TENTH CHAPTER I. THE SUPREME WORD OF THE GITA The Blessed Lord said: Again,1 0 mighty- armed, hearken to my supreme word, that I will speak to thee from my will for thy soul's good, now that thy heart is taking delight 2 in me Neither the gods nor the great Rishis know any birth 3 of Me, for I am altogether and in every way the origin 4 of the gods 5 and the great Rishis. __________________________________________ 1 The divine Avatar declares, in a brief reiteration of the upshot of all that he has been saying, that this and no other is his supreme word which he had promised to reveal. 2 Th

THIRD CHAPTER II. THE DETERMINISM OF NATURE The passages in which the Gita lays stress on the subjection of the ego-soul to Nature, have by some been understood as the enunciation of an absolute and a mechanical determinism which leaves no room for any freedom within the cosmic existence. Certainly, the language it uses is emphatic and seems very absolute. But we must take, here as elsewhere, the thought of the Gita as a whole and not force its affirmations in their solitary sense quite detached from each other. We have always to keep in mind the two great doctrines which stand behind all the Gita's teachi

SEVENTH CHAPTER II. THE SYNTHESIS OF DEVOTION AND KNOWLEDGE The Gita, after giving us in the first fourteen verses of this chapter a leading philosophical truth of which we stand in need, hastens in the next sixteen verses to make an immediate application of it. It turns it into a first starting-point for the unification of works, knowledge and devotion,—for the preliminary synthesis of works and knowledge by themselves has already been accomplished. The intrinsic activity of the supreme Nature ( Para Prakriti) is always a spiritual, a divine working. It is force of the supreme divine Nature, it is the conscious will of the b

EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER II. SWABHAVA AND SWADHARMA There is not an entity, either on the earth or again in heaven among the gods, this is not subject to the workings of these three qualities (Gunas), born of nature. The works of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras are divided according to the qualities (gunas) born of their own inner nature. Calm, self-control, askesis, purity, long-suffering, candour, knowledge, acceptance of spiritual truth are the work of the Brahmin, born of his swabhava. 43. Heroism, high spirit, resolution, ability, not fleeing in the battle, g

ELEVENTH CHAPTER I. TIME THE DESTROYER 1. Arjuna said: This word of the highest spiritual secret of existence, Thou hast spoken out of compassion for me; by this my delusion1is dispelled. 2. The birth and passing away of existences have been heard by me in detail from Thee, 0 Lotus-eyed, and also the imperishable greatness of the divine con- scious Soul.2 ______________________________________________ 1 The illusion which so persistently holds man's sense and mind, the idea that things at all exist in themselves or for them- selves apart from God or that anything subject to Natu

Preface The Gita is a great synthesis of Aryan spiritual culture and Sri Aurobindo's luminous exposition of it, as contained in his Essays on the Gita , sets out its inner significances in a way that brings them home to the modern mind. I have prepared this commentary summarising its substance with the permission of Sri Aurobindo. The notes have been entirely compiled from the Essays on the Gita and arranged under the slokas in the manner of the Sanskrit commentators. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 21st February, 1938, ANILBARAN

FOURTEENTH CHAPTER ABOVE THE GUNAS 1. The Blessed Lord said: I will again declare the supreme1 Knowledge, the highest of all knowings, which having known, all the sages have gone hence to the highest perfection. Having taken refuge in this knowledge and become of like2 nature and law of being with Me, they ______________________________________________ 1 The distinctions between the Soul and Nature rapidly drawn in the verses of the thirteenth chapter by a few decisive epithets, especially the distinction between the embodied soul subject to the action of Nature by its enjoyment of her gunas, qualities or modes and

CONSPECTUS FIRST CHAPTER _Kurukshetra Arjuna, the representative man of his age, is over come with dejection and sorrow at the most critical moment of his life on the battle-field of kurukshetra, and raises incidentally the whole question of human life and action, the whole exposition of the Gita revolves and completes its cycle round this original question of Arjuna. 1 - 12 SECOND CHAPTER The answer of the Teacher proceeds upon two different lines: 1.(1-38) The Creed of the Aryan Fighter First, a brief reply founded upon the philosophic and moral conceptions of Vedanta and the social idea of duty a

APPENDIX II THE HISTORICITY OF KRISHNA For the fundamental teaching of the Gita as for spiritual life generally, the Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation of the Divine and not the historical teacher and leader of men. The historial Krishna, no doubt, existed. We meet the name first in the Chhandogya Upanishad. We know that Krishna and Arjuna were the object of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries; and there is some reason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and philosophical tradition from which the Gita may have gathered many of its elements and even the foundation of its synthesis of know- ledge, dev

SEVENTH CHAPTER 1. THE TWO NATURES The Blessed Lord said: Hear, O Partha, how by practising Yoga with a mind attached to me and with me as ashraya (the whole basis, lodgement, point of resort of the conscious being and action) thou shalt know me without any remainder of doubt, integrally.1 I will speak to thee without omission or remainder the essential knowledge, attended with all the comprehensive knowledge, by knowing which there shall be no other thing here left to be known. ______________________________________ 1.The implication of the phrase is that the Divine Being is all, vasudevah