Gita key verses course 12 – Who is God? Does he care? Why should I care? – Gita 4.8
Thank you very much for joining today.
We will be continuing our discussion on the Bhagavad Gita.
We are discussing the fourth chapter, and I have shared the PowerPoint. We will be discussing verse 4.8 in the Bhagavad Gita.
The topic is: Who is God? Does He care? Why should we care?
Verse 4.8 in the Bhagavad Gita is a well-known verse. Here, Krishna says that He descends to this world repeatedly to bring order to it and to establish dharma.
Dharma can be described as the moral and spiritual order at both an individual and a social level. Krishna comes to establish this order. When He comes in this way, He also empowers the devoted and disempowers the demoniac.
Now, I have the slide, and all of you have the PowerPoint. I will mention which slide I am speaking on, and then you can go to that slide. That way, we will have a correlation between our discussions and the visuals. I am not sharing the screen.
Review of What We Have Covered So Far
The Bhagavad Gita begins with the question: What is it that I am meant to do? What is dharma?
To understand what we are meant to do, we need to understand who we are. And then, as we understand that we are spiritual beings, the question arises: How do I live in a way that helps me realize my identity?
We talked about destiny, work, the search for pleasure, and duty. Various aspects of these topics were discussed.
Then, we moved to the question of knowledge: How do we gain that knowledge?
In the previous session, we talked about revelation. Revelation is given by God. However, God doesn’t just give revelation—He also descends to ensure that reality and the world are aligned with revelation.
This alignment means living in a way that is harmonious with the ultimate reality. For this purpose, He descends.
Slide Reference
Slide 3 outlines the three key questions we are addressing:
Who is God? Does He care? Why should I care?
Revelation teaches us not just who we are but also whose we are. It helps us understand that we are not just isolated, fragmented beings existing in an uncaring cosmos. Rather, we are parts of a whole—something much bigger than ourselves.
This is shown on Slide 5, where it states that we are parts of a whole. The identity of that whole is also revealed.
The Bhagavad Gita focuses more on the divine from Chapter 7 onward. Here, the focus on the divine is like a detour. Krishna mentions that He gave this knowledge at the dawn of creation. Arjuna asks in 4.4:
“How could you have given this knowledge? You are contemporary to me. Were you existing at the dawn of creation?”
In response, Krishna reveals His divinity.
Krishna’s primary emphasis, however, is not on His divinity but on how to function in the world based on spiritual identity. Verses 4.5 to 4.14 touch upon Krishna’s divinity, but this is like a brief aside. This theme is elaborated on further from Chapter 7 onward.
Krishna’s Response
Krishna says:
“Both of us have had many lives before. I remember all of them, but you don’t.”
Revelation teaches us about the identity of the divine.
Who is God?
At this stage, we focus on a preliminary understanding. A deeper understanding will come in Chapter 7, where specifics about God are discussed.
To know about God, there are two approaches:
- Forward Reasoning
- Backward Reasoning
Let me explain these approaches.
Forward Reasoning
Forward reasoning means we propose God as an axiom. If we accept that God exists and establish a basic definition of God, we then move forward to examine:
If God were the founding basis of existence, does the world align with this principle?
In other words, we start by accepting God as an axiom and then evaluate whether the world makes sense as a creation of God.
Backward Reasoning
Backward reasoning starts with observing the world as it exists and tracing backward to infer whether God exists.
For example, when we use the design argument, we observe the complexity and order in the world and ask:
Could this have come into existence by itself or by chance?
If the evidence suggests that such complexity cannot arise by chance, it points to the existence of a designer—God.
Thus, backward reasoning involves starting with the world and tracing back to the idea of God.
Comparing the Two Approaches
Both forward and backward reasoning have their utility.
Here, we are trying to address the question: Who is God? Krishna reveals His identity in the Gita, but we are attempting to approach this understanding logically before examining the scriptural perspective.
While both approaches are useful, backward reasoning can sometimes lead to problems.
Let us look at what could be the problem. When I talked about what revelation is telling us and what reason is telling us, reason is our rational faculty, our logical analysis. So, what is the relationship between reason and revelation? If reason is directed properly, then reason and revelation can work in harmony. Let us go to slide nine now, where you see the image of a candle and the image of the sun. Revelation is like sunlight—it can reveal and show everything, but reason is like moonlight.
Revelation requires faith to be understood. Faith has to dawn in the heart, just like the sun rises in the sky. When the sun is not there, we need a candle or the moon. Let us compare it to a candle here. With candlelight, we can see, but what we see with the candle and what we see with the sun will eventually be the same. However, sunlight provides much greater clarity. Similarly, revelation gives us much more clarity in understanding reality. But revelation requires faith, purification, and, of course, it requires revelation itself. Scripture was revealed at one time—the Gita was revealed by Krishna. But how the Gita makes sense depends on the revelation that has to dawn in our own hearts. So, in that sense, revelation is not just a historical incident; it is an ongoing process. Until that revelation happens in our heart, we can and should use reason.
Reason is like candlelight, which can show us one step ahead as we move on. We are trying to look at reason as a means to understand God. So, what can we understand from reason? To slide 10: Reason can tell us about God’s existence, whereas revelation can tell us about God’s nature. The difference is that God exists, and we can make a reasonable inference about that from reason. Like I said earlier, there are various arguments that are used, such as the design argument, the moral argument, the ontological argument, and the cosmological argument. We won’t go into all these arguments, but these have been debated by philosophers for quite some time. Reasonable inference can be made about God’s existence, but what about God as a person? Not just God as the creator of the world, but God’s self-existence. That we can’t understand except through revelation.
So we have the existence and the self-existence, the self-existential nature of God, which we understand through revelation. In that way, both reason and revelation can illumine the same reality with greater clarity. Now, what is the Gita’s revelation about God? It says God is Krishna. Who Krishna is, we’ll discuss further, but at this stage, He says He is Krishna. He is the transcendental ultimate reality. This is slide 11 now, which shows that He exists beyond this world and descends periodically to this world. As Krishna says, “ajopisan avyatma bhutani mishwaropisan,” meaning He exists beyond this world as the divine being and periodically descends to this world, “sambhavami yuge yuge.” So, who is God? God is a transcendental person.
Now, let’s look at how reason and revelation can apply to a further step forward. At one level, we may ask, “Okay, if there is a God, a big question comes up: Does He care?” One of the strongest arguments used against the existence of God is the so-called problem of evil. The problem of evil is this: If God exists and if God is good, then why is there so much misery in the world? Why is there so much evil? Does this indicate that God does not exist? Or, if we say that God does exist, then does He really care? How do we reconcile the enormous suffering we see in the world with the idea of a good, benevolent God?
For this purpose, let’s look at something here. We can look at slide 13 and see the basic problem with respect to revelation. What do evidence and reason say? At one level, we can say God cares. How does He care? Because there is so much right in this world—so many things are right in the world. We discussed in an earlier session about how heat, light, air, and water are all provided for, and when these are provided, it indicates that there is some benevolent arrangement. We realize the value of these things when they are not there. We may not think of water much, but when we are desperately thirsty, we realize how invaluable it is.
So, so many things are right in the world, and they surely need some arrangement to have come through. That is one indication that God cares. But then, we can also give contrary evidence that God does not care because there are so many things wrong in the world. What are those things? Now, we could say, okay, if you say that God arranges for rains, then there are torrential rains that lead to floods and devastation. There are also rains that don’t come at all, leading to droughts and death. So, all the things we can call provisions also lead to tribulations. There is food, but there are also so many times throughout human history when food is not available, leading to enormous suffering.
Now, those who are theists can point to all the things that suggest that God cares, and atheists can point to the things that suggest that God doesn’t care. In that way, both can substantiate their own beliefs. The fundamental problem here is the problem with backward reasoning. I talked about two types of reasoning—backward and forward. Backward reasoning presumes that the world as it is, is the reality. Based on the reality of this world, we can infer whether God exists or not. From a philosophical perspective, we will discuss the concept of free will in more detail later, but at this stage, God has given each of us free will. Free will means He gives us the ability to either accept Him or reject Him.
It is not just an act of personal independence but also a matter of cosmic dispensation. God has arranged the world in such a way that those who want to turn toward Him will see evidence that supports their decision, and those who want to turn away from Him can also find evidence to support their rejection. Thus, God provides for the use of free will in both directions. This is why both theists and atheists can find evidence to support their beliefs. Therefore, backward reasoning can sometimes be inconclusive. The sheer amount of suffering in the world can be seen as a refutation of God’s existence.
That’s why the design argument can be used, no doubt, and it can convince people to some extent; it is useful to that degree. But both in the Indian tradition and in the Western tradition, the inadequacies of the design argument have been pointed out. Ramanujacharya, in his commentary on the Vedanta Sutra, in the third sutra, Shastrayonitvat, discusses a similar argument. He says that, given the suffering in the world, three prominent arguments are often presented. One of them is that maybe the being who created this world is an evil being—a demon or Satan—not a good God but an evil Satan. So, given the suffering in the world, that could also be an inference.
He concludes that arguments like the design argument are not conclusive. This is not to say that they are not useful, but they are not conclusive. If we want conclusive knowledge, he says, Shastrayonitvat, we need to turn to revelation. Revelation is like forward reasoning, not backward reasoning. First, we understand God from revelation as an axiomatic principle, and then, based on this understanding of God’s nature, we look at the world around us and see if it aligns with what we would expect.
In this way, when we start with forward reasoning—not backward reasoning (not from the world to God), but by understanding God as the axiom and moving forward to the world—we gain clarity. The Gita, the revelation, tells us two important things: first, that this world is not the ultimate reality; reality is two-level. The spiritual level of reality is our home, while the material level of reality is like a hospital. Now, why specifically a hospital? In a hospital, we see these two things simultaneously.
Let’s move on to slide 16 first, and then we’ll go to slide 15. If you see, atheists point to all the design in the world, while atheists also point to all the distress in the world. Is there a place where we have both design and distress? Yes, one example is a hospital. In a hospital, things are very well designed. Each department serves a specific purpose, the supplies are arranged in an orderly fashion, and all the arrangements for particular procedures are systematically made.
So, there is no doubt about the presence of design in the hospital. But at the same time, there is no doubt about the presence of distress in a hospital. The hospital has both design and distress, so just the presence of distress does not disprove design, and the presence of design does not necessitate the absence of distress. I repeat this: Atheists argue that because there is distress, there cannot be a good God. But does the presence of distress disprove design? Not necessarily.
We always have to consider design in the light of the purpose. We have to consider design in the light of its purpose. If I use a small phone to type a book and then say, “This keyboard is so small, so messy, I can’t type on it,” well, a phone is not meant for typing a book. Any design can be faulted if we divorce it from its purpose. The design has to be seen in the light of what its purpose is.
So, when we think of this material world as our home and look at how good a home God has made for us, we will always find that things are not good enough—that there are many things that are bad. But if we see this world as a hospital, then there is design and distress, both. Now, of course, an important point is that the hospital doesn’t cause distress. Distress exists in the hospital because people are diseased. Similarly, the world’s purpose is not to cause us distress. Distress is a feature of the world, not the purpose of the world. Just as distress is a feature of the hospital, it is just there.
Now, what does all this have to do with our driving question? Our question is: Does God care? To understand how God cares, we need to understand the purpose of the world. God cares for us. If this world is a hospital, He cares for us so that we get treated and move from the hospital to the home.
So, you can go to slide 15 now. There is a spiritual level of reality and a material level of reality. The material level is like a hospital, and the spiritual level is the home. God’s care is seen in what way? He cares so much that He descends from the spiritual level to the material level to help us get treated and then we move on to the spiritual level.
God’s descent from the spiritual level to the material level is called the avatar. This is what is discussed in this verse when Krishna says “avatar” is descent. The word “avatar” literally means “avatariti”—one who descends from a higher level of reality to this level is called an avatar. Of course, in today’s world, the word “avatar” is also used in another context, such as online gaming or video games, where people have their representation in the digital world, which is called an avatar. There is also a movie called Avatar, which had a similar idea. But basically, the idea of avatar is something that is transported from the physical world to the digital world. In the original context, however, the word “avatar” refers to God descending from the spiritual to the physical.
So, God descends from the spiritual world to the material world, and that is called an avatar. His purpose is twofold. One purpose is that if everything in the hospital is chaotic, the order of the hospital needs to be restored. But even when a hospital is orderly, it does not mean the hospital will ever be as comfortable as a home. The order in the hospital is there so that patients can be treated and then discharged, so they can go back home. Similarly, God’s purpose is to establish dharma in this world—to establish order in the world. However, that order will not make this world a forever happy place. That order will enable us to raise our consciousness to the spiritual level and to attain the spiritual level of reality, which is our eternal home.
This is the next verse (4.9) where Krishna says in the Gita, “I descend to this world, and if you understand my appearance and activities, you will become attracted to me. Once you become attracted to me, you will become devoted to me, and you will attain me—attain me in my abode at the spiritual level of reality.”
So, God’s purpose is twofold. If you want to understand whether God cares, we can’t just look at the world and think that one day this world will become as comfortable as a cozy home and that will show God cares. No, we can look for God’s care in His provision of resources to live in this world in a way that allows us to heal ourselves.
Now, what is the disease we are having? The disease is essentially misdirected desires. We are eternal beings, but our desires are directed toward temporary things, and we are looking for eternal happiness in things that are temporary. That is the disease, and it causes our distress. So, God comes to redirect our desires from the temporary to the eternal.
Now, how does God care? He descends, and this is coming to slide 17 now. He descends to guide and guard us from making things worse in this world and to raise us beyond this world. His purpose in descending to the world is that when we live according to dharma, at the very least, we don’t make things worse. Life will bring distress in its own way—say, a storm comes, which is stressful—but during the storm, if people, instead of helping each other, start plundering each other, that will make things worse.
So, when dharma is established, at the very least, we don’t make things worse. The hospital works in an orderly way, and by that, we gradually become purified and spiritualized, ultimately raising ourselves beyond this world.
So, now that brings us to the third part: Why should I care? Why should I care? Well, does God exist? Does He care? Who is God? Why should I care about all this? Many people—an increasing number of people in the first world, in Europe, America, Australia—when they are asked about their religious orientation, they say they are “none.” “None” means they don’t belong to any religion. This is sometimes called apotheism. There is theism (God exists), atheism (God doesn’t exist), agnosticism (we can’t know if God exists), and apotheism (I just don’t care whether God exists or not).
More and more people are gravitating toward this view, and there are reasons for it. One reason is religious sectarianism, extremism, and violence, which makes people feel that they don’t want to have anything to do with religion. We will talk about religious extremism in our next session, about various religions and revelations in 4.11. But at this point, the question is: Why should I bother with all this?
So, why should I care? That will be the last part of our talk. Traditionally, people felt the need for God because they believed they couldn’t fulfill their needs and desires on their own. For example, there is a famous biblical prayer: “Oh Father, thou art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, give us our daily bread.” This prayer indicates that God is a cosmic provider. In the past, when people lived with greater uncertainty, they felt that maybe they needed God to provide their daily bread. Today, there are still many hungry people in various parts of the world. But many people who feel their needs are provided for say, “I don’t need God.” They rely on the government to provide for them, or on their own talents and abilities to fulfill their needs. With technology also facilitating many comforts and luxuries, people feel they can get their desires fulfilled without God.
If we have the vision of God as the fulfiller of our needs and desires, one problem could be that we see there are so many things that are not provided for in the world. The other problem could be that if I can provide for those things without God, then why should I care whether God exists or not? So, we are addressing this different point here, that first, there is so much distress in the world.
How can there be a God? Now, the other point I am making is that, yes, I can enjoy life without God. Why do I need to care for God at all? This brings us to a very important point, which is foundational for spiritual growth: fulfilling our needs and desires doesn’t bring fulfillment. Fulfilling our needs and desires doesn’t bring fulfillment.
Let’s first look at our needs. We have a need for food, water, and shelter, and these are vital. Not having these needs fulfilled causes great misery. That’s why we use the word “needs” for them—we must have them fulfilled. But just having those needs fulfilled doesn’t bring fulfillment. Once we have food, water, and shelter, what next? We want something to bring meaning, adventure, and fulfillment in our life. Fulfilling our basic needs doesn’t bring fulfillment.
In a sense, we could say that our needs are like the fuel for a car. They are essential if you want to drive the car, but just having fuel doesn’t mean that’s all we need. We want something more—what do we do with it? So, fulfilling our needs doesn’t bring fulfillment. Not having those needs fulfilled definitely brings frustration. We are all longing for fulfillment in our life, but does fulfilling our desires bring that fulfillment?
Strangely, what we are increasingly finding in modern and postmodern times is that fulfilling our desires doesn’t bring fulfillment. Of course, this is an eternal truth, but even in the increasingly aggressive materialistic world, many people are realizing that after fulfilling their desires, something is still missing in their lives. For example, people may want a big car, a big house, an attractive partner, or a prestigious position in society. But even after they get all these things, they find that something is still lacking in their life. These desires, even when fulfilled, leave us craving for more, and we remain dissatisfied.
Why is this? Today, even the average middle-class person has comforts that were unimaginable for royalty a few centuries ago. We have air conditioning, air travel, telecommunications, and abundant entertainment. Yet, people are far more mentally troubled, and in fact, more people are suicidal today than ever before in recorded history. So, why is that? There is something missing.
If we think that we don’t need to care for God because we can fulfill our needs and desires by our own means, that approach doesn’t work and it won’t bring fulfillment. What do we really need? We need to realize that our longing for lasting happiness cannot be fulfilled in this world because everything in the world is temporary. Even the best pleasures are temporary. So, our desires can only be fulfilled by understanding that God is not only the fulfiller of our desires but also the ultimate fulfillment of them. God is an all-attractive Supreme Person, and He is meant to be the object of our love. When we learn to direct our love toward Him and become devoted to Him, we experience supreme satisfaction.
It is this loving connection that is the Bhagavad Gita’s ultimate direction. We need to care for God, not because He will provide us with the things we care for, nor because He is not providing us with what we want, but because He is the Supreme Being. Connecting with Him brings us supreme fulfillment.
It’s not just fulfillment beyond this world, but even in this world, when we become connected with Him, when we become absorbed in Him, we can experience fulfillment. We discussed earlier how connection and contribution bring real satisfaction: connection with the Divine internally and contribution in the mode of service to the Divine externally. That is what brings us satisfaction.
This is what the Bhagavad Gita leads us toward.
And I’ll summarize now, as I am keeping a lot of time for questions today. I’ll summarize what I’ve spoken about.
I discussed the theme of Who is God? Does He care? Why should I care? We talked about the Bhagavad Gita, and it says that God descends to this world periodically. If you want to know who God is, there are two ways of knowing: forward reasoning and backward reasoning.
Backward reasoning means starting from the world and inferring the nature of reality. We try to answer, “Is there a God?” Forward reasoning means starting with God as an axiomatic principle, with the basic understanding of God as given through revelation, and then examining the world to see if it makes sense.
Reason, in some ways, is backward reasoning, where we start from the world, while the path of revelation is forward reasoning, where we start from God. Both approaches can point us in the same direction, and both provide us with light. The light from reason is like candlelight or moonlight, while the light from revelation is like sunlight. As long as we don’t have the “sunlight” of revelation in our lives and hearts, we still need the “moonlight” or “candlelight” of reason. However, what is revealed through reason dimly can be understood through revelation clearly.
Through reason, what can we know about God, about God’s person? We can look at the many things provided for us in life and infer God’s existence. This is seen in various arguments, such as the design argument. But just as candlelight doesn’t reveal the full reality, reason alone can be limited. While it shows us many things that are provided, it also shows us many things that are not provided. For this reason, the design argument in mainstream philosophy is often considered inconclusive, though useful.
Ramanacharya, in his commentary to Shastra Yonitvaad, says that if we only infer from the world, we could observe both design and distress, and from that, we could conclude that there is an evil being who created the world. This is a possible inference, as suggested by Immanuel Kant in Western philosophy.
So, what is the way of forward reasoning? We start with revelation, and revelation tells us that this world is not the ground of reality. There are two levels of reality: the physical, material, and the spiritual. The spiritual level is our true home, and the material world is like a hospital. We are here because our desires are diseased. Although we are eternal beings, we look for pleasure in temporary things.
Does God care? To find out, we need to look not just at whether God has made provisions in this world to make it a wonderful home for us, but whether the provisions here are sufficient for a hospital. The world provides enough for us to treat ourselves and grow spiritually. If we want to be simply materially happy, the world will never offer enough. Just as a hospital menu is not designed for indulgence, the world provides enough for us to stay healthy and heal spiritually, but not to indulge endlessly.
The world provides for our needs and desires in moderation. It’s not a place for enjoyment but a place for treatment. In a hospital, order must be maintained. If it becomes disorderly, God Himself descends to establish order. But the order is not to make the world a home; the order ensures the world functions as an orderly hospital. Through this, we can practice dharma, heal, and elevate ourselves. This is why 4.8, which talks about God descending to establish order, is followed by 4.9, which explains that God’s order enables us to become attracted to Him and attain His world.
So, God’s care must be seen in the facilities He provides for us to treat ourselves and elevate ourselves.
Now, why should we care? Even if we can fulfill our needs and desires on our own, it will not bring us fulfillment. Our hearts will not find fulfillment in temporary things. We need to redirect our hearts toward the spiritual. This redirection happens when we understand the truth of the Gita’s revelation: God is an all-attractive person, not just the fulfiller of our desires, but also the fulfillment of our desires.
And when we make Him our object of love, we can find contentment in this life and progress towards liberation beyond this life, beyond this world. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
So, are there any questions?
There is a question by Vishakha Agarwal: Why is there suffering in the world? Is it there to bring us to our knees, to force us into surrender, so that if we don’t surrender, we suffer?
Well, that is one way of looking at it, but it’s an oversimplified way of seeing things. Is the world designed to force us to surrender? Well, yes and no.
The basic point is that there is an existential incompatibility: the world is temporary, and we are eternal beings. The world provides us with temporary pleasure, whereas we seek lasting happiness. This existential incompatibility itself is the root cause of suffering.
Now, beyond this existential incompatibility, there are other specific causes of suffering that we often take very seriously. During the course of our lives, somebody might steal something from us, insult us, or we might lose our job when the stock market crashes. These are real sufferings. And when a relationship goes downhill, that’s also a form of suffering. No doubt, these are difficult.
However, there is a difference between these types of suffering. In many Abrahamic religions, particularly in the Christian tradition, the problem of evil is often framed as, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Why do children suffer from terrible diseases, for example? These are certainly serious sufferings.
But when the Bhagavad Gita talks about the distresses of the world, and when Vedanta Sutra addresses them, it doesn’t focus on circumstantial distresses. It talks about existential distresses. Circumstantial distresses are those caused by external circumstances—like losing a job, facing a financial crisis, or going through a breakup. These may vary from person to person. Some people may face terrible circumstances, while others face more manageable ones.
But existential distresses are different. These are universal. Old age, disease, death, and rebirth are existential distresses that everyone experiences. No matter what the circumstances of our lives, these existential problems remain.
Why are these existential distresses there? They exist because we are eternal beings, but we seek pleasure in temporary things. That existential incompatibility is the cause of all existential suffering.
Additionally, there is the principle of karma, which we will discuss later. We ourselves often act in ways that make our suffering worse. It’s not that God is malicious or that He created a world of misery. Rather, it’s our misdirected desires that have set up a situation where suffering is inevitable. It’s woven into the very fabric of existence because of the incompatibility between our longings and our situations.
Our aspirations are for lasting happiness, but our situations are temporary.
Through this, the ultimate purpose is our spiritual evolution. It is not just suffering that is meant to help us evolve; even pleasure serves that purpose. Everything in this world is meant to help us direct our attention toward God.
If we experience suffering in this world, it can remind us that this world is not a place of lasting happiness, which may prompt us to turn towards God. But even pleasure can point us toward God. In the 10th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, it is explained that everything attractive in this world manifests a spark of Krishna’s splendor. When we see something attractive, that attractiveness is not illusory. It’s just like when a person is in the hospital and they are sick. The desire to become healthy motivates them to seek the cure. Similarly, the attractions in this world are meant to remind us to seek the ultimate source of all beauty and fulfillment—God.
But when they experience some good health, they feel some relief, some pleasure, and think, “I want to move in this direction.” So even the pleasures in this world can point us toward God if we can see them as connected with God, as the attractive objects of this world are manifestations of the divine.
So yes, everything in this world is meant to take us toward God. It’s both the pleasures and the pains—everything.
Now, Mayank Kumar has a second question. In 5.5, it is said that analytical study is the same as devotional service. Does this shed some light on forward and backward reasoning? Can analytical study lead to backward reasoning?
Well, analytical study is the same as backward reasoning. Backward reasoning means starting from the world, analyzing the world, and moving toward the nature of ultimate reality. It’s inferential logic. So, backward reasoning is valid, and that particular verse, 5.5, where Prabhupada uses it in a slightly different sense, talks about Krishna addressing the paths of Sankhya and Karma, Sankhya and Yoga. We will come to these verses later, but the path of analysis and the path of service both ultimately lead to the same reality.
When Sankhya is discussed in the Bhagavad Gita, it is also based on Shastra (scripture), so it’s not exactly backward reasoning, although there is an element of backward reasoning in it. Let’s reserve this for a future session.
Now, why do we come to the hospital? We have free will, and the very existence of free will implies that there has to be an arena for the exercise of free will. So, if a boy proposes to a girl by bowing down on his knees, offering a ring, and asking her to marry him, and she says no, and the boy takes out a gun and threatens to shoot her unless she says yes, that is not love. Love means there has to be free will.
God has given us free will because He wants us to love Him. Love requires free will. So, free will means there must also be the possibility of misusing it. The world is an arena for us to exercise our free will, where we can do two things: experimentation and redirection. We experiment with our various desires using our free will in various ways, and then there is rectification. We learn the best use of our free will and redirect our desires accordingly.
There is another question: If taking God as an axiom, can it be dismissed as blind belief? How do we counter this argument?
Yes, this is a big subject, and we will cover it in more detail later, but I’ll explain briefly. Every school of thought has to begin with some axioms—something that is axiomatic. So, is there an ultimate reality we begin with? If we consider the atheistic worldview, atheists must begin somewhere as well, and they begin with a singularity. A singularity is essentially a point of infinite density, infinite mass, and infinitesimal volume from which the universe exploded.
But what is the basis for the existence of that singularity? Was it complete in itself? If it was complete, then why did it have to get activated and explode? If it was not complete, then what was the external agent that activated it? And more importantly, where did that agent come from?
Furthermore, the universe as we know it is filled with incredible precision. How did that precision come about? To explain this, some atheists propose the idea of cyclic universes—multiple universes that undergo a “big bang” followed by a “big crunch,” and then repeat this cycle eternally across multiple trajectories.
If the probability of the universe emerging from the singularity is 10 raised to the power of -63, atheists argue that as many universes as needed must exist to make the probability work. In such a case, the improbability of our universe existing becomes manageable because there are countless universes. This argument, however, faces challenges. For example, the probability of the universe coming into existence is so small that it is statistically less likely than shooting an arrow and hitting a single atom at the other end of the universe. So, even with an infinite number of universes, the argument for the universe’s existence based on this probability remains problematic.
So, this idea of infinitely cycling universes or an infinite number of universes fits more into the realm of science fiction than science. These concepts are proposed primarily to avoid the implication of a transcendental source or a transcendental overseer.
So, if we don’t accept God as the axiomatic truth, we are left with the idea of millions of universes existing and recycling over millions of cycles as the axiomatic truth. The important point here is that none of these ideas—eternally cycling universes or multiple universes—have any empirical evidence. They may have some speculative inferences from particular theories, but these can also be interpreted in many different ways.
What atheistic science or atheism asks us to believe is infinitely more complicated than accepting one transcendental being. It’s not that the axiomatic approach to God calls for blind belief—it’s that every approach, especially when dealing with ultimate realities, requires belief. The atheistic approach requires far greater belief, much more complicated and irrational belief, than the theistic approach.
Now, when we make the wrong choice and return to square one, regretting it later, how can we avoid this cycle?
Well, it’s not necessary to go back to square one. Externally, it might seem like that, but every exercise of choice, even small ones, can take us forward. I discussed this in a previous session about how the floor may be inclined in a particular way, creating restriction, redirection, and reconstruction. You can refer to that class (3.36, 3.37).
It’s a gradual, incremental process. Even if our free will is misused sometimes, instead of obsessing over those times, we should focus on the remaining moments and try to use our free will as wisely as possible. Over time, a positive habit will develop, and that will help us counter the negative habits.
Bad habits are like a formidable weapon, like an enemy attacking us with great power. No matter how determined we are, if we are unarmed, we will be defeated. So, rather than trying to fight these bad habits with bare hands, we focus on acquiring a new weapon. That weapon is the development of good habits, particularly devotional habits—habits that help us connect with and absorb ourselves in Krishna.
As we develop these good habits, they empower us. And once we have a good habit, we can focus on those things easily. If we make it a habit to connect with Krishna, then when bad habits attack, we can direct our thoughts toward Krishna. This becomes both our defense and counterattack.
So, focus on developing good habits, and gradually the negative ones will lose their power.
One last question from Subha: Are there different kinds of avatars?
This is a technical subject, and I wouldn’t want to dive into it at this stage. The Bhagavad Gita talks about avatars in a particular sense. In fact, the Bhagavad Gita does not use the word “avatar” explicitly, but the concept is prominent. The essence of avatars involves crossing over from one level of reality to another. The divine manifests at various levels.
Purusha avatars, as described in Sankhya philosophy, refer to manifestations of the divine who are co-eternal with existence and ensure the maintenance of the universe. They are avatars in the sense that they are divine manifestations, moving from the spiritual to the material realms, but just as Prakriti (nature) is eternal, Purusha (consciousness) is also eternal. They coexist.
Examples of these Purusha avatars are Mahavishnu, Karavodaksha Vishnu, and Suryodaksha Vishnu. These avatars maintain the material order invisibly and immanently within the world.
Then there are Leela avatars, Guna avatars, and more. There are three modes of material nature, and the avatars who oversee these modes are called Guna avatars.
So, once again, there is a connection between the spiritual and the material, but with a specific purpose: overseeing the maintenance and functioning of the modes of material nature. That is the role of Guna avatars.
Leela avatars refer to the divine avatars who come to this world primarily to perform pastimes, or Leela, and through these pastimes, they exhibit attractive qualities that can draw us towards the Lord’s abode beyond this world.
Shaktyavishavatars are human beings who are endowed with divine energy. Though they are human, they manifest something that transcends humanity. In this sense, they are avatars.
Manvantar avatars are those who appear within each Manvantar. A Manvantar is a cosmic cycle, and during each cycle, there is cosmic disorder followed by reordering of the universe. This happens not only in every Manvantar but also in every Yuga.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.