Chapter 15
Art of Liberation
This unique chapter of 20 slokas, is known as purushottama prãpti yoga, Realization of the Supreme. S9, s12, s13, s14 and s15 being digressions are clearly interpolations.
Beginning with the parable of world as a fig tree, it later deals with the indwelling spirit and the Supreme Spirit, and the perishable man and the imperishable Purusha (Supreme Spirit).
1
Thus spoke the Lord:
Wise see Nature as fig tree huge
Roots its planted in high skies
Branching down with Vedic leaves
Helps which man reach State Supreme.
2
So to feed on their organs
With its downward roots it ties
Beings all to mundane things,
With man being charged by wants
Supplies he the feed it needs Through
the knots of threefold ways.
3
Man as fails to lay his hands
Roots on those that entwine him
Helps dispassion sunder them.
4
Roots as sundered, one gets freed
To reach the Vedic branch in reach,
Grasps as he the truth there all
Goes he up from branch to branch
To end up on the root utmost
On which Abode Supreme lies.
5
Freed of pride, desire ’n delusion
Climbs as he, in self he dwells,
Feels he same of pleasure ’n pain
Detached he reaches thus Supreme.
6
Sun too doth pale nears it when
Seat of moksha, Abode of Mine.
7
Spirit as lies in beings all
Gets it rubbed with one’s nature.
8
Wind as carries scent of flowers
While leaving them as is where,
In like fashion Spirit from frames
Moves its awareness to rebirths.
10
Know not fools in lifetime theirs
Nature of Spirit thus lies in them
But ever on move from frame to frame.
11
This by striving wise realize
Fail though naive in spite of it.
16
Perish all beings though in time
Perishes not the Spirit in them.
17
Self Mine Highest that sustains
Is but different from that One.
18
Since I transcend that perishes
Apart ’n above the eternal One
Vedas vouch Me Soul Supreme.
19
Who aver Me as Soul Supreme
In My worship bring they faith.
20
Grasps who nuances of this science
Turns he wise ’n accomplished thus.
Ends thus:
Art of Liberation,
The Fifteenth Chapter
Of Bhagavad-Gita,
Treatise of self-help.