Bhagavadgita -Radhakrishnan 60

The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 13. The Goal The Gita insists on the unity of the life of spirit which cannot be resolved into philosophic wisdom, devoted love or strenuous action. Work, knowledge and devotion are complementary both when we seek the goal and after w€ attain it. We do not proceed on the same lines but that which we seek is the same. We may climb the mountain by different paths but the view from the summit is identical for all. Wisdom is personified as a being whose body is know-ledge and whose heart is love. Yoga, which has for its phases, knowledge and meditation, love and service is the ancient road that leads from darkness to light, from death to immortality. The goal of transcendence is represented as the ascent to the world of the Creator (brahmaloka), or the attainment of the status of the Impersonal Supreme (brahmabhava or brahmisthiti). One side of it is isolation from the world (kaivalya). The Gita mentions all these views. Many passages suggest that, in the state of release, duality disappears and the released soul becomes one with the Eternal Self. It is a condition beyond all modes and qualities, impassive, free and at peace. If we have a body clinging to us, nature will go on acting will the body is shaken off as a discarded shell. The jivanmukta or the freed soul possessing the body reacts to the events of the outer world without getting entangled in them. On this view, spirit and body are an unreconciled duality and we cannot think of any action of the released soul. The main emphasis of the Gitã is not on such a view. For it, the state of spiritual freedom consists in the transformation of our whole nature into the immortal law and power of the Divine. Equivalence with God (sadharmya) and not identity (sayujya) is emphasized. The freed soul is inspired by Divine knowledge and moved by the Divine will. He acquires the mode of being (bhava) of God. His purified nature is assimilated into the Divine substance.