Chapter 15
Art of Liberation
This unique chapter of 20 slokas, is known as purushottama prãpti yoga, Realization of the Supreme. S9, s12, s13, s14 and s15 being digressions are clearly interpolations.
Beginning with the parable of world as a fig tree, it later deals with the indwelling spirit and the Supreme Spirit, and the perishable man and the imperishable Purusha (Supreme Spirit).
1
Thus spoke the Lord:
Wise see Nature as fig tree huge
Roots its planted in high skies
Branching down with Vedic leaves
Helps which man reach State Supreme.
2
So to feed on their organs
With its downward roots it ties
Beings all to mundane things,
With man being charged by wants
Supplies he the feed it needs
Through the knots of threefold ways.
3
Man as fails to lay his hands
Roots on those that entwine him
Helps dispassion sunder them.
4
Roots as sundered, one gets freed
To reach the Vedic branch in reach,
Grasps as he the truth there all
Goes he up from branch to branch
To end up on the root utmost
On which Abode Supreme lies.
5
Freed of pride, desire ’n delusion
Climbs as he, in self he dwells,
Feels he same of pleasure ’n pain
Detached he reaches thus Supreme.
6
Sun too doth pale nears it when
Seat of moksha, Abode of Mine.
7
Spirit as lies in beings all
Gets it rubbed with one’s nature.
8
Wind as carries scent of flowers
While leaving them as is where,
In like fashion Spirit from frames
Moves its awareness to rebirths.
10
Know not fools in lifetime theirs
Nature of Spirit thus lies in them
But ever on move from frame to frame.
11
This by striving wise realize
Fail though naive in spite of it.
16
Perish all beings though in time
Perishes not the Spirit in them.
17
Self Mine Highest that sustains
Is but different from that One.
18
Since I transcend that perishes
Apart ’n above the eternal One
Vedas vouch Me Soul Supreme.
19
Who aver Me as Soul Supreme
In My worship bring they faith.
20
Grasps who nuances of this science
Turns he wise ’n accomplished thus.
Ends thus:
Art of Liberation,
The Fifteenth Chapter
Of Bhagavad-Gita,
Treatise of self-help.
Note: This fillip, as before is to cross the systemic 500-word hurdle.
The spiritual ethos and the philosophical outlook that the Bhagavad-Gita postulates paves the way for the liberation of man, who, as Rousseau said, ‘being born free, is everywhere in chains’. But equally it is a mirror of human psychology, which enables man to discern his debilities for appropriate redressal.
All the same, the boon of an oral tradition that kept it alive for over two millennia became its bane with the proliferation of interpolations therein. Besides muddying its pristine philosophy, these insertions affect the sequential conformity and structural economy of the grand discourse. What is worse, to the chagrin of the majority of the Hindus, some of these legitimize the inimical caste system while upholding the priestly perks and prejudices.
This rendition seeks to restore to the Gita, its original character by ridding it of hundred and ten interpolations, which tend to keep the skeptics away from it. And ironically these muddle the understanding of the adherents as well. In the theatre of man as nothing surpasses the drama of war, the stage for unveiling the Gita’s unrivalled philosophy was set on the battleground of Kurukshetra at the threshold of the battle of Mahabharata.
