Yatharth Geeta -Swami Adgadanand 18

Yatharth Geeta -Swami Adgadanand Ji

PREFACE In our own time we see how even hangers-on of no consequence get their work done by pretending to be intimate with weilders of power, whereas as a matter of fact they may not be really even known to them. Likewise, codifiers of rules for social life and conduct also hide behind great sages and exploit their venerable names to win subsistence. The same has happened with the Ved. Fortunately, however, what may be deemed the essence of the Ved-the divine revelations of saints and seers who lived thousands of years ago-is enshrined in the Upanishad. Neither dogma nor theology, these meditations concern direct, overwhelming religious experience in the midst of life, and record insights into eternal truths. They are unified by their common search for the true nature of reality, and in the course of this search provide glimpses into sublime states of the soul. And the Geeta is an abstract of this essence that the Upanishad contain. Or, as it might be said, the Geeta is the quintessence of the immortal substance that the Upanishad have churned from the celestial poetry of the Ved. Every sage who has attained to reality is also likewise an embodiment of this quintessence. And in every part of the world a compilation of his utterances is known as scripture. Nevertheless, dogmatists and blind followers of creeds insist that this or that holy book alone is a repository of truth. So we have people who say that only the Koran is a revelation of truth and that its visionary experience cannot be had again.