9.2 Raja Guhyam

The reason is the word anasūyave in BG 9.1, which means “non-envious”. A similar word nirmatsarāṇāṁ is used in SB 1.1.2 which also means “non-envious”. The words asūya and matsar mean jealousy. The jealousy of Krishna is the reason that the soul comes to the material world, therefore, jealousy is the common trait of almost all living entities in this world. Jealous people cannot appreciate a great person, let alone the greatest person. The moment they see greatness, they try to minimize it or ignore it. The truth is hidden from them because of their jealousy.

Take for example Abrahamic faiths in which man enters into a contract with God. A self-sufficient person never enters into a contract with a needy person. The needy person approaches the self-sufficient person in all humility and surrenders to Him completely. But in Abrahamic faiths, God has entered into a privileged contract with some people of one place, giving them privileges over others, and so on. This is jealousy of God under which God has been minimized to serve human needs. People have also enmeshed religions with politics not realizing that God is so great that He doesn’t care about the material world, let alone the political dynamics of a small country in a small planet in a small universe in one corner of the material creation. They don’t know God’s greatness and minimize Him to serve their needs.

Similarly, the impersonalists try to minimize Krishna to an enlightened soul, not the Supreme Person from Whom everything has emanated, in Whom everything rests, and in Whom everything returns. Instead of saying that we are eternal servants of Krishna, they say that by enlightenment one becomes God. It means that God fell into ignorance, forgot his true nature, then read the Vedas, and became God again. This is jealousy of Krishna. They cannot stand the fact that there is a person who is Achyuta or one who never falls. They equate the fallen to the infallible.

Similarly, there are people who pretend to have taken to Krishna Consciousness but they keep ignoring Krishna’s words. One such neglect is the claim that the four classes in society are an old Indian way of life that either cannot be applied to the modern world or at least cannot be applied to the Western world. Even if Krishna says that striyo vaiśyās tathā śūdrās are pāpa-yonayaḥ, many people demand equality for everyone. Even when Krishna describes people in terms of their qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas, many people ignore these things. Therefore, envy is not limited to other religions or impersonalists. It is found even in those people who want Krishna to protect them but they disregard what He says. Just as they practice selective hearing for other people, they try to do the same with Krishna. They don’t take His words seriously but claim to be completely devoted to Him.

Jealousy of Krishna also appears in the form of jealousy of His pure devotees. Many people become gurus without attaining liberation, let alone pure devotion. They claim to be representatives of the guru parampara, hiding their imperfections. If their imperfections are exposed, they say that even great devotees have flaws. By hook or by crook, they raise their status by lowering the status of great devotees.

They see differences between the statements of Acharyas and claim that because due to such differences, there must be imperfection, disregarding the fact that the same truth can be described in different ways without a contradiction. Those who know the truth know that there is no contradiction and they can explain it, provided someone asks sincerely and humbly. But the envious people do not ask. Their envy requires that a great person be brought down to their level for them to feel good.

There are people who equate the Vedic texts to man-made fictions in other societies, the Sanskrit language to other mundane languages, and give great importance to their modern Western academic system. They cannot see (or choose not to see) the cheating of people simply trying to advance their careers by publishing papers. They want to reduce even a great system to a lowly system out of sheer jealousy.

A jealous person wants the prestige of the superior person but he doesn’t have the required good qualities and he doesn’t want to accept his flaws. He tries to downgrade and find faults in the flawless, perfect, and supreme. This is not a strange trait. It is the nature of almost all living entities in the material world, except the pure devotees. The moment we see jealousy, we know that the soul is fallen.

These fallen souls are never given the highest truth because it makes them insecure. To regain their feeling of security, they criticize others needlessly. The jealous person is left alone to rot in this world. He is forced to live with other jealous persons by the tit-for-tat law of nature because of which he suffers constantly. That is the only remedy for his jealousy. Divine nature is furthest from any kind of jealousy.

Therefore, raja-vidya is meant only for the non-jealous. Since the non-jealous person is very rare, and only such persons are given the raja-vidya, therefore, it is very rare. Others can read it, but they will not know anything. It will appear poetry to them.