Brahm Sutra by Ved Vyas has four chapters and each
chapter has four sections. It starts with,
defining the prerequisite which
means that the Brahm Sutra is only for that person who is fully renounced
and has a real deep desire
to know God. Then it declares,
“The true liberation could only be attained by lovingly
surrendering to Him.” Further it tells,
“God has unlimited and absolute virtues.”
In this way, from the very beginning, the Brahm Sutra
in simple wordings reveals the true theme of the Upnishads, that God has
His Divine personal form with all of His Divine virtues. The formless (nirakar)
aspect of God cannot have Divine virtues as it is formless, and thus
action-less and virtueless. Thus, the loving form of God is desirable; and
because He is Gracious, kind, loving and all powerful, His Grace would
eliminate the mayic bondage of any soul when (tannishthasya)
he wholeheartedly engrosses his mind in His loving remembrance.
Brahm Sutra, at the end of the first chapter, describes
the existing status of the universe and tells that the universe is not the
manifestation of only maya as Sankhya Darshan says, it is
also the embodiment of God.
This sutra is the exact translation of the
Upnishadic statement,
This world is a representation of both: God and maya.
For a soul, who has a material mind, this world is only
a manifestation of maya. But for a Divine Saint who has attained
God realization (according to our scriptures) the whole world becomes the
form of his God.
In the second chapter it details the existing form of a
soul and says,.
“The souls are unlimited in number
and infinitesimal in form, and are (ansh) a fractional part of God.”
God is absolute and unlimited and logically there cannot be fractions of
the absolute. Although the word ansh means fraction, but it also
means that all the souls are God-like Divine by nature, like a drop of
water of the ocean is substantially the same as the ocean. Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu clarifies this issue and says that God has a power called the
‘jeev shakti.’ All the souls are the part (ansh) of that.
In the third chapter, the Brahm Sutra further explains
the situation of a soul which is under the bondage of maya and
keeps on reincarnating in various forms of life. It also tells about the
nirakar form of worship and the disciplines, and at the end it
tells about the greatness of bhakti and says that,
through bhakti a devotee
easily receives the Grace of God.
In the fourth chapter, it mainly explains about the
devotion and meditation, about the personal and impersonal (sakar,
nirakar) forms of God, and the outcome of such practices. It
also gives a detailed description about the gyanis and yogis
who reach Brahm lok, the abode of Brahma, and out of them, some are
liberated and some are not.
In the beginning of chapter four it tells that,
a devotee should repeatedly try to
remember the devotional teachings all the time, and do his regular
devotions while,
lovingly meditating upon the form
of his beloved God. At the very end of the fourth chapter it tells that, the devotees doing bhakti to
a personal form of God receive a very special unimaginable Divine gift and
that is their experiential synonymity with God in His Divine abode. It
means that the bhakt Saint, in the Divine abode of God, enjoys the
same amount of Divine Bliss as his beloved God experiences. It is the
absolute kindness of God that He makes an eternally maya- inflicted
soul equally Blissful as Himself.
This is the Brahm Sutra in a nutshell. It represents
the theme of the Upnishads which are the essence of the entire literature
of the Vedic realm.