Bhagavad Gita gives a universal message for the welfare of all the living beings without consideration of race, caste, nationality and religion. It teaches us the art of living in the light of truth and happiness in whatever situation or occupation one may be. It helps us to understand the answers to the questions – Who are we? Who is God? Why we are suffering? How to remove sufferings? What is real goal of life? And to get answers for the million dollar question – How to find the happiness?
We are the eternal soul which is never born and never dies. It is the living force in everybody that is seeing through our eyes and hearing through our ears. This body is like a chariot and the soul is like a passenger in the chariot; we are the soul and not the body. When we forget who we really are i.e. the soul, we spend our whole life thinking we will be happy by giving pleasure to the chariot of the body while we ignore the needs of soul. It is like decorating the cage and forgetting to feed the bird inside the cage. The purpose of the cage is to make the bird happy but if we spend all of our time decorating the cage and forget to nourish the bird then that bird will starve. Similarly, we spend so much of our time for this body and the bodies of others but we forget to nourish our real soul and souls of others. This is the reason for our suffering.
God is the seed giving father and mother of every living being. The soul’s nature or need is to love and serve God. Everything we do in life should be done as an offering of love to God. If we perform our actions with the consciousness to serve God then our work is yoga and it is spiritualized. If one wants to become a perfect yogi, all we have to do is perform our work for God. That is the highest yoga. When we water a tree, what does really give it nourishment- Is it watering the flowers, twigs, and leaves or watering the root. Watering the roots of a tree nourishes it and makes it blossom. Similarly, God is the root and source of our existence. We are entrusted with God’s property to make him happy and nothing belongs to us anyways as it will be taken away at the time of death. So, if we will try to please God then automatically we will be pleased like flowers, twigs and leaves of tree that are nourished when roots are watered. Thus, it is only by giving our love to God that we can develop love for everyone and be an ambassador of love.
The process to achieve this love is mentioned in Bhagavad Gita, it recommends us not to stop our work or change it, but to do it in pure consciousness. This is the greatest need in the world, to change our consciousness from self-conscious to God-conscious. We may observe two persons doing exactly the same thing, but the difference is, a person with pure consciousness performs his work selflessly and he develops humility, love and devotion to God whereas if the same work is done for selfishly, the bad elements of arrogance, envy and greed creep into our consciousness.
To eradicate selfishness we should adapt spiritual practices like chanting of holy names and reading spiritual literature which act as cleansing agents for our consciousness and help us to develop positive emotions. Thus by doing our actions with compassion, humility and devotion we can live in the spirit of devotion to God which will help us to attain everlasting happiness.