When I first turned to the Bhagavad Gita, I expected a book of commandments—a manual of divine law, moral injunctions, and supernatural assertions. What I found instead was something startlingly human. The Gita’s portrait of an enlightened person is not of a miracle worker or mystic lost in trance, but of someone deeply decent, emotionally balanced, and quietly radiant with goodness.
I had anticipated doctrines: rules for prayer, prescriptions for purity, or threats of punishment. Instead, the Gita offered qualities of character that any of us might aspire to cultivate. The bhakti yogi, or person of devotion, is described (mostly in the 12th chapter, verses 12-20) as:
- Not envious
- Friendly
- Compassionate
- Without selfish interest
- Aware of their nonmaterial identity
- Equal in happiness and distress
- Tolerant
- Forgiving
- Self-controlled
- Content
Reading these verses, I realized that perhaps “human” is another word for “divine” stripped of its religious trappings. The Gita does not divide the world into saints and sinners. It paints an enlightened being as someone who has learned to meet the turbulence of life with grace. Such a person:
- Puts no one into difficulty
- Is not disturbed by others or by fear or anxiety
- Leads a life that is pure, meticulous, and free from the fever of material results.
Even uncertainty does not shake such self-aware individuals. They are equal to all, indifferent to honor or dishonor, content with modest living, and wise enough to avoid frivolous company.
In these verses, I did not find a god perched beyond the clouds demanding obedience. I found a mirror, one reflecting what we might become when we stop measuring worth by achievement or belief, and start measuring it by peace, humility, and kindness.
The Gita’s enlightened person is not remote from the world but fully present in it, determined to stay on the spiritual path, modest about knowledge, and devoted to serving God by serving others.
Perhaps the real revelation of the Gita is that goodness—steady, quiet, unpretentious goodness—is not merely human. It is the divine wearing a human face.