The eighteen chapters of the Gītā can be grouped into three sets of six chapters each. The first set focuses predominantly on karma-yoga, the second set on bhakti-yoga, and the third on jñāna-yoga. But to some extent all three topics can be found throughout all the chapters. The first chapter is introductory and doesn’t outline any specific yoga. It is titled “The Path through Despondency” (Viṣāda-yoga) because it describes Arjuna’s dejected mental-emotional state after he surveys the armies on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra. It can be considered as a yoga, or transformational means, only in the sense that dejection itself, when it leads to self-inquiry, becomes the basis of authentic practice. In the state of dejection, one’s ordinary absorption in materialistic pursuits is slackened, and thus deliberation on God becomes a distinct possibility.
The spiritual world is not somewhere else. It is right here. It depends on your angle of vision – same place, same thing is now different. Like a tv with 100 channels, it depends on which channel. Whatever show you are watching, you are absorbed in that show. All is there, all the channels are hanging in the same ether – depending on where you tune to, you see that. Krishna is right here, but you are not tuned to Him.
