The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

The Bhagavad Gita ╯
person, the essentially spiritual nature of the human being.
“Wrong shraddha” is not necessarily morally wrong, merely
ignorant. It means believing that there is no more to life than
physical existence, that the human being is only a biochemical
entity, that happiness can be got by pursuing private interests
and ignoring the rest of life. Such beliefs are misplaced:
we have attached our shraddha to beliefs that life cannot
bear out. Sooner or later they must prove false, and then our
shraddha changes. Like our thinking, therefore – like we ourselves
– shraddha evolves. The purpose of karma is to teach
the consequences of shraddha, so that by trial and error, life
after life, the individual soul acquires the kind of faith that
leads to fulfillment of life’s supreme goal. Krishna explains
the dynamics:
When a person is devoted to something with complete
faith, I unify his faith in that. Then, when faith is completely
unified, one gains the object of devotion. In this way, every
desire is fulfilled by me. (7:21–22)
This is perhaps the most compassionate insight into human
evolution ever expressed. The Gita is steeped in it, but it is
not exclusive to the Gita or to Hinduism. “Whether you like
it or not, whether you know it or not,” says Meister Eckhart,
“secretly Nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the
track in which God may be found.” The whole purpose of
every experience, every activity, every faculty, is to turn the
human being inward and lead each of us back to our divine
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