The endless spiritual treasures of this essential scripture have been mined by saints, scholars, and devotees throughout the ages. Through a unique combination of exhaustive study and scholarship, and insight and wisdom gleaned from personal experience, Swami Nirmalananda’s commentary offers new gems that will enrich all true seekers.

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A Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, by Swami Nirmalananda Giri

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Cool fall nights have begun to turn the trees and bushes at higher altitudes into nature’s color palette.

This article is the first of several on “Creating Your Happiness.”

(The following was written during the Great Depression, but its principles remain relevant today.)

It is easier to spend than to earn.
Also it is harder to save than to earn.

Most people spend thirty dollars a week when their income is only twenty. The extra ten dollars is acquired by borrowing, or by buying with promises to pay in the future, on installment plans, and such systems. You must not always feel that you have to “keep up with the Joneses.” To try to own more than your purse will allow is to live in constant mental worry, and under such conditions happiness, like a will-o’-the-wisp, has to be chased foolishly all over the boggy surface of bottomless desires.

To spend more than you earn is to live in perpetual slavery. To spend more now in the hope of making more later on is the harbinger of all material suffering. An expensive car, together with a good dress-suit, and a beautiful home are very pleasant to have, but the loss of your car because you cannot meet the so-soon-recurring installments due; foreclosure of the mortgage on your home, built and paid for by many years of labor and saving; the publicity, dishonor, and heavy heart that comes after such occurrences—all these are very unpleasant. Is it not better to have an inexpensive car all paid for, a cozy cottage, a low-priced, clean suit, and a comfortable bank account than to have a big outward show with only borrowed money in your pocket?

Remember that along with the art of money-making it is well to learn the art of money-saving, for a large income is of no lasting good to you if it creates only habits of luxury and no reserve fund. Think for a moment. If you should get sick suddenly, how would you continue your luxurious habits, without the usual income, if you have no savings put away? It is a bad thing to cultivate luxurious habits if you have only a small income. Is it not better to live simply and frugally and grow rich in reality? You should use one-fourth of your income on plain living, save three-fourths, and be at ease in your mind with a feeling of future security. Keep what you earn legitimately, and don’t gamble or lose it in trying to “get rich quick.”

The present depression has taught you to buy lower-priced things, to save for a “rainy day” and not to spend on mere material comforts more than you are earning.

Happiness can be had by the exercise of self-control, by cultivating habits of plain living and high thinking, by spending less even though earning more. Make an effort to earn more so that you can be the means of helping others to help themselves, for one of the unwritten laws decrees that he who helps others to abundance and happiness, always will be helped in return by them, and he will become more and more prosperous and happy himself. This is a law of happiness which cannot be broken.

• You can purchase Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi at Amazon.com, in the first edition facsimile by Crystal Clarity Publishers. The full text the Autobiography is available online here.
• Read the next article in this series, Happiness is in the Mind.

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What is the Bhagavad Gita? Several thousand years ago in north-central India, two people sat in a chariot in the midpoint of a great battlefield. One of them, the yogi Arjuna, knew that it would be not be long before the conflict would begin. So he asked Krishna, the Master of Yoga, what should be his attitude and perspective in this moment. And above all: What should he do?

There was no time to spare in empty words. In a brief discourse, later turned into seven hundred Sanskrit verses by the sage Vyasa, Krishna outlined to Arjuna the way to live an entire life so as to gain perfect self-knowledge and self-mastery. Visit our Bhagavad Gita page to find out more about the Gita.

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A: By your habitual state of mind outside of meditation. Read the Gita carefully and consider if what Krishna describes there is being attained–at least in some degree–by you.

Choose any of three versions of the Bhagavad Gita to download and study on our Bhagavad Gita page.

“At the hour of death, he who dies remembering Me, having relinquished the body, goes to My state of being. In this matter there is no doubt.” –Bhagavad Gita 8:5

This is quite straightforward and easy to understand. The moment of death is perhaps the most important moment in our life, equalled only by the moment of birth. Dr. Morris Netherton, formulator of the Netherton Method of Past Life Recall, has found that the most significant factors in our life can be either birth or death trauma. The same would be true of positive experience during birth or death, which is why in India sacred mantras are recited during both times–at least by the spiritually intelligent. In this way the individual both comes into incarnation and leaves it accompanied by the remembrance of God. In a few verses we will see that the way to fix our consciousness in God will be the repetition of Om. (See our free eBook: Om Meditation–Its Theory and Practice.)

The principle

Sanatana Dharma is never a matter of “shut up and accept what I tell you.” So Krishna explains to us how it is that if we are intent on the remembrance of God at the time of death we will go to God.

“Moreover, whatever state of being [bhavam] he remembers when he gives up the body at the end, he invariably goes to that state of being, transformed into that state of being.” –Bhagavad Gita 8:6

All translators I know of have translated this verse to mean that whatever we think of at death, we will go to that thing, to whatever world in which it exists. The conclusion is then that if we remember God in life we will go to God at the time of death. Sounds, simple, easy, and certainly noble. But it is not true, as no simplistic formula is ever true. Winthrop Sargeant alone, as far as I know, translates this verse correctly.

It is not “who” or “what” we merely think of intellectually that determines our after-death state, but the state of mind and being, the bhava, that we are in at the time of death. A Brief Sanskrit Glossary defines bhava in this way: “Subjective state of being (existence); attitude of mind; mental attitude or feeling; state of realization in the heart or mind.” In short, it is our state of consciousness, and that is a matter of evolution, of buddhi yoga. Religiosity and holy thinking fail utterly; it is the level of consciousness that alone means anything.

When we die, we gather up all the subtle energies that comprise our astral and causal bodies–energies that ultimately are seen to be intelligent thought-force. Then we leave the body through the gate (chakra) that corresponds to the dominant vibration of our life and thought. If our awareness has been on lower things we will depart through a lower gate and go to a low astral world. If we have been spiritually mediocre (the ignorant call it being “balanced” or “following the middle way”) we will go to a middling world. But those who have made their minds and bodies vibrate to Divinity through authentic spiritual practice, tapasya, will leave through the higher centers. Those who have been united with God even in life will go forth to merge into Brahman forever.

Some people pay attention to the first part of this verse only, and think that they will cheat the law of karma which operates mentally as well as physically. They think that if at the moment of their death they will say a few mantras, then off they go to liberation (or at least heaven) no matter how they have lived their lives. Others, not quite so crass, decide that after having lived in a materialistic and spiritually heedless manner they will “get religious” during the last few years of their life and then be sure to be in the right state of mind and being as they die. But there is no cheating or cutting corners. What we sow that we reap–nothing else.

The outspoken Ajaan Chah, a meditation master of the Thai Buddhist forest tradition, said that many people pester their grandmother at the moment of death, calling out: “Say ‘Buddho [Buddha],’ grandma, say ‘Buddho’!” “Let grandma alone and let her die in peace!” said Ajahn Chah. “She did not say ‘Buddho’ during life, so she will not say ‘Buddho’ during death.” Sri Ramakrishna said that even at the moment of death a miser will say: “O! look how much oil you are wasting in the lamp! Turn it down.” he also said that you can teach a parrot to constantly say “Radha-Krishna!,” but if you pull its tail feathers it will only squawk. In the same way, when death pulls our “tail feathers” we revert to our swabhava, our real state of mind and consciousness.

The lesson we must learn

There is a lesson here for all of us. As Jesus said: “Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,” in the realms of higher consciousness, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” (Matthew 6:20, 21) even at the time of death.

“Therefore at all times remember Me and fight with your mind and intellect fixed on Me. Without doubt you shall come to Me. With a mind disciplined by the practice of yoga, which does not turn to anything else, to the divine supreme Spirit he goes, meditating on Him.” –Bhagavad Gita 8:7,8

This is the necessary bhava we must cultivate at all times, fighting the battle of life in the conditions and situations dictated by our karma.

The Lord

We are not going to heaven–we are going to God! And we do not just believe in God, we intend to unite with God. So Krishna further says: “He who meditates on the ancient seer, the ruler, smaller than the atom, Who is the supporter of all, Whose form is unthinkable, and who is effulgent like the sun, beyond darkness; at the hour of death, with unmoving mind, endowed with devotion and with the power of yoga, having made the vital breath [prana] enter between the two eyebrows, he reaches this divine supreme Spirit.” (8:9,10)

One of the gates to higher worlds is the “third eye” between the eyebrows. During meditation the yogi sometimes finds his awareness drawn spontaneously to that point. It is the same at the time of death. The purified and divinely-oriented life force (prana) automatically exits through that gate and goes to God, bearing us upward, even as the Egyptians pictured the freed soul flying in a spirit-boat to the sun.

There is more:

“That which those who know the Vedas call the Imperishable, which the ascetics, free from passion [raga], enter, desiring which they practice brahmacharya, that path I shall explain to you briefly.” –Bhagavad Gita 8:11

To die right takes a lifetime of purification and preparation. Only those can enter into God whose bonds of desire are broken. To this end they constantly practice brahmacharya–control of the senses and mind, which includes chastity/celibacy.

Going forth

“Closing all the gates of the body, and confining the mind in the heart, having placed his vital breath [prana] in the head, established in yoga concentration, uttering Om, the single-syllable Brahman, meditating on Me, he who goes forth, renouncing the body, goes to the supreme goal.” –Bhagavad Gita 8:12, 13

It is important to remember here that “heart” means the core of our consciousness, and not the physical heart–or “heart chakra.” Even more important, Krishna is not referring to some kind of strenuous breathing exercise, but rather, the natural and automatic rising of the life-fore into the higher centers of the brain that occurs when we inwardly repeat Om with attention.

If we do this throughout our life it will be done by us in death. As the upanishads say: “Om is Brahman. Om is all this. He who utters Om with the intention ‘I shall attain Brahman’ does verily attain Brahman.” (Taittiriya Upanishad 1.8.1) “What world does he who meditates on Om until the end of his life, win by That? If he meditates on the Supreme Being with the Syllable Om, he becomes one with the Light, he is led to the world of Brahman Who is higher than the highest life, That Which is tranquil, unaging, immortal, fearless, and supreme.” (Prashna Upanishad 5:1, 5, 7) “This is the bridge to immortality. May you be successful in crossing over to the farther shore of darkness.” (Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.6)

A resume

Krishna then recaps all he has said in this section with these words:

“He who thinks of Me constantly, whose mind does not ever go elsewhere, for him, the yogi who is constantly devoted [nityayuktasya–constantly disciplined or yoked], I am easy to reach. Approaching Me, those whose souls are great, who have gone to the supreme perfection, do not incur rebirth, that impermanent abode of suffering. Up to Brahma’s [the Creator–not Brahman] realm of being, the worlds are subject to successive rebirths, but he who reaches Me is not reborn.” –Bhagavad Gita 8:14-16

Further Reading:

• Introduction to Om Yoga
• The Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Life

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