TEXT 37
O son of Kuntī, either you will be killed on the battlefield and attain the heavenly planets, or you will conquer and enjoy the earthly kingdom. Therefore get up and fight with determination.
PURPORT
It is very difficult to find people interested in spiritual science. Even after accepting the spiritual process in one or another confession, people are still mostly absorbed with their material problems, which steals their mind and knowledge. We are all the same as souls - why are some persons enlightened and others not? Because the latter are busy with themselves. In general, religion does not require any special asceticism from a person. Even if we take some Christian ascetics it would be a thousand times greater effect if they followed the instructions of the Bible and preached. The New Testament, in fact, is one continuous call to preach, and Jesus Christ, similary, gave an example of constant preaching. Neither the Bhagavad-gītā nor the Bible call for renunciation of the world, nor do they call for any special repentance or for the introduction of any temple rituals. They point out to go to preach or do one's duty in the name of God, and when person really does something for God he becomes peaceful. "Nirmamo nirahaṅkāraḥ." There is nothing ours in this world then why bother? "You can't make a single hair white or black" - it's little depend on us.
Just as Lord Kṛṣṇa encourages Arjuna to engage in the battle, we also encourage people to develop spiritual understanding and communicate with others on these topics.
TEXT 38
Do thou fight for the sake of fighting, without considering happiness or distress, loss or gain, victory or defeat—and, by so doing, you shall never incur sin.
PURPORT
Since Kṛṣṇa is Arjuna's friend, so Arjuna accepts God's arguments as friendly and he does not feel fear or awe of Him. When God reveals Himself in all his greatness, no soul can resist and immediately begins to fulfill His command. However, we do not see God because we have a lot of our own plans and urgent matters. All this is sad – people continue to vegetate in an uninteresting material life devoid of dynamics.
When a person acts for God, he incurs no consequences. There is a fundamental difference between acting in selfish interests and acting in accordance with scripture. When person wants to get result, he falls into the duality of happiness and misery, he is happy when he is successful and he is sad when he fails. A devotee has no personal interests, therefore, he is always happy and his activity is not hindered. The world is created with the help of intelligence, so in any situation a devotee finds a way out with the help of intelligence. Materialists are very sophisticated in their plans, while the faithful has no special pretensions for something, so his life is simple and easy. "Plain living and high thinking" - this is the formula for happiness and good luck.
The Supersoul, the Superconsciousness, stays behind everything in the world, God is in every atom and in everyone's heart. As the Supreme witness, He determines the consequences of everyone's actions. God is not interested to punish anyone, but He maintains universal justice and simply sends everyone his own result on the principle of "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." One of the main points in all that is the person's motives. One and the same action can be done with different motives. Therefore, although a devotee can act like an ordinary person, nevertheless, since he has no selfish motives, he technically does not get the consequences because he is non-attachment and because he acts under the direction of a higher authority. This is the principle of karma-yoga and the principle of devotional service is even higher.
Karma-yoga means that we have some kind of karma, for example, we should to work, but by doing work in the spirit of Bhagavad-gītā person gets out of this situation with minimal losses. Devotional service this is what God wants from us directly. In the case of devotional service we do not have any karma, fate or forced duties, but we voluntarily accept the instructions of God through knowledge. We are not responsible by acting in this way because we are only fulfilling His desires. What are God's desires? Maybe He needs money or to win any state? Of cause, He does not need anything like this and the whole world is already His property, but there is one thing in which we could be useful to Him - this is helping other living beings in spiritual life. This is really needed.
God out of compassion for lost souls, has established religion from age to age because every soul is His creation. Having lost contact with God rebellious souls are desperately trying to build his personal happiness on their own, and although God can give them all easily and gratuitously, anyway they, stubborn, are burrowing as worms deeper and deeper into material world. They are wanting to become a God themselves sometimes even begin to hate Him, although He has never done anything wrong to anyone. This hatred is born because of their constant failures - suffering defeat after defeat, they become embittered in an attempt to become gods.
Sometimes people find it difficult to understand who God is, but the answer lies on the surface. Everyone in the material world wants wealth, beauty, health, and everyone wants not to grow old, to be young and strong. Where do such universal desires come from? Because this is God - He is young, never age, rich, strong, and omnipotent. All the people of the entire material world have been striving for these things millennium after millennium, all as one - this is the answer to all questions. All scientific discoveries are an attempt to become omnipotent, to get out of the influence of the laws of nature, to become free from all laws, just as God is eternally free. People are looking for love, but the only worthy object of love is God; and when person can understand the futility of material life or when we can direct someone to God - it is a wonderful event. A devotee who is seriously engage in preaching activities gradually becomes free from all consequences.
TEXT 39
Thus far I have declared to you the analytical knowledge of sāṅkhya philosophy. Now listen to the knowledge of yoga whereby one works without fruitive result. O son of Pṛthā, when you act by such intelligence, you can free yourself from the bondage of works.
PURPORT
It is almost the middle of the second chapter, but never once did Lord Kṛṣṇa say to believe Him. Kṛṣṇa was explaining argument after argument to Arjuna and now He is going to describe the structure of the material world and make real simple to everyone how liberation happens.
We can easily see that this world has a complex harmonious structure, similarly spiritual life, or religion, has its own internal structure and laws. If the gross material world is arranged in such an exquisite and precise way, what to say about the science of spiritual life? Or does anyone think that having created through laws, harmoniously every atom and every corner of the universe, God will offer in religion to simply believe in Him? God is the supreme logician, the supreme philosopher, and He is the most intelligent Person, therefore we do not find any appeals to a blind faith. Kṛṣṇa says here: "you act with such intelligence"; the entire Bhagavad-gītā is dedicated to spiritual knowledge. Gradually we will change this primacy of faith rooted in religions due to materialism, and the world will be illuminated by transcendental understanding. There is no faith in the spiritual world, so both spiritual life and spiritual perfection are expressed in knowledge.
What will the dull priests say to God's argument about analytic knowledge? In fact, they consciously or unconsciously hide from everyone the brilliant God full of all perfections. Faith as love for God and devotion to God certainly is an element of spiritual life, but the full formulation looks like: "Knowledge without feelings is a dry thinking, feelings without knowledge are sentiments and fanaticism"; that is why feelings for God (or faith) and knowledge must always go hand in hand and one without the other will always be incomplete. Knowledge is what leads us forward, and feelings, love for God is the essence which fills us. For example, the vision of God is knowledge, cit. God is a person and He is the source of all forms, all worlds, all knowledge - all this is cit-śakti. The structure of the spiritual world again is cit, knowledge, form; and the relationship between the soul and God, spiritual feelings is ānanda, happiness; but without knowledge of God no ānanda is possible.
Person can direct his feelings (faith) to God and perhaps God will reveal Himself - person will know Him (cit) and love Him (ānanda). Seeing God is like a sparkling lightning that cuts the sky from horizon to horizon, person experiences a spiritual shock and the feeling of love for God rushes in a continuous stream. Even a single moment of such perception will change his entire life. Or a person may know about God (cit), then gradually rising and has reached God, he will find ānanda – eternal communication with Him. But in any case, ānanda, love, is based on the aspect of knowledge, cit-śakti. In other words, the qualities of God, His name, His form, His attributes (cit) are the source of love for Him (ānanda). Love, or ānanda, does not exist by itself, it is always based on knowledge. The desire to find one "pure" love, or faith, is a form of impersonalism or materialism. Sometimes they say that "God is love", but this is not true - God is the Person we love and He also loves us. Love is a mutual exchange of feelings or even if one start looking for personified love, this is not He, but His energy.
Because of materialism, people constantly want to highlight one of these two aspects at the expense of the other. Some emphasize faith, for example, there are Catholics or Orthodox, others emphasize knowledge, for example, there are Protestants. However, the full formula is "with all thy heart, with all thy mind"; person cannot comprehend God if he tries to do one thing without the other. There are needed both feelings and knowledge. However, nowadays there is a bias towards faith, so highlighting the aspect of knowledge is more relevant. Christianity collapsed because it went into the wilds of faith; the faith itself can take completely stupid forms, and in some cases a fervent faith becomes dangerous to society because of its extremism.
On the other hand, sit and theoretically think about God is also no much use. Therefore, the decision, or the spiritual path, is always a combination of these two points - love and knowledge. If we want to be more correct then it is better to replace the word "faith" with the words "feelings" or "love". In this sense, the Bible says well: "with all thy heart" - this is a good definition. Faith (śraddhā) in the Vedas is mentioned as the initial position, but even at the beginning it is quite possible to dispense with faith by studying the scripture. What to believe gentlemen? God gives a factual description of the world, we can perceive directly everything that He describes: karma, guṇas, and later: Brahman, Paramatma, and others - all these are accessible to perception.
The ordinary common faith in God carries itself a tinge of impersonalism. For example, a person enters to a temple or reads a scripture and feels a spiritual uplift, he perceives it as a sign of truth, and although this is true, yet the person knows nothing about God. What happens next? A Christian enters a christian temple, a Muslim enters a mosque, a Jew enters a synagogue, and everyone feels the same thing - spiritual uplift, goodness, the Holy Spirit, Brahman - and everyone is confirmed in this way in "faith" with almost complete absence of knowledge. This impersonal faith in God is good, but then these three people meet and begin to prove to each other their "truth" based on their own personal experience, but none of them know the truth. If all three people do not know anything about God but only believe in Him, in some higher impersonal power, respectively linking its manifestation with their own confessions, based on their personal feelings - this is lead them to fanaticism or to belief in some rites or other external things.
When there is no knowledge, person is afraid of everything and can also deify anything. Such believers have no criteria in religion, they have only their impersonal, helpless faith; and for lack of knowledge they fenced off from the world by the confines of their sect and administrative positions. At the same time, the supreme head of the sect is afraid of any debate because he has nothing to say. So what is religion exist for? Not for the sake of candles. Religion must speak about God and give knowledge about God - understanding.
TEXT 40
In this endeavor there is no loss or diminution, and a little advancement on this path can protect one from the most dangerous type of fear.
PURPORT
Śrīla Prabhupāda commentary on this verse as they say: "nothing more, nothing less." I'm fact, my commentaries are a simplified version of Prabhupāda's commentaries. Although only half a century has passed, but people have degraded even more and sometimes it is difficult for them to perceive the academicism of Śrīla Prabhupāda's commentaries. His commentaries are much more extensive and universal, but I write more with reference to the place and taking into account some of the specifics of modern religion and society.
PURPORT of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda:
Activity in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or acting for the benefit of Kṛṣṇa without expectation of sense gratification, is the highest transcendental quality of work. Even a small beginning of such activity finds no impediment, nor can that small beginning be lost at any stage. Any work begun on the material plane has to be completed, otherwise the whole attempt becomes a failure. But any work begun in Kṛṣṇa consciousness has a permanent effect, even though not finished. The performer of such work is therefore not at a loss even if his work in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is incomplete. One percent done in Kṛṣṇa consciousness bears permanent results, so that the next beginning is from the point of two percent; whereas, in material activity, without a hundred percent success, there is no profit. Ajāmila performed his duty in some percentage of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but the result he enjoyed at the end was a hundred percent, by the grace of the Lord. There is a nice verse in this connection in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam:
tyaktvā sva-dharmaṁ caraṇāmbujaṁ harer
bhajan na pakko 'tha patet tato yadi
yatra kva vābhadram abhūd amuṣya kiṁ
ko vārtha āpto 'bhajatāṁ sva-dharmataḥ
"If someone gives up self-gratificatory pursuits and works in Kṛṣṇa consciousness and then falls down on account of not completing his work, what loss is there on his part? And, what can one gain if one performs his material activities perfectly?" (Bhāg. 1.5.17) Or, as the Christians say, "What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world yet suffers the loss of his eternal soul?"
Material activities and their results end with the body. But work in Kṛṣṇa consciousness carries the person again to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, even after the loss of the body. At least one is sure to have a chance in the next life of being born again as a human being, either in the family of a great cultured brāhmaṇa or in a rich aristocratic family that will give one a further chance for elevation. That is the unique quality of work done in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.