Abstract
In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna lays out three paths of yoga as the means to achieve human perfection: the path of self-less action (karma yoga), the path of knowledge (jnana yoga), and the path of devotion (bhakti yoga). In this paper I will argue for an interpretation of the Gita in which the path of devotion is the last step that leads to moksha. This is not to claim that bhakti yoga is more important than karma and jnana yoga, but rather that the latter two are more elementary. In order to practice bhakti yoga, one must first have practiced karma and jnana yoga. All three forms of yoga are equally important—but there is a prioritized order in which they are to be practiced. On my reading, bhakti is more than having an intense feeling of love for God, because practicing devotion to God is an intellectual love of God that entails an intuitive understanding of the essence of things. My approach is to cross-examine the concept of human perfection as discussed in the Gita and Spinoza’s Ethics. Human perfection is characterized in both texts as a total liberation from being guided by things external to oneself other than one’s own nature. In other words, the aim of life is to liberate oneself by acquiring the right kind of knowledge. The freer one becomes and the more knowledge that one has, the more perfect one becomes. Thus, Spinoza’s idea of the “free man” resembles the self-realized agent in the Gita, because a human being becomes more “perfect” when he expresses God’s power to a greater degree. Bhakti yoga is the last step on the path to attain knowledge of God because in bhakti yoga, one employs the method of intuition to grasp God’s essence. As such, unlike karma and jnana yoga, the knowledge acquired in bhakti yoga is not empirical. In the Gita, rational devotion is a single act of both the mind and the heart, which, in turn, will lead to the practice of self-less actions.
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Notes
According to Easwaran, the Gita is not an integral part of the Mahabharata. The Gita on its own is an Upanishad because it does not owe its authority to other scriptures. As such, the Gita should be considered shruti in the same way that the Vedas (including their Upanishads) insofar it is a record of direct encounter with the divine. (Shruti literally means “heard” rather than “learned” so shruti have their own authority.) For Easwaran, both the Upanishads and the Gita are original oral transmissions. The Gita sets down the direct mystical experience of an inspired seer (traditionally Vyasa) and is inserted into the Mahabharata at the appropriate place. Introduction by Easwaran, pp. 18–22.
All translations of the Bhagavad Gita are those of Eknath Easwaran in 1985. References to the Gita will be by chapter and verse.
It is a general consensus that jnana, bhakti and karma yoga are the three main paths that Krishma prescribes. However, dhyana (meditation) yoga is also mentioned in the text, but it is typically not given the same status as the other three. Some scholars have argued for the equal status of dhyana yoga. See Dorter “A Dialectical Reading of the Bhagavadgita.”
Traditionally the eighteen chapters of the Gita have been broken into three six-chapter parts. Chapters one to six deal with karma yoga. Chapters seven to twelve deal with jnana yoga. Chapters thirteen to eighteen deal with bhakti yoga. Introduction by Easwaran, p. 31.
The term “yoga” is used in three different ways in the Gita: First, as an intelligent method of performing actions (2:50), second, as an tranquility and evenness of the mind (2:48), and third, as “a discipline which leads to a state of union with God” (2:50). Mulla and Krishnan (2014), p. 342.
Karma also means the endless cycle of cause and effect, or reincarnation.
For more discussion on the inconsistency in the text, see Dorter (2012).
Dorter, pp. 314–315.
The word “dharma” here is usually translated as duty. However, one should keep in mind that this is not the same kind of duty as Kantian duty because Hindu duties are largely determined by social rules and the caste system. Thus, unlike the Kantian duty which is a categorical imperative, the Hindu duty is expressed more accurately as a hypothetical imperative that depends on time, place and circumstances. Gupta (2006), pp. 380–382.
Dorter, p. 314.
Ibid., p. 314.
Ibid., p. 315.
Many commentators have thus argued that no path of yoga is more superior to another because they all lead to the same goal. Proponents include Eknath Easwaran and Kenneth Dorter.
All translations of Spinoza’s (1994) writing are those of Edwin Curley in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. References to the Ethics will by Part (I–V), axiom (A), proposition (P), scholium (S), corollary (C) and definition (D) is either a definition that follows immediately a part number) or a demonstration.
The term Yoga here refers to one of the six ancient schools in classical Indian philosophy. Samkhya and Yoga are usually considered as the two of the six orthodox schools. The other four are: Nyaya, Vaisesika, Purvamimamsa and Vedanta. The central tests of classical Samkhya and Yoga are Samkhyakarika and Yogasutra respectively. For more discussion on the connection between Samkhya and Yoga, see Mikel Burley, Classical Samkhya and Yoga: An Indian Metaphysics of Experience, 2007.
Introduction by Easwaran, p. 9.
“The struggle the Gita is concerned with is the struggle for Self-mastery. [Arjuna] and Krishna are then no longer merely characters in a literary masterpiece. Arjuna becomes Everyman, asking the Lord himself, Sri Krishna, the perennial questions about life and death—not as a philosopher but as the quintessential man of action,” Introduction by Easwaran, p. 7.
Although Gandhi agrees that the battlefield was merely an analogy, he sees the Gita as failing to establish the necessity of physical warfare, and hence a piece of text supporting pacifism. Introduction by Easwaran, p. xvii.
In the Latin edition of the Ethics, “God, or nature” is expressed as “Deus, sive Natura.”
“[by] Natura naturata I understand whatever follows from the necessity of Gods nature, or from any of God’s attributes, that is, all the modes of God’s attributes insofar as they are considered as things which are in God, and can neither be nor be conceived without God” IP29S.
Spinoza thinks that no two substances can share an attribute because if they did, then it would not be possible to distinguish them. If we could not distinguish them, then their non-identity would be a brute fact—but Spinoza’s metaphysical rationalism would not allow this. For Spinoza, everything has a cause or reason (and so there cannot be brute facts). Lin (2006), pp. 146–147.
ID6: By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, that is, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.
IIP7: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
Gita, p. 74.
Freeman (2010), The Mirror of Yoga, pp. 80–81.
Ibid., p. 81
For Spinoza, all ideas are beliefs, so there is no difference between having an idea and willing an idea. To experience akrasia, or be overcome by one’s passions, does not mean that one “willingly” goes against what is the right thing to do. Spinoza’s akrasia means that the passionate ideas are merely stronger than the adequate ideas. To have an idea is to affirm it because “[the] will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary one.” Also in IIP49D “In the mind there is no absolute faculty of willing and not willing, but only singular volitions, namely, this and that affirmation and this and that negation.” And in IIP49C, The will and the intellect are one and the same—the will and the intellect are nothing apart from the singular volitions and ideas themselves.” For more discussion, see Soyarslan (2014a, b).
An affect is “affections of the body by which the body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections” (IIID3).
“I call that cause adequate whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perfective through it. But I call it partial, or inadequate, if its effect cannot be understood through it alone” (IIID1).
“The mind is more liable to passions the more it has inadequate ideas, and conversely, is more active the more it has adequate ideas” (IIIP1C).
Soyarslan (2013), pp. 2–3.
Nadler (2015), pp. 103–104.
Knowledge of the first kind is the only cause of falsity, whereas knowledge of the second kind is necessarily true. Knowledge of the second and third kinds, and not of the first kind, teaches us to distinguish the true from the false.
Soyarslan (2013), The Distinction between Reason and Intuitive Knowledge in Spinoza’s Ethics, European Journal of Philosophy, doi:10.1111/ejop12052, p. 5.
Ibid., p. 5.
It is a debate among commentators the extent to which intuitive knowledge differs from reason. While all scholars agree that intuitive knowledge differs from reason in terms of its method, some argue that it also differs in its representative content and others disagree. It is not important for the purpose of this paper to decide on a view so I will focus only on the methodology aspect.
Sandler, p. 84.
We can draw an analogy here to the Platonic Forms. True knowledge for Plato means grasping, i.e., seeing these Forms, and it is from having seen the Forms that we understand the nature of everything. If we don’t grasp the objects of true knowledge, we cannot say that we have real knowledge. For example, we cannot say that we know what beauty is until we have seen the Form of Beauty because only then could we understand why particular things in the sensible realm are beautiful.
Sandler (2005). IIP40S.
Sandler, p. 85, this quote comes from the Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, II, 2.
Sandler (2005), p. 88.
Ibid., p. 90.
Ibid., p. 88.
For an opposing view, see Soyarslan (2013).
Sandler, p. 89.
Introduction by Easwaran, p. 18.
Gupta (2012), p. 30.
Introduction by Easwaran, pp. 18–19.
Gupta (2012), p. 35.
Ibid., p. 35.
Ibid., p. 35.
Ibid., pp. 38–39.
Ibid., p. 41.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid., p. 37.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 37.
Katha, p. I.3.3-8.
Freeman, p. 124.
Gupta (2012), p. 42.
Ibid., p. 42.
Easwaran, p. 31.
Ibid., p. 31
Freeman, p. 113.
Ibid., p. 112.
Ibid., pp. 111–112.
These three passages express a very vivid and direct encounter experience of God but at the same it is impossible to actually visualize these images in one’s mind. The words used refer to human anatomical parts—for example, in verses 11:15 and 16, Brahman is described as having infinite mouths and arms, stomachs and eyes. The images provoked refer to parts of the physical body, but it is impossible to have a real visual image of infinite mouths, arms stomachs and eyes. The idea of infinity can be understood by our intellect but not perceived by the senses. Thus, the images can be logically grasped by our mind but not by the senses. This reinforces the idea that Arjuna is “seeing” God but we, the reader, are not (because we haven’t reached that level yet). Furthermore, God is described as literally embedded in nature and connected to all elements in the natural world—and this again is an idea that can be grasped by the intellect but not “seen” by the unenlightened layperson. For example, in verses 11:19, [God’s] eyes are the sun and the moon and God’s mouth is fire, and in verses 11:40, [God is] behind me and in front of me and [God is] everything. Knowledge of God cannot be actually seen or heard by the senses. The layperson can conceptually grasp God’s immanence in the universe but cannot literally experience it like Arjuna.
Freeman, p. 132.
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