The World’s Greatest Unpublished Spiritual Book

Philosophy East and West 65.4 (October 2015), pp. 1209-1233

"This essay argues that Sri Aurobindo’s unduly neglected Essays on the Gita (1916-20) develops a radically new hermeneutic approach to the Gītā, which helps account for crucial aspects of the Gītā’s philosophical and theological teachings that have baffled commentators for centuries. Rejecting the eisegetic practice of traditional commentators such as Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, Sri Aurobindo strives to interpret the Gītā on its own terms. Sri Aurobindo’s key move is to foreground and reinterpret the mysterious concept of “vijñāna,” which occurs at five places in the Gītā. In IX.1 of the Gītā, for instance, Lord Kṛṣṇa refers to the “highest secret” as “jñāna combined with vijñāna.” By situating these two key concepts within the Gītā’s broader philosophical framework, Sri Aurobindo makes a convincing case that jñāna is the realization of the impersonal “Ātman,” the eternal non-dual “Self” common to all, while vijñāna is the still higher realization of God as the impersonal-personal “Puruṣottama,” the “Supreme Person.” Upon the attainment of vijñāna, one realizes that the infinite God is at once the impersonal Ātman and the supreme Lord of the universe, at once immanent in the universe and transcendent to it. According to Sri Aurobindo, the concept of vijñāna is the hermeneutic key to understanding the Gītā’s entire thought-structure, including its complex account of the nature of God and its persistent privileging of devotion (bhakti). Sri Aurobindo further demonstrates how vijñāna furnishes the conceptual basis for the Gītā’s unique syncretic conception of spiritual practice, which combines devotion, knowledge, and selfless action. I conclude the essay by gesturing toward how Sri Aurobindo’s radical reinterpretation of the concept of vijñāna in the Gītā opens up exciting possibilities for interreligious dialogue and provides a fertile basis for exploring new directions in comparative theology."

Eleventh chapter of Indian epic poem the Bhagavad-Gītā mediates an important dimensions about the nature of god through revelation of his different aspects. The emphasis is on the picturesque dreadful image of god, which is a constitutional part of the totality of his identity and is a complementary aspect of Absolute's existence, which is on the other hand also gentle and benevolent. He is not only a creator, but also a destroyer, as warrior Arjuna realized through the majestic spectacle of divine's revelation. This vision is the origin of a special aesthetic experience, which supports human's faith in god, and at the same time is the basis for comprehension of the eternal laws of god and for ethical conduct, based on right attitude toward active participation in the society.

Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 2015

All great religious books, no matter how and when they were created, are living things whose lives continue to influence people across the ages and civilizations. As part of Princeton's series dedicated to the lives of great religious books, Richard Davis produces a rich biography of the oft-quoted Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, examining how it has lived on in diverse contexts and through adverse situations. He traces how the Gita travelled from ancient India to the modern West, from the hands of Hindu philosophers like Shankara and Ramanuja and Indian nationalists like Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, to Western intellectuals like Friedrich Max Müller and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The Mystic's Vision website, 2021

Recently Revised Collection of the Essential Articles of Swami Abhayananda, Vol. One

The Mystic's Vision website, 2021

A Collection of Articles by Swami Abhayananda from The Mystic's Vision website, Vol. Three, Revised 1-12-2021

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2015

A Short Treatise on the Gita Experiences- second edition

Exchange, 2009

Abstract: The aim of this short article is to introduce a topical text called the Daśaślokī (DŚ) of Ᾱdi Śaṃkara, widely known as Śaṃkara (the systematic propounder of Advaita Vedānta, ca. 8th century CE) and its only available commentary the Siddhāntabindu (SB) by Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (MS, ca. 16th century CE, generally said to have hailed from Bengal). While these two classics delineate in a nutshell the basic tenets of Advaita Vedānta philosophy and are placed with great significance in the tradition, very little work on them, particularly those based on textual study, has been done in modern scholarship. Thus, the article, without going into much detail of the content of these two works and the commentaries available (on the SB), gives in brief their introduction, in order to revisit them. Keywords: Daśaślokī, Advaita Vedānta, Ᾱdi Śaṃkara, commentary, Siddhāntabindu, Madhusūdana Sarasvatī.

This introduction discusses the nature of bhakti as a particular kind of knowledge. The cognitive nature of bhakti as understood by many of the great religious thinkers of India is often overlooked or ignored in favor of an understanding of bhakti as pure emotion. Even Sankara glosses it as paramarthajnanalaksana. Ramamnuja glosses it as jnana-visesa. This introduction traces the history of the understanding of bhakti as a kind of knowledge. Our (Blazing Sapphire Press's) edition of the Gita to which this introduction belongs comes in three flavors: Sanskrit only, the wonderful metrical translation of C. C. Caleb only, and the bilingual version with both the Sanskrit and the translation of C. C. Caleb. It is available from Amazon all around the world.

The paper begins with an analysis of the word ‘psychology’, involving the triad of soul, mind and behaviour and Gita’s philosophy concerning the same triad and goes on to: the Freudian and post-Freudian models, including the ‘individuation’ theory of Karl Jung and its affinity with Gita; the correlation of the Gita models (of the good, passionate and dull modes, the divine and demoniac attributes etc.) with the models of psychology and science (wave-particle duality model); the need to super-impose models to understand nature – both physical as also spiritual (in relation to the adhyāsa or Error Theory of Shankaracharya); Gita’s integrated roadmap from the practical to the transcendental realms laid across the domains of philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and psychology, involving both the individual and the society; the analyses of Madhusudana Sarasvati and Ananda Giri relating to the successive approach in Gita to explain the Upanishadic aphorism of identity of the self with the absolute – ‘That Thou Art’; Arjuna’s questions on the dialectic of man’s proclivity to sin and on the fickleness of mind, leading to Krishna’s detailed clarifications in terms of the modes, attributes and faiths governing the human nature; how Krishna’s description of the demoniac mind describes the bane of today’s world, where agents of ‘feeble intellect and cruel deeds’ seem to strive for mindless annihilation of the world with weapons of mass destruction – validating the theory of collective consciousness and societal harmony propounded by Carl Jung; and finally, in Gita’s last chapter on the soul’s deliverance, the insights on duties based on one’s nature (svabhāva) and station (svadharma) and the way to attain perfection to be united with the Absolute (Brahman), leading to dispelling of Arjuna’s doubts. N.B. This article is a reproduction of an essay of the same title appearing in the author’s book, titled Prophets, Poets, & Philosopher-Kings: Sketches on India’s Spiritual & Literary Heritage, published in 2012 by Celestial Books, an Imprint of Leadstart Publishing Pvt Ltd, Mumbai. ISBN 978-93-81576-06-9 © Abhijit Basu, 2012

This is a proof copy of my book "Exploring the Bhagavad gita; Philosophy, Structure and Meaning".

2017

This literary review will show the following: The functional purpose of The Bhagavad-Gita , how it originated and how it has transcended not only India, but also the entire world. In addition, this paper will also tie in how it affects me personally as someone on the Autism Spectrum Disorder, including a brief explanation on the condition as well. From it’s origins as a document before a war broke out, it became a doctrine. Even as it is explained at the beginning: “King inquired: Sanjaya, please tell me, in detail, what did my people and the Pandavas do in the battlefield before the war started?” (Jayaram, 1.01), its reverence in time poses similarities between cultures of the east and ultimately over time, the entire world. The Gita has not only affected just those who practice the philosophies inside it in India, but also the entire world. Autistics view the world differently, depending on their functioning levels. How Autistics perceive religion, especially one which is utilized by the second most populated country in the world (being India), this reference work (being The Gita) is crucial for Hindus and it has definitely shaped the way the world perceives religion.

Transcendent Philosophy: An International Journal for Comparative Philosophy and Mysticism

Hinduism or the san tana dharma (eternal religion) is not only among the world's oldest spiritual traditions but one that comprises a complete and integral psychology or-science of the soul.‖ The hegemonic dominance of modern science and its ideological offshoot, scientism, were spawned by the European Enlightenment; prior to which there were, as there are today, ways of being and knowing that do not conform to the truncated outlook of secular humanism and its reductionist tendencies. Rather, these alternative visions of reality offer a more complete and satisfying understanding of the human condition. For this reason, it is not widely known that just as there is a Hindu psychology, we also find psychological perspectives informed by the Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions (as well as those of various First Peoples and their shamanic heritage). These approaches can be conveniently termed ‗perennial psychology' insofar as they are distinguished, unlike contemporary psychology, by their foundation in metaphysics, sacred science and spiritual principles.