The main theme of the Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is the most beloved scripture of India, a scripture of scriptures. It is the one book that all masters depend upon as a supreme source of scriptural authority. Bhagavad Gita means “Song of the Spirit,” the divine communion of truth-realization between man and his Creator, the teachings of Spirit through the soul, that should be sung unceasingly.

The pantheistic doctrine of the Gita is that God is everything. Its verses celebrate the discovery of the Absolute, Spirit beyond creation, as being also the hidden Essence of all manifestation. Nature, with her infinite variety and inexorable laws, is an evolute of the Singular Reality through a cosmic delusion: maya, the “Magical Measurer” that makes the One appear as many embracing their own individuality- forms and intelligences existing in apparent separation from their Creator. Just as a dreamer differentiates his one consciousness into many dream beings in a dream world, so God, the Cosmic Dreamer, has separated His consciousness into all the cosmic manifestations, with souls individualized from His own One Being endowed with the egoity to dream their personalized existences within the Nature-ordained drama of the Universal Dream.

The main theme throughout the Gita is that one should be an adherent of Sanyasa, a renouncer of this egoity ingrained through Avidya, ignorance, within the physical self of man. By renunciation of all desires springing from the ego and its environments, which cause separateness between ego and Spirit; and by reunion with the Cosmic Dreamer through ecstatic yoga meditation, Samadhi, man detaches himself from and ultimately dissolves the compellent forces of Nature that perpetuate the delusive dichotomy of the Self and Spirit. In Samadhi, the cosmic dream delusion terminates and the ecstatic dream being awakens in oneness with the pure cosmic consciousness of the Supreme Being- ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss. 

The God-realization cannot be attained merely by reading a book, but only by dwelling every day on the above truth that life is variety entertainment of dream movies full of hazard of duality-villains of evil and heroic adventures with goodness; and by deep yoga, meditation, uniting human consciousness with God’s cosmic consciousness.

Thus does the Gita exhort the seeker to right action- physical, mental, and spiritual- toward this goal. We came from God and our ultimate destiny is to return to Him. The end and the means to the end is yoga, the timeless science of God-union. 

So comprehensive as a spiritual guide is the Gita that it is declared to be the essence of the ponderous four Vedas, 108 Upanishads, and the six systems of Hindu philosophy. Only by intuitive study and understanding of these tomes, or else by contacting Cosmic Consciousness, can one fully comprehend the Bhagavad Gita. Indeed, the underlying essential truths of all great world scriptures can find common amity in the infinite wisdom of the Gita’s mere 700 concise verses.

The entire knowledge of the cosmos is packed into the Gita. Supremely profound, yet couched in revelatory language of solacing beauty and simplicity, the Gita has been understood and applied on all levels of human endeavor and spiritual striving- sheltering a vast spectrum of human beings with their disparate natures and needs. Whatever one is on the way back to God, the Gita will shed its light on that segment of the journey. 

God Talks With Arjuna by Sri Paramahansa Yogananda