The Yogeshwarah that is Sri Krishna

The Yogeshwarah that is Sri Krishna

All the eighteen yogas contained in the eighteen chapters may be reduced to four—the Karma Yoga, the Raja Yoga, the Bhakti Yoga and the Jnana Yoga. Tradition holds that spiritual life begins with Karma Yoga and goes on evolving into the other three respectively. That the sequence of the chapters in the Gita bears testimony to this is their contention.

There are others who compare these four Yogas to the bud, the tender fruit, the unripe fruit and the fully ripe fruit. But neither Sri Krishna’s life nor his utterances lend any support to this kind of gradation. It is true that the development of the subject in a chapter leads to the theme of the next. Nevertheless this does not warrant holding that one System of Yoga is anterior to another. All through the discourse the Lord equates Karma with Supreme Jnana. In several places Bhakti is placed on a par with Jnana. Elsewhere Raja Yoga gets a footing parallel to Bhakti. In Him these Yogas suffer no gradation; neither is there anything like evolution of one into the other. These seemingly different Yogas may be said to be various readings of the same phenomenon – the moral and spiritual growth of the individual. While playing the part of the charioteer, Sri Krishna reined four white horses yoked to the chariot. They symbolize the four Yogas yoked to the human career. Those snow-white steeds “Suggest purity as the basis of all the Yogas. Their combined effort is necessary to draw the chariot forward. All the four Yogas together stimulate life ‘with spirituality. Since Sri Krishna handles all the four Yogas with equal importance he is called Yogeshwara.

Source: Introduction to Srimad Bhagavad Geeta-Commentary by Swami Chidbhavananda