Gita, lesson 12: heaven as a promise, and the search to feel at ease with oneself

What are we looking for when we long for a vacation, success, or even paradise? The twelfth chapter of Swami Dayananda Saraswati's series argues that the goal is always the same: to feel at ease with oneself. Everything else would be attempts to get there by detour.

Heaven as merchandise

Dayananda notes that the Vedas, India's oldest texts, and other scriptures describe heavens and rituals for prosperity, children, and a future life. He compares them to a supermarket shelf: you can look, but no one is required to buy. He adds a logical point as well, that a heaven with a beginning and an end is like a trip with a return ticket.

The conclusion is that fleeing the discomfort of being oneself, whether at a party, on a retreat, or in paradise, leaves intact the very thing one is fleeing from.

Small, or only appearing small

The chapter's core concern is the feeling of insignificance. Even those with success, fame, or learning tend to feel limited, because everything one achieves is finite while the desire is for something without limit. Dayananda criticizes self-help advice that tells people to accept their own insufficiency and live with it. He calls that resignation, not wisdom.

In its place, he offers a logical alternative. Either the person is in fact small, in which case there is no way out, or they only appear small because of ignorance (avidyā), in which case the solution is self-knowledge (ātma-jñāna). Vedānta, the Indian school of reflection on the Self, takes the second view: the essential Self would be complete and lacking nothing.

A single goal

From this comes the concept of niścaya, the clear determination that everything one seeks, security, love, freedom, is found in the recognition of the Self. Without that clarity, the mind jumps from one desire to the next. With it, life gains a direction. This knowledge, the chapter says, is not added to a list of information: it changes the very identity of whoever receives it.

The full study appears in the book The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita, by Swami Dayananda Saraswati.