There are millions of scriptures and books on planet Earth. From time immemorial, human beings have created scriptures and still continue to create spiritual books. But Bhagavad Gītā is incomparable. Unlike any other, this book has penetrated human consciousness so deeply. No other book has contributed to the preparation of so many Enlightened Beings on planet Earth. Bhagavad Gītā is the unabridged dictionary and encyclopedia of spirituality.
Spiritual literature can be classified into three categories. First we have śāstras: Sāstras give us clarity about the goal of human life. They give intellectual understanding about the ultimate truth of man and God.
Śāstras are the scriptures which guide us to have the right cognitions of life. They logically and intellectually answer all major questions so that we can be logically convinced to follow the ultimate path. There are manyexamples. The śṛutis and smṛtis of sanātana-hindu-dharma, the sacred scriptures such as the Vedas and Upaniṣads, the guidelines such as the Manusmṛti and Itihās, and the great epics, historical happenings such as Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārat, are śāstras.
The second category of literature is stotra. It is the expression of someone who has realized the ultimate Truth; who has had the glimpse of divine love. When such a person expresses his joy, the expression is stotras. When we worship and surrender ourselves to the Divine, the form of expression is stotras, devotional compositions. The literature from the heart is stotras; literature from the head is śastras. The third type of literature, called sūtras, gives us techniques to realize the state of uniting with the Divine.
Śāstras give us intellectual understanding, stotras give emotional feeling connection, Sūtras give the being level experience. Śāstras are like signboards, intellectual scriptures that explain the basics of life. They alone cannot lead us to enlightenment; although they can take us to an Enlightened Master. Stotras enrich us to surrender to the Divine. The glory of the Divine is expounded on by the stotras. Sūtras give us techniques to achieve devotion or Enlightenment.
Stotras are spoken from the level of emotion, feeling. Sūtras mean the technique that helps us achieve the goal of the śāstras and the stotras.
People who are intellectually oriented, need śāstras—intellectual scriptures. They do not do anything unless they are intellectually convinced. We cannot say that because of this attitude, they should not seek spirituality, the path of living the highest potential and expanding with
peak possibility. Listen, we should look at man with more compassion. We can't put faith as the main criterion to enter into spirituality, then we are refusing spirituality to almost 90% of humanity. We should create a system through which we can reach and enrich every individual with the science of completion and creation.
Our Vedic seers created śāstras—the absolute science of living in completion while creating our peak possibility. They logically taught us the path and the goal—why we are asked to do what we do, why we need spirituality in our day-to-day living. All these major questions are proven logically in śastras and the conclusions are given. Understand, śāstras completely take away our doubts. Doubt is a devil. Once a doubt enters our mind in the form of self-doubt, self-hatred and self-denial, we can't sleep, we can't rest until we clear and complete with it. Śāstras help us get rid of these doubts intellectually, scientifically!
Unless we have complete intellectual clarity, complete cognition, our belief will be a pseudo belief; anyone can shake our faith as it will be rooted in self-doubt. Our cognition is not complete cognition till the śāstras of integrity, authenticity, responsibility and enriching become
the basis of our cognition. Till then our cognitions are nothing but confusions, self-doubts. Our faith does not have a strong base, it is like a building without a foundation. It will collapse. The same will happen to us if we don't have the base of śāstras.
A person asked the great Master Vivekananda, 'Master, what is the importance of Vedas and why should we study the scriptures?' Vivekananda said, 'If you study the scriptures, all your faith and sincerity will become so strong that nobody will be able to shake you.' Otherwise, any fool can tell us that what we are doing is superstitious and we can start thinking, 'Am I really doing superstitious things? Am I really following the right path?' We will start having doubts about ourselves.
We may think we believe in something; but our faith or belief is not deep enough, not authentic enough. We are not integrated to our words, and we are not authentic to our thinking and actions. Unless we have the deep foundation of śāstras, not only we will not be able to believe in anything, we will be doubting and hating our very own self! We will not be authentic and integrated to the truth.
Understand, even our emotions are not so deep. We think we have love, we think we believe. I see all kinds of people who say they believe in what they think. One man said, 'Oh Master, I love the whole world.' We can always say Vasudaiva Kuṭuṃbakaṁ—the world is my family. Again and again, I tell people that to love the world is easy, but to love your wife is very difficult! The problem is that we are not in tune with our own family. This is because we don't have the right cognition of completion, without which our faith can be shaken by anybody. Śāstras, the science
of Living Enlightenment, gives a powerful base of the 'great why of life' so that all our cognitions, all our faith can enter into our being and start creating our possibilities.