Divine Manifestations
Uddhava addresses Krishna
“You are the supreme Brahman without beginning or end, free from all limitations. In you the whole universe exists. The wise know this; but the ignorant do not. Teach me how to worship you in all beings and attain to your abode.” Krishna replies “O Uddhava, the same question was asked by Arjuna on the eve of the battle of Kurukshetra. I will tell you in brief my divine manifestations.”
Krishna tells Uddhava what he told Arjuna in the 10th Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita about all his glories or Vibhuties. However the Lord says “I have indicated in brief to you all these manifestations of mine. Know them to be nothing but the fancy of the imagination, mere words, and unreal. You will do well to control your speech, mind and senses, and you will never again suffer transmigration. He who fails to control his mind and tongue, all his spiritual attainments will leak out of him like the water out of an unbaked pot.”
Varna Ashrama Dharma
Then the discussion between Uddhava and Krishna centres on castes (varna) and orders (ashrama) of life, their origin, functions in the society, their duties and obligations. The purpose of marriage is not enjoyment but attaining knowledge by the couple in this life and everlasting happiness hereafter. Krishna says ‘as travellers meet by chance on the way, so does a man meet wife, children, relatives and friends: let him therefore be in the world and yet separate from it.”
The Goal and The Way
Krishna continues to advise Uddhava:
He whose mind has been thoroughly purified by knowledge and realization alone can comprehend my supreme state. Penance, pilgrimage, japa, charitable acts, is mere means of self-purification and not of perfection as knowledge is. Therefore work your self-knowledge up to the stage of realization and reject everything else but your devotion to me.
Uddhava wanted to know about the difference between Jnana, Vijnana and Bhakti as also about Yama and Niyama which are prescribed in the scriptures for the attainment of final beatitude. The Lord answered all these questions in detail and concluded by saying that the means by which he is attained is known as the right path and the wrong path is that by which mundane activity is undertaken.
Krishna continues;
“In order to lead men to the highest good, three methods of self-discipline have been taught by me. They are:
1] Jnana Yoga, the path of knowledge or investigation - meant for those who have lost the taste for worldly action, considering it to be a source of misery.
2] Karma Yoga, the path of action - meant for those who thirst for fulfillment of desires through action and
3] Bhakti Yoga, the path of devotion meant for those who are neither disgusted with sense pleasures nor inordinately attached to them. And who love to hear the stories about the Lord and chant his name.
Those who follow any one of these paths will attain the state of Brahman, the absolute Reality, my state.”
The Lord deprecates the goal of heaven through ritualism as mere glamorous and says that he only knows the true and hidden meaning of the Vedas. The reward of heaven promised by the Vedas for ritualistic worship is not blessedness or the final goal in itself, but is calculated to create a taste for worship as an introduction to the subject of final Liberation, even as the promise of chocolates induces a child to take its dose of medicine.
Then follows a detailed and long discussion between Krishna and Uddhava on varied topics like categories or tattvas, purusha and prakriti, sankhya doctrine, characteristics of the three Gunas, and the method of formal worship to propitiate the Lord.
Truth is One Only
Recapitulating the earlier teachings, Krishna affirms that considering the existence of only one substance viz. Paramatman or the Supreme Self, manifesting as purusha and prakriti, the seeker must desist from praising or condemning the actions or dispositions of others which will lead him to duality and thus defeat his own purpose of attaining the oneness of the Self.
In the world of duality where everything is false, unreal like a mirage, an echo, a reflection, the discrimination between good and bad does not arise, although it somehow affects the jivas.
The one substance is both, the creator and the created, the protector and the protected and the destroyer and the destroyed. The triad of percipient, percept and perception is the product of illusion and thus does not exist. The knower of this truth as taught by the Lord, neither extols nor reviles anyone, but goes about unattached like the sun.
Uddhava now raises an interesting question. He says that when death and rebirth is talked about, neither the soul (Self, Atman) nor the body is capable of rebirth because the soul is deathless and the body gets disintegrated upon death and stands no chance of revival. Yet birth and death are real. Then which entity, he asks Krishna, undergoes the process of death and rebirth (if neither the body nor the soul is reborn)?
Krishna answers: “Notwithstanding the fact that the phenomena of birth and death do not really happen to the Soul or prakriti, yet so long as the contact between the ignorant or indiscriminate jiva and the senses continues, birth and death does not cease. It is just like a man so long as he is dreaming, there is no corresponding reality for the objects experienced in the dream but he, the dreamer, continues to be deluded by the dream objects, and continues to suffer the dream sorrow, although this does not exist as real sensations in him, and ceases when he becomes enlightened on waking. Thus birth and death, grief, fear etc affect the deluded jiva, the ego and not his being or Self. Hence the aim should be not to identify with one’s own body which is non-self and unreal and to identify oneself with the Self, which is the only reality. This is called wisdom which consists of distinguishing Self from Non-Self.
The means to acquire wisdom are-
1] study of the Vedas (nigama)
2] tapas
3] faith in the teachings of exalted souls
4] one’s own realization
5] ability to infer what is the beginning, middle and the end.
Gold and not the ornament is the reality. Even so, the Atma is the reality and not the world. The mind in its three states of consciousness viz., dream, wakefulness and deep sleep creates the respective world. Consciousness, which is the reality, is Brahman which pervades all three states and the universe. The reality will persist, even when the threefold distinction disappears. The universe did not exist before and was evolved out of Brahman which is the cause of all, and which is not caused by any other entity or cause. Gold appears as ornaments which we may call as intermediary stage. Even if the ornaments are melted gold will exist which we may call as the end stage. Similarly, even when the ornaments were not made the gold remained in the form of a bar or some such shape. This stage we may call as the beginning. So what exists in all the three stages i.e. the beginning, the middle or intermediary and the end is the Reality and that which does not so exist is unreal.
Krishna advises Uddhava to clear his doubts in this way with the grace of a Guru. The sun is not affected by the clouds appearing and disappearing around it. The sky is not affected by the five elements viz. earth, air, water, fire and space which are in it. Similarly Brahman or the Paramatman is not affected by the universe.
Just as the light of the sun dispels the darkness from the eye and reveals what has been already present but unseen, so does the Self-realization, dispels the darkness of the mind and reveal the Self, the Lord, Bhagavan, which has been invisibly present as the source of all experiences, the senses and speech and which is beyond reason, words, time, space and causality. The Lord warns that even if one possesses such discriminatory wisdom, he should be ever vigilant lest there is every possibility of losing it on account various inimical forces at work like temptations for worldly objects, pleasures of wife, children and wealth etc. He assures that his true devotee will never have such obstructions.