Song of God
Guide to Practical Life
Wholeness: The Bhagavad-Gita can be translated from Sanskrit as the “Song of God.” Past the experience of sound alone is the melody and harmony of what makes a song. As reverberations of Pure Consciousness ourselves, the feeling of a song is something inherent to all relative life, whether human or plant, gem stone or water. Practical life as we know it, is the daily activity of this material plane.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian teacher and physicist, introduced the Transcendental Meditation method to the world in the mid-20th century. His teachings explain a model of seven states of consciousness, with ordinary states including waking, dreaming, and sleeping, and higher states including Transcendental, Cosmic, and God Consciousness. Transcendental Meditation is a technique that connects one to this Transcendental state of Consciousness regularly, allowing the presence of Being to permeate a physical experience.
Practical Guide in the Bhagavad Gita & Maharishi’s Commentary
From the perspective of Maharishi Vedic Science, practical life is understood as action and interaction, on the gross level, resulting from the dynamism of Pure Consciousness knowing itSelf, and manifesting into physical elements and the fields and forces of nature.
The Bhagavad-Gita can act as a guide to practical life with the integration of this knowledge alongside its core concepts in chapters one through three, including Krishna’s direction of Yogasthah Kuru Karmani, which translates from Sanskrit as “established in Being, perform action” (Bhagavad-Gita 2.48), and how this aligns Consciousness within an individual for utmost “skill in action.” Maharishi (p. 218) subtly includes the tongue among the five organs of action. To establish oneself in Being, Yoga, Sanskrit for Union, with Pure Consciousness is necessary. Only from this establishment of Being in one’s experience can actions, including speech, be skillful.
Maharishi’s commentary notes the role of sound and the eternal voice (Shruti) in accessing freedom, as Krishna awakens Arjuna out of despondency with his response (Bhagavad-Gita 1.47-2.2).
Personal Reflections on Relevance
My personal experiences of sound reach into my earliest memories, as is the case with most people. My voice, however, specifically my inner voice, sought shelter in the Transcendent and disappeared before I was five years old. While much of my expression up until that age was tolerated as early childhood babble, the truth of my Self became unacceptable to communicate past that point. During childhood and adolescence, my experience was to do the best I could to remain accepted as normal, though never quite doing that well. Though I had both of my parents and a sibling, I felt I was best understood alone, and spent most of my time that way.
For the majority of my life, the inner voice I experienced only presented as thoughts, without a memory of my own voice. Many times over I had experiences of hearing my voice recorded, only to be confused that the sound did not resonate with what my thoughts felt like. Through a series of relatively unfortunate events, I began accessing the Transcendent through meditation more pointedly. Experiencing the Transcendent through meditation helped to reconnect my physical body with unmanifest, Pure Consciousness again. It remained there all along. During a time of isolation and grief, the opportunity of a changing voice gave me a notable and novel, new memory (Smriti) of my voice, still the sound of Self, Pure Consciousness, eternal sound (Shruti). The Gita’s teachings explain the power of enlivening an individual with the origin of sound from within, transforming feelings of being silenced into conscious self-expression.
Relevance for Contemporary Society
An individual established in Being requires the consideration of themselves through practices such as meditation. Eventually, this consideration leads to the understanding of the Self within each relative experience of the material world, first in an individual and then through interactions with other forms of life and the relationships therein. What is more practical than understanding how to continually learn more of the Self within and integrate that into daily life? I imagine a more stable, balanced and healthy world through the collective practice of transcending, through remembering the origin of our voices and listening there.
Through Yoga, the union of our deepest Consciousness, more conscious communication and expression can alleviate harmful, unconscious expressions. All action, though, is only that. (p. 218, Maharishi, 2024) Whether one is considered enlightened or ignorant, their movement and words are orchestrated by Pure and Unbounded Consciousness.
Conclusion
The Song here is timeless, as time is only a measurement of change, and uninhibited, unmanifest Consciousness is unchanging and exponential. Listening to the Song, listening inside ourselves for the utterance of our origin, aligns our action with Consciousness. This balance is the practical life.
“Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.”
– Song of Myself (1892 version) by Walt Whitman
References
(Bhagavad-Gita Online, n.d.)
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. (2024). Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gītā: A New Translation and Commentary with Sanskrit Text. Chapters 1 to 6 (First Indian Edition ed.). Motilal Banarsidass Publishing House.
Whitman, W. (1892). Song of Myself (1892 version) | The Poetry Foundation. The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved October 6, 2025, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version
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