Bg 9.1
śrī-bhagavān uvāca
idaṁ tu te guhya-tamaṁ pravakṣyāmy anasūyave
jñānaṁ vijñāna-sahitaṁ yaj jñātvā mokṣyase ’śubhāt
Bg 9.2
rāja-vidyā rāja-guhyaṁ pavitram idam uttamam
pratyakṣāvagamaṁ dharmyaṁ su-sukhaṁ kartum avyayam
Bg 9.3
aśraddadhānāḥ puruṣā dharmasyāsya paran-tapa
aprāpya māṁ nivartante mṛtyu-saṁsāra-vartmani
Translation
The Blessed Lord said: 1. To you who do not cavil, I shall now declare this, the greatest secret, the most profound knowledge combined with experience (or realisation) ; which having known, you shall be free from the sorrows of life.
2. Royal Science, Royal Secret, the supreme purifier is this, realisable by direct intuitive knowledge, according to the DHARMA, very easy to perform, imperishable.
3. Persons without faith in this DHARMA (the Divine Self) , O Parantapa, without attaining Me, return to the path of rebirth, fraught with death.
Commentary
Lord Krishna has found, in Arjuna, one who is really anxious to evolve. Only, he wanted help from some quarter, to develop in himself an intellectual conviction for the way-of-life he was to pursue. The Lord says that He will declare the philosophy to Arjuna, "WHO DOES NOT CARP OR CAVIL," and the benefit of this knowledge and its practical application has also been indicated in this stanza; "HAVING KNOWN WHICH, YOU SHALL BE FREE FROM ALL LIMITATIONS OF FINITE EXISTENCE."
An individual becomes incapable of facing the challenges of life and meeting its rising demands, because, in his false estimation of things and beings, he comes to play out of tune with the whole orchestra of life. To understand ourselves and the world outside, is to know the secret of keeping a healthy and happy relationship with the world outside. He, who is capable of tuning himself up thus with the whole, is the one who is marked out for sure success and complete victory in life.
Because of his internal maladjustments, we found Arjuna, the hero of his age, behaving as a shattered personality. Such an individual, split in himself, comes to feel the problems of life too heavy, the duties of life too irksome, and life itself too much to bear. All those, who thus allow the engine of life to run over them and crush them down, are termed as Samsarins. Those who know the art of self-development can easily learn how to steer the engine of existence from its driver's seat, safely around every impediment, and they are the Men-of-Realisation, the Saints, and the Sages. This status is the heritage of man --- of every intelligent person, who has the enthusiasm and the courage to master life and live like a God upon earth ruling over the circumstances, and smiling at the adversities.
TO GENERATE AN ALL-OUT ENTHUSIASM IN THE ART OF LIVING, WHICH EACH STUDENT HAS TO BRING ABOUT IN HIS OWN LIFE, THE ART OF SELF-PERFECTION IS PRAISED IN THE FOLLOWING:
Vedanta is no religion in the ordinary concept of the term, which implies the formalistic observance of some physical and mental discipline, in some House of God, during a specific day of the week, for a prescribed length of time. If we consider religion as an "Art of Right Action," then Vedanta is indeed the noblest of religions, because it provides a scientific explanation for the entire way of right living. Krishna here glorifies it: "THIS IS THE ROYAL SCIENCE, THE ROYAL MYSTERY, PURE AND VERY HIGH."
Even if there be a Science, royal in its import, deep in its profundity, and "supreme in its purifying effect," unless it be available for our comprehension, it is almost useless. Here, Krishna promises that it is "CLEARLY COMPREHENSIBLE," since it can be apprehended directly by an immediate experience of the Self.
Also it is a science "pertaining to Dharma" (Dharmyam). The term Dharma has already been explained. Man is nothing but a parcel of minerals in their gross and subtle states, if the Conscious Principle were not blessing them with awareness. This Awareness, called the Self, is then the Dharma of man, the Principle of Life in him. the Spiritual Science, that the Lord of Vrindavana promises to enunciate in this chapter, is neither the physical science of the biology of the objects of the world, nor the science of psychology that explains the field of emotions and thoughts --- but the Science of the Self, the deepest essence in each individual.
VERY EASY TO PERFORM --- Religion is a subjective technique to be pursued and accomplished by each in himself. If this great science, into which Lord Krishna is proposing to initiate Arjuna, is an extremely difficult proposition in life, then, naturally, it is a futile philosophy. The poverty of a country is not removed by the declaration of its scientists that there are inexhaustible quantities of unclaimed gold, awaiting free transportation, on Mars! In order to remove this vague fear, it has been fully confirmed that the technique of self-integration and the ultimate gaining of complete mastery over oneself is an art easy to master for the sincere and the diligent.
Even if it be easy, no intelligent man can pursue the path, if the gain acquired thereby is perishable and temporary. It is endorsed here that the gains acquired through a faithful pursuit of this Royal Science of self-development and self-mastery are "OF AN IMPERISHABLE NATURE." To realize the Self is to become the Self, the Eternal, the Infinite Reality behind the phenomenal world of appearances.
AS A CONTRAST TO THOSE WHO ARE SEEKING, THE DESTINY OF THOSE WHO ARE NOT SEEKING THE IMPERISHABLE IS DECLARED TO BE THE DISTURBED LIFE OF SAMSARA:
Those who live in complete disregard of the Self, necessarily "RETURN WITHOUT ATTAINING ME." Men of extroversion, meditating upon the sense objects and bartering away their intellectual capacities, emotional powers, and physical strength for seeking, acquiring and possessing the implements to work out their sensual satisfaction, must necessarily return to "THE PATH OF REBIRTH, FRAUGHT WITH DEATH."
The more an individual meditates upon the finite, strives to gain the changeable, and gets choked by the sorrows of the perishable, the more he comes to worship and court the lower nature of the Self, the Prakriti. However big the ocean may be, a drop of it, taken from anywhere in its infinite expanse, should taste saline. In the same way, whatever be the motive behind the courting, once we allow ourselves to be courtiers of the world-of-objects, we are doomed to taste the saline tears of sorrow, because of the very ephemeral nature of the "objects of our love."
The world of names and forms is finite and ever-changing. At every moment, every object is living through a process of change, and each change is death to the previous state of existence of the object. Thus, the term "death" used here by Krishna in his phrase "FRAUGHT WITH DEATH" is to be understood in this liberal meaning of the term. In short, courtiers of the finite reach the tragic realms of constant death.
In the perfect Science of Vedanta, though Shraddha also implies "faith" in the Tagorean sense of the term, it is not built upon the misty vapours of emotionalism, but upon the solid beams of intellectual understanding and perfect awareness of the logic of thought behind the theory. Shankara defines Shraddha as the "moulding of the life and living, on the basis of right intellectual comprehension of what the scripture indicates and the teachers explain." It is the enduring faith that lifts us to realms beyond the reach of the mind and intellect, and helps to carve out of the mortal and the finite, the Immortal and the Infinite.
Something without which a substance cannot be that very substance is called its Dharma or essence; e. g., heat in fire, cold in ice. Those who have no faith in the Divine Essence, which is the Self in them, get easily abducted by the cooings of their emotions, or the barkings of their intellect, or the whisperings of their flesh. They slip into devolution and come to live as biped animals, when they lose their faith in the Divine core which is the Essential Being. A mad king, who has forgotten his own kingship, throws his kingly dignity to the winds and runs about naked on the streets, behaving as though he were a homeless vagabond. Similarly, an individual, in his forgetfulness of the dignity of his essential Self-hood, comes to live in the open streets of sense pleasures, hunting for his satisfactions, as though he were nothing better than a crawling worm in some wayside ditch.
Simple-looking though it be, this stanza is pregnant with untold suggestiveness. By contrasting thus the "Path-of-Knowledge" with the "Path-of-Ignorance" in the most vivid terms, Krishna brings to the comprehension of Arjuna the advisability of the blessed path of Higher seeking, the realization of the Imperishable.
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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