Post on fourth adhyaya.

क्षमस्व!   क्षमस्व!   क्षमस्व!    I beg pardon of all the readers and followers for the delay in publishing this post. It happened due to some unavoidable personal difficulties.   Hopefully, there will be no irregularity in future and postings on the blog henceforth will be published at regular intervals. Now, let me concentrate on today's post.  

Which is the yoga professed by Lord Krishna in fourth adhyaya of Bhagwad Geeta?

          Fourth adhyaya starts with a proclamation by Lord Krishna to Arjuna that the yoga now being preached was earlier taught by him  to Sun God (Viwaswan) in distant past. The Sun-God-Wiswan passed it on to his son Manu. Manu practiced this yoga and then expounded it to his son Ikshwaku. In this way, this yoga was traditionally practiced and followed by a few generations of Sun Dynasty (Surya-vansha). This was called as Rajarshi-Vidhya, which was learnt and adopted by some other yogis also. They were known as Rajarshis i.e.royal sages or philosopher kings. King Janaka was one of them. However, with passage of time, number of followers of this Rajarshi-Vidhya reduced to almost zero because, the kings and other people started giving more importance to and became interested in fulfillment of their sensory, physical and  worldly enjoyments rather than yearning for liberation through spiritual achievements. As a result, in the days of Krishna and Arjuna, this yoga (by practicing which, an aspirant can easily attain self realization i.e. Atma-bodha), was totally forgotten, went out of practice and no one even remembered about it.  In this background we should see the first shloka of fourth adhyaya given below.

                        श्रीभगनानुवाच:-             इमं विवस्वते योगं प्रोक्तवानहमव्ययम् ।


                                                        विवस्वान् मनवे प्राह मनुरिक्ष्वाकवेऽब्रवीत् ॥ १ ॥

Shri Bhagwan said:

“I taught this everlasting and imperishable yoga to Viwaswan, the Sun God. He gave it to Manu (his son) and Manu extended it to his son Ikshkwaku”.

While commenting on this shloka, Dnyaneshwar Mauli wrote as under:

        तोचि हा आजि आतां । तुजप्रती कुंतीसुता । सांगितला आम्हीं तत्त्वता । भ्रांति न करीं ।। ४-२७ ।।

4-27. (Shrikrishna tells Arjuna) - O son of Kunti (अर्जुना), today I have advised you in principle, essence of the same eternal and primal yoga that I had taught to Sun God. Do not have any doubt or delusion about it.   

          This declaration of the Lord to Arjuna that the same yoga is being narrated,  reminds me of my postings on second adhyaya dated 12^th and 22^nd March 2012 on this blog describing importance of Buddhi yoga. In fact, up to this point in Bhagwad Geeta, Buddhi yoga has been espoused by the Lord as  main subject . I am restraining myself from discussion on Buddhi yoga here in this fourth adhyaya because,  the main theme of this adhyaya is “Dnyana yoga” (yoga of knowledge of Atman). As per the scheme of Geeta, every adhyaya has its own theme and purpose for motivating Arjuna to discard his despondency and commence the battle. This arrangement has to be honoured and therefore without diverting, I am coming back to description of fourth adhyaya.  

          While confirming that it is the same original yoga, the Lord said that this yoga was till then conserved by him as topmost secret, but Arjuna being his dearest friend and devotee, he could not stop  its disclosure to Arjuna. 

          Upon this, Arjuna expressed a doubt that Krishna is of present generation and Viwaswan and Manu had lived hundreds of generations behind; how could Krishna teach this yoga to them?  Lord satisfied the query by telling Arjuna that you and I have taken many births on this earth. I remember them all because, I am incarnation of the Supreme Self and take birth on the earth with the help of my own Maya i.e. prakriti, while you are born as a human being, who cannot remember any of the previous births. In other words, the theory of re-birth has been introduced here by the Lord. The reason given by the Lord  for incarnation was protection of dharma i.e. righteousness and  the righteous people.  


         Then comes the idea that the Parabrahman (Supreme Being) is only one entity and all other deities imagined by the human beings are its manifestations only. So, whichever deity a person may be worshipping, in effect he is worshipping the Supreme Being alone. All the benefits accrued to a person from his devotion to some particular God,  are in fact bestowed on him by the Supreme Being in the name of that particular deity. .


          The Lord also declares that he has constituted four classes in the society (chaturvarnya) based on the gunas (attributes of prakriti) and prescribed the karmas for them in the social system. The Lord has said in the same breath that though he has created these four classes, in reality he is not their creator. This averment of Lord needs to be discussed in detail and we will do that in some of our forthcoming postings. 

          Ahead in this fourth adhyaya, the Lord described true nature and inevitability of karma i.e. action. distinguished from the concepts of akarma i.e. inaction and naishkarmya i.e. actionlessness. Thereafter, importance of Dnyana i.e. knowledge abut Atman is described. This dnyana is subject of atindriya spiritual experience (beyond sensory perception) distinct from the material information that is generally considered as dnyana. This dnyana has to be gained from the dnyani (experienced wise) persons by humbly serving them. This dnyana kindles a fire called Dnyanagni in the mind, intellect and body of the devotee aspiring for liberation. All karmas of the aspirant with their binding effect get burnt in this dnyanagni, purifying  and leading him to final beatitude.  


          The Lord has also narrated how Dnyana-yadnya i.e. sacrifice by knowledge is best among all the other sacrifices. This again is a subject that requires lot of discussion and we will discuss it in future.

          In the next posting, I propose to discuss some important aspects of the fifth adhyaya, which has been named by some of the commentators of Geeta as yoga-garbha adhyaya. i.e. it gives an idea as to how the concept of yoga got conceived in the mind of Arjuna.