The Bhagavad-Gita consists essentially in a dialog between two persons: Arjuna, the Indian knight who is faced with the most unpleasant duty of leading a fratricidal battle, and Krishna, his charioteer, who is to be his closest mate in that very battle. Before the fight begins on the earthly field of Kurukshetra, an inner war of duties has begun to rend asunder Arjuna’s heart and mind, his Dharmakshetra, and he naturally turns to the companion who is wont to lead him in his earthly battles. He tells him of his anguish; this war is a moral evil which he is bound to wage by his knightly duty but which, he feels, is going to ruin his moral personality down to its very depth. Thus addressed, Krishna steers him away from that ethical morass by leading him up to the uppermost reaches of the divine Mystery.

The Gita as a Parable
Their mutual relation clearly presents the elements of a parable. Arjuna stands for man in his existential situation, man the individual, with his ideals and limitations, his conflicts of duties, his puzzlements and his noblest desires, his anguish and his deep conviction that he is not made for evil and misery but for virtue and happiness. However, this man is not alone, he is steered by another, a faithful companion whose guidance is soon to be revealed as the guidance of Arjuna by God Himself. What better figuration of God than this charioteer, always at hand, who shares Arjuna’s life, his fights and his revels, his meals and his games, his campaigning days and his nights under the tent: is he not nearer to his heart than any other friend?

Their friendship is so smooth that Krishna’s superiority is hardly felt by Arjuna. Arjuna accepts Krishna’s guidance as a matter of course. It is so delicate, so respectful an answer to needs and queries rather than an imposition. The final decision always rests with Arjuna. Krishna behaves like a servant and not like an imperious master. He does not intrude, yet is always at hand to provide clear guidance and unflinching support. Again, do we not find him an apt figuration of God who, in the words of the Bible, “deals with men with great reverence” (Wisdom 12,18)?

Thus by his very choice of the two partners in this dialog, the author of the Gita suggests his design which, beyond settling a particular problem of existential ethics, aims at revealing the mysterious personality of God and His loving guidance of man and all creatures from which, “He is far away and yet so near” (13,15). This revelation is gradual and culminates in the famous theophany of chapter XI. It has a solid traditional foundation in the Upanishads but also novel overtones of a more personalistic religion, due to which it can really be said to stand, outside the Bible, as the best approach and prefiguration of God’s Revelation in the New Testament. Indeed, it transcends by far the older teachings of the non-biblical religions as well as the best speculations of the Greeks or the suggestions of their mystery religions.

The Gita revelation of God is not linear but intricate, as is fitting in a book which is not a philosophical treatise but an interpersonal dialog. It follows the movements of Arjuna’s anguished soul and proceeds more in the manner of a psychologist healing a disturbed mind than in the fashion of a teacher expressing a systematic doctrine. While now setting it forth, I shall try to retain something of this existential approach:

The Paradox of Detached Activity
“I am thy pupil; teach me, who am seeking refuge in thee” (2,7). The troubled Arjuna addresses Krishna as a merely human companion, but already with the boundless trust which used to characterize the relation of the Vedic pupil with his guru. Thus addressed, Krishna does not undeceive him straightaway, but tells him about the immortal spirit in man which can never perish though his body is slain. This is the teaching of Upanishadic Samkhya. Krishna explains it in terms of rebirth which imply an essential separateness of man’s body and spirit. This view favors a downgrading of man’s external actions from the ethical to the merely physical level and this provides a doubtless too easy solution of Arjuna’s inner conflict: if killing is merely physical, then surely one may engage in a battle even between brothers. The same view further suggests that man’s spirit should disengage itself altogether from any tie it appears to have with its body and desist from all forms of active partnership with that body. However, what Krishna now proposes is not withdrawal (sannyasa) but transcendence, namely, disintereted activity:

To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.

Possible through Love for God
But how can this ideal of detached activity be possible? Even when man has shunned all his outward-bound desires, there remains in his spirit a basic restlessness, an upward mobility, a thirst for happiness which cannot stay unquenched. It is in this experience of our radical dynamism that Krishna inserts his teaching of God, the Absolute Spirit, as the supreme Goal of our immortal spirits. Only by clinging to the Supreme can man overcome the downward pull of his senses and transcend it even when he performs actions:

The objects of the senses turn away from the embodied spirit who abstains from feeding on them. But the taste for them remains. Even this taste turns away when the Supreme is seen.

From then on, Krishna’s teaching is openly theistic and he begins to speak of himself and the Supreme in the same breath, thus revealing himself as a theophany. Already verse 2,61 has two readings: either tatparah: intent on that, or matparah, intent on Me. Soon afterwards he speaks of this state of clinging to God and detachment from objects as brahmi sthitih: divine state, santih: peace, and brahmanirvana: blissful withdrawal into the Absolute, antakale, at the hour of death (2,70-72). Thus even the perspective of rebirth is displaced by this eschatological promise of a perfect union with God.