We saw last time how the challenge facing Arujuna in the Gita is a metaphor of the battle for truth and meaning which occurs inside every human mind. Therefore the essential step one must take is to probe not the unknown, but the knower. The Gita presents a topographical map of human consciousness through Brahmavidya (study of the mind).6 Arjuna begins the story in ordinary consciousness, preparing to fight against his wrongful adversaries. He then experiences first an elevated state of consciousness – cognizance of the theoretical evil of harming his relatives and former teachers, followed by an inner state of transcendence emerging out of the knowledge derived from the teachings of Krishna, and finally the state of eternal freedom when his decision is made, and his task is pursued without attachment to the fruits of victory or fear of his own death.7
In brief, the Gita’s philosophical vision is of the human person finding himself or herself existing in a precarious and enigmatic outer world. Resolution and escape depend on a journey first to the inner world and eventually to the innermost world where divinity is encountered.8 It is the level of man’s ‘higher consciousness and true supermanhood’9 where meaning, virtue, and deathlessness reign. 
Spiritual serenity in the face of turmoil occurs by way of the religious quest to connect to one’s own divine essence and “share in God’s mode of being through an experience of one’s essential unity with the divine source.”10 We reach the most profound depth of the Gita’s philosophy which distills down not to ratiocination, but empiricism; God (Krishna) is ultimately experienced as the spark of divinity at the human core.
Krishna says nothing more clearly in the entire text:
“I am the true Self in the heart of every creature, Arjuna, and the beginning, middle, and end of their existence.”11
The remainder of the Gita describes three pathways one may travel toward that ‘spark of divinity’ and which comprise the subject of Part V. Join me next time as we explore the unexpectedly practical method the Gita offers.
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6Easwaran, Eknath (translator) The Bhagavad Gita. Nilgiri Press, California., 2007. ISBN 978-1-58638-019-9, pages 7-19.
7Schweig, Graham M. (translator), Bhagavad Gita. HarperOne, New York, 2007. ISBN 978-0-06-199730-3, page 10.
8Ibid., page 11.
9Beck, L. Adams, The Story of Oriental Philosophy. The New Home Library, New York, 1942. Page 121. Beck compares the Hindu concept with, in his opinion, the lesser Nietzschean concept of the uberman.
10Magill, Frank N. and McGreal, Ian P. (editors), Masterpieces of World Philosophy. HarperCollinsPublishers, 1990. ISBN 0-06-270051-0, page 13.
11Easwaran, Eknath (translator) The Bhagavad Gita. Nilgiri Press, California., 2007. ISBN 978-1-58638-019-9, page 185 (Bhagavad Gita 10:20).
