Ravi Ranganathan Podcast

Arjuna continues to describe the Cosmic Form he is seeing. With fear overcoming him, arjuna begs Bhagavan to get back to his original form.  Bhagavan restores Himself to his original form and consoles Arjuna. With that description of the Cosmic Form there is nothing much to add as chapter appreciation, except to make one observation.

This podcast "BG -yah pashyati sa pashyati" reaches a milestone.  In Episode 50 Bhagavan is giving His Cosmic Form to Arjuna.

Episode 49 continues the vibhuties, glories of Bhagavan. This cover the eighth and ninth aspects of Bhagavan's glory and chapter conclusion and appreciation.

Episode 48 continues to explain the glories of Bhagavan. Who He Is and how to see him in this world.

In this episode 47, Bhagavan starts a detailed list of 76 of His glories. This covers 21 verses and the list in verse order will sound completely random. Going through these verses in order will make a listener completely lose the purpose of this list. To make life easy, I have reordered all these manifestations and grouped them into 9 glories. With that you can see the clear picture behind what is Bhagavan trying to say.  Of course the picture is not something different from what He has already said in chapters seven and nine.

Episode 46 gives introduction to chapter 10 titled Vibhuti yoga.  Vibhuti is glories or manifestations or expressions.  Bhagavan gives 20 inner  expressions and at the request of arjuna gives  a detailed list of 76 manifestations.  

Episode 44 started covering verse thirty two that has created a lot of controversy. In this verse Bhagavan talks about sinners, women, vaisyas (business people) and sudras (workers). Some commentaries have even skipped this verse.  The last episode explained what the controversy was about and some common sense refutations for the criticisms. Some have interpreted this verse to mean women, business people and workers are the worst sinners and worse all women are of low birth and criticized entire Sanatana dharma.

Episode 45 explains who is Bhagavan referring to as sinners and what is the real meaning of the verse. This episode also cover the chapter appreciation.

In Episode 44, what is needed to show devotion to God is continued from the previous episode. In addition to that another major topic is discussed.

In chapter four Bhagavan said that he is the creator of the four fold varna division. So far the focus was on kshatriyas, arjuna being a kshatriya. Since Arjuna wanted to take to sannyAsA, Bhagavan also talked about brAhmins who focus their life on Self knowledge and Self realization. So far he has not talked about the other two varnas viz., vaishyas (merchants) and sudras (workers). Also ArjunA brought up women becoming corrupt etc and Bhagavan has not said anything about women. What about all these people? Can they attain moksha? In addition to that, this episode also addresses the question of whether Bhagavan is partial to those who worship only Him?

Lot of controversy has been created by one of the verses that addresses these questions. This episode will look into the controversy and give some common sense refutations before we will see the real meaning of that verse.

The five aspects of God started in episode 42 continues. Following this Bhagavan describes three types of His devotees - (1) devotees without desires, (2) direct devotees with desires and (3) indirect devotees with desires.

This episode covers three types of people - fools, mahatmas who are knowers of saguna brahman and finally the knowers of nirguna brahman. This episode also starts the five aspects of god and covers the two functions of the first aspect of God.