and the beautiful to fill it.
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In the background of such achievements our modern understanding of Jnaneshwar at times seems unfortunately to be wanting in its gripping essentiality. Very often there is the stress on his metaphysics or on the aspect of Bhakti alone which can be quite misplaced. We may cite an example or two.
In his introduction to Dnaneshwar's Gita by Swami Kripanand, S. G. Tulpule of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies writes as follows: “If Jnaneshwari teaches anything, it is the way of devotion. It is an easy but a long, long way. In fact, it is endless. The aspiring mystic goes on continuously approaching God, and instead of reaching a final and perfect identity between these two, the devotee meets God at infinity. There is only a little difference left between them which disappears upon the mystic’s giving up the ghost. The reason for this asymptotic approximation to Reality, as Ranade calls it, is the physical, mental and other limitation of the seeker. As long as he has a body, a mind and a world to live in, he must fall short of total Divine Attachment. Says Jnaneshwar: ‘Even though a devotee may reach unison with God, yet he remains a devotee.’ The doctrine of asymptotism can be said to be a veritable landmark in the history of the philosophy of mysticism.” The author continues: “It is surprising to find parallel thoughts in the writings of the Chinese philosopher, Confucius, who lived in the 5th century B. C. To the question ‘How can the finite man attain the infinite Cheng?’ he answers: ‘Cheng is actually to be reached only by the sage, but it is the business of the ordinary man...to seek and strive with all his faculties to approach it. It is true that the path of this approach, though convergent, is endless—asymptotic, like the mathematical straight line that draws ever nearer to a curve, yet never meets it. There is no need for dismay on that account, however, for the path is rich in compensation and promise.’ Jnaneshwar says: Granted that one completely renounces the world, meets the proper Guru, gets initiated in the right way, granted all this, granted that the seed that is sown is the best of its kind and is sown in the best of the land, yet it is only in the course of time that a rich harvest can be reaped.” Can mysticism accept the concept of asymptotism?
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In his book Maharashtratil Sant Mandaliche Aitihasik Karya (The Historical Work of the Saints in Maharashtra), B.R. Sukhtankar says: “In Dnyanadeva, devotion, yoga, knowledge and karmayoga had an excellent blend. He was the philosophical Guru of the Varakari Movement…He thought that Truth is dynamic and rejected Shankaracharya’s doctrine of ‘the world is an illusion’ saying God and Creation are the same; just as Fire and Flame, Lotus and Petal, Diamond and Lustre, Ocean and Wave are not different, God and Creation are not different…He accepted age-old principle of Hinduism that ‘liberation (moksha) is through knowledge’ and broke that ground for women and lower castes. He was Maharashtra’s greatest philosopher. In fact, the Medieval Indian Philosophy reached its climax in him…It is a pity that nobody came forward to develop his philosophy, else he too would have been established as a founder of modern philosophy like Spinoza and Berkeley.” We should ponder whether such a western approach is at all proper to look into the work. It is well known that Jnaneshwar in Jnaneshwari had never set himself to deal with any philosophy per se and whatever philosophical he had said it was purely in the context of the Gita. Even that was not a systematic or a very original exposition of the issues dealt by it. His poetic expression was always in the contextual details and nowhere an attempt was made to bring out any doctrinal principle for its own sake, as was done by Shankara. In fact one wonders whether Jnaneshwar himself would have relished being a Spinoza or a Berkeley, nor even a Plato. Therefore such a discussion in the context of his phenomenological-experiential attainments will be our misplaced enthusiasm to call him a philosopher. It is through the poetry of his creation that one can really meet him and be one with him. Jnaneshwari is not a treatise on metaphysics or spiritual philosophy or a tract of yogic practices though all these abound in it in their functional richnesses. After all it has a far greater appeal to our inner being than his deeply philosophical Amritanubhava.
If we were to see Jnaneshwari merely as a literary creation we would miss much of its aesthetic delight which flows from its spiritual inspiration and spiritual word. We should not look at it as the
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work of a poet like Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, or Keats, even like that of Dante or Kalidas. It must be seen as the work of Valmiki or Vyasa though not on that level of aesthetic-spiritual creativity. Textbook or academic criteria are certainly not applicable to it nor should we judge it as “noble” or “elevating” merely in the Arnoldian sense. Nor should we look at it hastily in terms of “formal beauty” based on standardised measures or theoretic-prosodic considerations. In it we have a calm rush of language and thought which are alien to our perception of things. Take for example the following statement: “Literature begins in the creative possibilities of human language and in the desire of human beings to use their language creatively. Though its origin lies in the joy of creation, literature can be intensely serious. It can use its formal beauty as a way of enabling us to contemplate the most painful and terrible aspects of existence, or as a way of celebrating those things we value most highly in life. In the end, literature enriches our lives because it increases our capacities for understanding and communication. It helps us to find meaning in our world and to express it and share it with others. And this is the most humane activity of our existence.” (Elements of Literature edited by Robert Scholes, Nancy R. Comley, Carl H. Claus and Michael Silverman, Oxford University Press) Jnaneshwari goes beyond that. In it human language acquires the character of transcendental speech. Its scope is the revelation that can become a part of our existence. Something that is unknown and unreachable is brought closer to us. In it is the greatness of Jnaneshwari.
We may restate it differently: the function of poetry should be to help spiritual realisation by which poetry too can realise the deeper sense of its creative functions. In it the means and aims get united as if an artistic urge found expression for the spirit’s delight in universal oneness. To put it in Sri Aurobindo’s words: “The voice of poetry comes from a region above us, a plane of our being above and beyond our personal intelligence, a supermind which sees things in their innermost and largest truth by a spiritual identity and with a lustrous effulgency and rapture and its native language is a revelatory, inspired, intuitive word limpid or subtly vibrant or densely packed with the glory
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of this ecstasy and lustre.” (The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, pp. 279) While presenting his vision of the kind of poetry that will be given to us in future, he writes: “It is in effect a larger cosmic vision, a realising of the godhead in the world and in man, of his divine possibilities as well as of the greatness of the power that manifests in what he is, a spiritualised uplifting of his thought and feeling and sense and action, a more developed psychic mind and heart, a truer and deeper insight into his nature and the meaning of the world, a calling of diviner potentialities and more spiritual values into the intention and structure of his life that is the call upon humanity, the prospect offered to it by the slowly unfolding and now more clearly disclosed Self of the universe.” (Ibid., p. 288)
In a certain sense we may therefore say that Jnaneshwari is generally future poetry which has the mantric power to mould our lives in the triple greatness of the spirit. Thoughts, feelings, our will all grow in proportion as we live more and more in it. It brings insights, it brings to us diviner potentialities, it brings spiritual values closer to us; we embody in us the realities that are elevating and enduring. We expect this spirit to be renewed in our creative activities, giving to life a nobility which will transform our anguish and suffering into delight of existence. Thus we shall relive in Jnaneshwari.
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