Shrimad Bhagavad Gita: The Supreme Spirit (Chapter 15)

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The fifteenth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita may be the shortest with only twenty verses, but it still manages to summarise the entire vision of Vedanta in its verses.

Through the use of an upside-down tree as metaphor, Lord Krsna begins by explaining the true nature of the world. Having thus laid the foundation, the Lord next enumerates the nature of the individual soul or jiva. Continuing the thread of thought, the nature of God or Isvara is expounded upon. Having unravelled each individual constituent, the Lord goes on to tie all ends together by explaining the relationship between the three.

Thus the fifteenth chapter systematically explains some of the simple yet profound questions that philosophy seeks to answer.

In this section consisting of the concluding six chapters of the Gita, there is, as all through the Gita, a systematic development of ideas and a logical building up of the theory that the ever-changing, finite world of multiplicity is but a projection on the infinite, and that the endless painful experiences are all caused by our own misapprehension of Reality. In the thirteenth chapter, the world of matter and the realm of Spirit were beautifully described and brought within our intellectual comprehension. The field of experience (ksetra), and the knower of the field (ksetrajna) were clearly pictured and it was shown that the knower of the field minus the field of experience is the pure Awareness, at once infinite and permanent.

The total impression provided by the various chapters of Gita up to the thirteenth chapter, was that the world of matter the entire cosmos - is one homogenous entity, and that the Spirit is ever non-dual and infinite. The assemblage of matter thrilled by the Spirit is the expressions recognised as being and things in the world. If this be so, any thinking student should wonder how the same spirit functioning through equipment made up of the same matter, could express itself in such an endless variety. In order to explain that the distinctions are created because of the differences in the composition, texture, quality and behaviour of the realm of matter in each subject, the fourteenth chapter exhaustively enumerated the three gunas and their play. Having thus removed the legitimate doubt of the honest intellect, Krsna, the supreme philosopher, is taking up the next logical topic of discussion in the chapter now under our consideration.