JOANNA JUREWICZ
Warsaw University j.jurewicz@uw.edu.pl
CHAPTER 11 OF THE BHAGAVADGĪTĀ AS A STRUCTURE OF THE EXPERIENCE OF BHAKTI
The paper proposes an interpretation of Chapter 11 of the Bhagavadgītā as a text that presents the cognitive-emotional foundations of bhakti, understood as construing the relationship to God in terms of a loving relationship between persons. Although the term bhakti appears explicitly only in verse 11.54 as a mental-psychological state enabling full union with Kṛṣṇa, and in 11,55 the subject experiencing this state is described as madbhakta, its meaning is constructed through the overall organization of the chapter. The sequence of Arjuna’s experiences may be read as a structure corresponding to the experience of love (comparable to what is today termed romantic love): an initial fascination with the beauty and majesty of the theophany (BhG 11,15–22), followed by terror associated with the disintegration of the previously established world of relationships—both through the vision of the loss of loved ones and through the threat to one’s own identity (BhG 11,23–31). In this experience, other relationships lose their autonomy and become subordinated to a single, absolute relationship with the manifesting God. The culmination is the moment of recognition that the revealed cosmos is at the same time Arjuna’s closest friend, which leads to a radical reinterpretation of his prior relationship with Kṛṣṇa and to a sense of the inadequacy of the way it had previously been experienced (BhG 11,41–42). The moment in which the beloved person becomes one’s entire world, without whom life appears impossible, constitutes a crucial—if not the most crucial—experience of love: this is how a child feels toward its parents, a young person in love toward a woman, or a friend toward a friend (BhG 11,44). In this context, the final verses of Chapter 11, which emphasize the importance of bhakti for liberation, as well as the following Chapter 12 (bhaktiyoga), may be read as a conceptual summary and systematization of the experience presented in Chapter 11. From this perspective, Chapter 11 shows that bhakti, as a specific mode of construing the relationship to God—integrating cognition, emotion, and action—is already present at the stage of the composition of the Bhagavadgītā, and, more broadly, the Mahābhārata. This does not yet imply the existence of institutionalized bhakti movements; rather, it points to the earlier presence of their fundamental experiential model, which is only later systematized and institutionalized.