Bhagavagd Gita - Session 31- Track 3108

Comment: So, this is the ritual…

…ritual which is given in its purely internal aspect. The greatness of the Bhagavad Gita is that the ritualism of the Vedic path, or the Vedic path which has descended into ritualism at one time and which was prevalent at the time of the Gita’s composition is now transformed into its original terms in which psychological aspects are explained. Everything that is physical and ritual is now translated into psychological equivalence.

pitāham asya jagato, you begin to recognise that I am the father of all action of the whole world, mātā dhātā pitāmahaḥ |, I am the mother, I am the dhātā, I am the former, one who formulates; pitāmahaḥ, I am the father of father; vedyaṁ pavitram, I am the one who is deserving to be known, I am pavitram, I am holly; I am oṁkāra, the whole praṇava, the word in which whole knowledge is contained, I am that; ṛk sāma yajur eva ca ||.

There are three words: there is a word which is called ṛk; the word which is called sāma; the word which is called yaju. In fact we have 3 Vedas: the Yajur Veda, the Rig Veda and Sama Veda. There is also fourth Veda, Atharva Veda which is a combination of all the three.

Now, ṛk is the word of illumination; sāma is the word of harmony; and yaju is the word of action, of will. In Yajur Veda you get the secret of action; in Rig Veda you get the secret of knowledge; in Sama Veda you get the secret of harmony: all the three are nothing but Myself, the supreme Lord. This is the knowledge that comes to you when you begin to do Karma yoga.

Question: When they talk of the herb and the Mantra and the clarified butter in the Vedas, in the Rig Veda also, they really by clarified butter, they actually meant the clarified mind, so if you could explain those, these terms actually so we could actually understand.

In the Veda, there is a parallelism so outer ritualism runs parallel to the inner psychological movements: yajña which is outwardly a kind of havana, yajña-kuṇḍa, …