Hello friends,
I believe it is time for me to provide an answer for the question I had posed in my previous post:
"Is the Bhagavat Geeta, against the Vedas since it asks to cut the Ashvattha tree, the leaves of which are the Vedas themselves?"
Before I provide one answer to this question (there could be others, far far better that mine), let me tell you that when the answer struck me, my first reaction was to bow to this wonderous land called Bhaarat, that has produced such a culture and such Mahatmas (and we call just one man now-a-days as the "Mahatma", how much have we fallen!). Hopefully, the esteemed readers would realise the greatness and gravity of what I am going to say. So, here goes:
Vedas are no doubt the important and fundamental (well, as fundamental as leaves are, to a tree) philosophical constructs of the Indian philosophy, but they can be understood or chanted only through the indriyas (senses). In this sense, they are only equal to something called "shadba brahman"--The state that has attributes, and is just below complete perfection.So what?
The point is, we are looking at something beyond the indriyas, the state which has no attribute, no qualities, completely neutral, i.e., a state that is nowhere near to anything we see, hear, touch, feel, smell, or taste. We need to aspire for that "totality of nothingness".
When a person becomes "Vedavit" (this word occurs at the end of the first verse), he has no need of either chanting, or understanding the Vedas-- he "knows" the crux of them. In this state, just as a snake sheds its skin when it has to grow, even the mighty and lofty Vedas, which are but a layer and just instruments to help towards that way to perfection, just wither away like leaves on a tree in autumn, when the person has grown to that state.
Then, in such a state, the presence of that cosmic tree called the wordly "samsaara" is an impediment to attain that moksha. Hence, it needs to be cut.
Fine! But there is one more thing that I struck me here. Just imagine-- can Islam exist without Holy Quran, or christianity without the Bible? These personality cults are stuck within their own "koopasthamandookas" and keep revolving around the the personae and books that they themselves have created. On the contrary, just imagine our culture: You take any book-- the puraNas, dharma shastras, geeta, even the Vedas-- everyone of them point to the fact that they are not a central or "indispensable" part of the sanaatana dharma. Thats because we dont worship books or persons in the way they do. They are only a part of our belief system, not central. The real Sanaatana Dharma exists within us. We are the puraNas, shaastras, and the Vedas ourselves.
We need to awaken to this fact and arise as a nation.