What Some Eminent Persons Say on the Srimad Bhagavad Gita

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Mahatma Gandhi: The Gita is the universal mother. Her door is wide open to

anyone who knocks. A true votary of the Gita does not know what disappointment

is. He ever dwells in perennial joy and peace that passeth understanding. But

that peace and joy come not to the sceptic or to him who is proud of his

intellect or learning. It is reserved only for the humble in spirit who brings

to her worship a fullness of faith and an undivided singleness of mind. There

never was a man who worshipped her in that spirit and went back disappointed.

…… I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita that I miss even in the Sermon on the

Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray

of light, I go back to the Bhgavad Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there,

and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies – and my

life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible or

indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad Gita …. Today the

Gita is not only my Bible or my Koran, it is more than that – it is my mother.

….. When I am in difficulty or distress I seek refuge in her bosom.

 

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) Social Reformer and Indian Independence Fighter:

The Srimad Bhagavad Gita is one of the most brilliant and pure gems of our

ancient sacred books. Igt would be difficult to find a simpler work in Sanskrit

literature or even inall the literature of the world than the Gita, which

explains to us in an unambiguous and succinct manner the deep, and sacred

principles of the sacred science of the Self, after imparting to us the

knowledge of the human body and the cosmos, and on the authority of those

principles acquaints every human being with the most perfect and complete

condition of the Self.

 

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), Indian Nationalist, Scholar and Mystic: The Gita is

the greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race. … our

chief national heritage, our hope for the future.

 

Madan Mohan Malaviya, Indian Nationalist and the Founder of Banaras Hindu

University: I believe that in all the living languages of the world, there is no

book so full of true knowledge, and yet so handy as the Bhagavad Gita. …. It

brings to men the highest knowledge, the purest love and the most luminous

action. It teaches self-control, the three-fold austerity, non-violence, truth,

compassion, obedience to the call of duty for the sake of duty, and putting up a

fight against unrighteousness (adharma). … To my knowledge there is no book in

the whole range of the world's literature so high above all the as the Bhagavad

Gita, which is a treasure house of Dharma not only for Hindus but for all

mankind.

 

Albert Einstein, Scientist and Noble Laureate: When I read the Bhagavad Gita and

reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous

…..

 

Dr. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965), an Alsatian musician, philosopher, and

physician. Awarded Noble Peace Prize in 1953: The Bhagavad Gita has a profound

influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by

actions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), an American essayist, philosopher, and leader

of the Transcendentalist movement: I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad

Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us nothing small or unworthy, but large,

serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and

climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

 

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American author, naturalist and

transcendentalist: In the morning, I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and

cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, since whose composition years of the

gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its

literature seem puny and trivial and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be

referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our

conceptions. …. One sentence of the Gita is worth the State of Massachusetts

many times over.

 

Annie Besant (1847-1933), a prominent Theosophist, and a notable political

leader during India's freedom struggle: Among the priceless teachings that may

be found in the great Indian epic Mahabharata, there is none so rare and

priceless as the Gita.

 

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), Prussian Minister of Education: (Gita is) the

most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known

tongue …. perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show. I read

the Indian poem for the first time when I was in my country estate in Silesia

and, while doing so, I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having

let me live to be acquainted with this work. It must be the most profound and

sublime thing to be found in the world.

 

Charles Johnston, an English civil servant in Bengal, in his a translation of

Gita in 1908: The Bhagavad Gita is one of the noblest scriptures of India, one

of the deepest scriptures of the world ….. a symbolic scripture, with many

meanings, containing many truths … (that) forms the living heart of the Eastern

wisdom.

 

Lord Warren Hastings (1754-1826), the first Governor General of British India: I

hesitate not to pronounce the Gita a performance of great originality, of

sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled; and a single

exception, amongst all the known religions of mankind.

 

Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), the developer of the atomic bomb: (Gita is) the

most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.

 

Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), Historian and an early interpreter of

Indian culture to the West: (Bhagavad Gita is) a compendium of the whole Vedic

doctrine to be found in the earlier Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads, and being

therefore the basis of all later developments: it can be regarded as the focus

of all Indian religion.

 

John Elignton, Well-known author: The Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads contain such

godlike fullness of wisdom on all things that I feel the authors must have

looked with calm remembrance back through a thousand passionate lives, full of

feverish strife for and with shadows, where they could have written with such

certainty of things which the soul feels to be sure.

 

Jacob Wihelm Hauer (1881-1961), German writer: (Gita is) a work of imperishable

significance (which) gives us not only profound insights that are valid for all

times and for all religious life, but it contains as well the classical

presentation of one of the most significant phases of Indo-German religious

history …. Here Spirit is at work that belongs to our Spirit. We are not called

to solve the meaning of life but to find out the deed demanded of us and to work

and so, by action, to master the riddle of life.

 

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), Eminent English writer and noted philosopher: The

Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the Perennial

Philosophy ever to have been done. Hence its enduring value, not only for

Indians, but for all mankind … The Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic

spiritual statement of the Perennial Philosophy.

 

Christopher W.B. Isherwood (1904-1986), American translator, biographer,

novelist, and playwright: I believe the Gita to be one of the major religious

documents of the world. If its teachings did not seem to me to agree with those

of the other gospels and scriptures, then my own system of values would be

thrown into confusion, and I should feel completely bewildered. The Gita is not

simply a sermon, but a philosophical treatise.

 

Sir Edwin Arnold (1832-1904), Poet and scholar and Author of The Song Celestial,

one of the earliest translations of the Gita: This famous and marvellous

Sanskrit poem occurs as an episode of the Mahabharata, in the sixth (section) –

or `Bhishma-Parva' of the great Hindu epic. It enjoys immense popularity and

authority in India, where it is reckoned as one of the Five Jewels –

Pancharatnani – of Devanagari literature. In plain but noble language it unfolds

a philosophical system which remains to this day the prevailing Brahmanic belief

blending as it does the doctrine of Kapila, Patanjali, and the Vedas.

 

L. Adams Beck (?-1931), Author of The Story of Oriental Philosophy: The Bhagavad

Gita is known as the Lord's Song – or the Song Celestial – and it represents one

of the highest flights of the conditioned spirit to its unconditioned Source

ever achieved.

 

(The Vedanta Kesari, December 2008)