The Gita is a message of eternity, and it has a timeless significance for every one of us. The vicissitudes of life have no impact upon this message, because it arises from a source that transcends the transitions of life. It is a message that embodies the knowledge of what is ultimately real. The union of the individual with the Absolute is the final consummation of this story that is the Gita. It is a story of the movement of all creation to the Creator, the Father of all beings that are here as these widespread phenomena.
The deeper you go within yourself, the deeper is the meaning you will discover in the Gita. If your outer personality reads the Gita, you will see only the outer feature of its message. The whole teaching of the Gita is centred on balance, equanimity, a putting in order of everything that is not in order. All the laws of various types signify one thing, namely, the necessity to maintain harmony, and it has to be maintained everywhere, in every walk of life, and in any given moment of time. The context in which Arjuna, the hero of this epic, the symbol of humanity in general, finds himself is the total human situation. It is your situation, my situation and everybody's.
The reluctance of Arjuna to take up arms is the reluctance of the spiritual seeker to grapple with reality in its essentiality. The dejection, or the mood of melancholy in which the representative man, Arjuna, found himself, has been described as a spiritual condition. That is why even the so-called dejection is regarded as a part of Yoga.
The Gita regards life itself as Yoga. The way in which we have to live in this world is Yoga. A spiritual seeker conceived in the light of the Gita is a spark from the divine conflagration of God-being, seeking union with its universal Selfhood or absolute comprehensiveness. Our conduct has to be in consonance with this great purpose.
The Incarnations, such as Krishna, Buddha or Christ, have various degrees of intensity in their workings and are in that particular shape or form which would be required under the circumstances. Hence it is that we see diversity among the messages of the Incarnations accepted by the various religions around the world. They are not diversified really. They appear to be so on account of the diversity of the needs of the circumstances that necessitated their descent.
"The Self is the friend of the self, and is the enemy also," which means to say that the higher Self is the friend and the benefactor of ourselves, to the extent we are in tune with its purposes and laws. We are failures in life to the extent we are dissonant in respect of its laws.
The Gita tells us that we shall feel such a joy in deep meditation, such a satisfaction, such a delight when the mind is wholly absorbed in this manner, that even the worst sorrow of our life will not be able to shake our minds.
In mighty incarnations, sages, saints, and in the various natural phenomena, anything that stuns us or strikes us with wonder-such a thing is a ray of God's manifestation. Arjuna's vision of God in the Gita is a timeless grasp of the eternity of Being, where everything is a here-and-now and not afterwards or somewhere else. How do we get a vision of God? A whole-souled surrender of the self is the way. Unless the self melts away into the All-Self, this vision is not going to materialise itself. In our spiritual practices, do we long to maintain our individualities? If this is true, the vision of God is far off.
Surrender the fruits of your action to God, and engage yourself in action in this world, perform your duties, go on with your vocation in the spirit of true Karma Yoga. Be an ideal person. Hate not, love not. Man and God have to work together. This is the principle behind Arjuna and Krishna sitting in one chariot and driving forward into the field of battle.
Generally, I would advise you to keep two things always in your pocket: one japa mala, and a small edition of the Bhagavad Gita. These will protect you also, and not just act as reminders. The Bhagavad Gita admonishes one to be perpetually in a state of Yoga. While an establishment of oneself in Yoga at the last moment of life will bestow the fruit of Yoga, one cannot know when the last moment will come. While death may take place after many years, it can occur in the next moment.
