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532 The Philosophy of the Bhagavad-gitā [ch. achieve that moral elevation, with little or no struggle, which is attained with so much difficulty by others. The path of bhakti is thus introduced in the Gitā, for the first time, as an independent path side by side with the path of wisdom and knowledge of the Upanişads and with the path of austere self-discipline. Moral elevation, self-control, etc. are indeed regarded as an indispensable preliminary to any kind of true self-realization. But the advantage of the path of devotion (bhakti) consists in this, that, while some seekers have to work hard on the path of self-control and austere self-discipline, either by constant practice or by the aid of philosophic wisdom, the devotee makes an easy ascent to a high elevation-not because he is more energetic and better equipped than his fellow-workers in other paths, but because he has resigned himself completely to God; and God, being pleased with his devotees who cling fast to Him and know nothing else, grants them wisdom and raises them up through higher and higher stages of self-elevation, self-realization and bliss. Arjuna treated Krsna, the incarnation of God on earth, as his friend, and Krsna in the rôle of God exhorted him to depend entirely on Him and assured him that He would liberate him-He was asking him to give up everything else and cling to Him as his only support. The Gītā lays down for the first time the corner-stone of the teachings of the Bhāgavata-purāna and of the later systems of Vaisnava thought, which elaborated the theory of bhakti and described it as the principal method of self-elevation and self-realization.
Another important feature of the Gītā doctrine of devotion consists in the fact that, as, on the one hand, God is contemplated by His devotees in the intimate personal relation of a father, teacher, master and friend, with a full consciousness of His divinity and His nature as the substratum and the upholder of the entire animate and inanimate cosmic universe, so, on the other hand, the transcendent personality of God is realized not only as the culmination of spiritual greatness and the ultimate reconciliation of all relative differences, of high and low, good and bad, but as the great deity, with a physical, adorable form, whom the devotee can worship not only mentally and spiritually, but also externally, with holy offerings of flowers and leaves. The transcendent God is not only immanent in the universe, but also present before the devotee in the form of a great deity resplendent with brightness, or in the personal form of the man-god Krşņa, in whom
