SRIMAD BHAGAAD GITA ch.7(gita.7)
https://youtu.be/5V8UDEPNXAY
Commentary on the Bhagavadgita
Discourse 20: The Seventh Chapter Continues – The Glory of God and His CreationA- A+
https://youtu.be/5V8UDEPNXAY
SRIMAD BHAGAWAD GITA CHAPTER 7
अथ सप्तमोஉध्यायः ।
श्रीभगवानुवाच ।
मय्यासक्तमनाः पार्थ योगं युञ्जन्मदाश्रयः ।
असंशयं समग्रं मां यथा ज्ञास्यसि तच्छृणु ॥ 1 ॥
मय्यासक्तमनाः पार्थ योगं युञ्जन्मदाश्रयः ।
असंशयं समग्रं मां यथा ज्ञास्यसि तच्छृणु ॥ 1 ॥
ज्ञानं तेஉहं सविज्ञानमिदं वक्ष्याम्यशेषतः ।
यज्ज्ञात्वा नेह भूयोஉन्यज्ज्ञातव्यमवशिष्यते ॥ 2 ॥
यज्ज्ञात्वा नेह भूयोஉन्यज्ज्ञातव्यमवशिष्यते ॥ 2 ॥
मनुष्याणां सहस्रेषु कश्चिद्यतति सिद्धये ।
यततामपि सिद्धानां कश्चिन्मां वेत्ति तत्त्वतः ॥ 3 ॥
यततामपि सिद्धानां कश्चिन्मां वेत्ति तत्त्वतः ॥ 3 ॥
भूमिरापोஉनलो वायुः खं मनो बुद्धिरेव च ।
अहङ्कार इतीयं मे भिन्ना प्रकृतिरष्टधा ॥ 4 ॥
अहङ्कार इतीयं मे भिन्ना प्रकृतिरष्टधा ॥ 4 ॥
अपरेयमितस्त्वन्यां प्रकृतिं विद्धि मे पराम् ।
जीवभूतां महाबाहो ययेदं धार्यते जगत् ॥ 5 ॥
जीवभूतां महाबाहो ययेदं धार्यते जगत् ॥ 5 ॥
एतद्योनीनि भूतानि सर्वाणीत्युपधारय ।
अहं कृत्स्नस्य जगतः प्रभवः प्रलयस्तथा ॥ 6 ॥
अहं कृत्स्नस्य जगतः प्रभवः प्रलयस्तथा ॥ 6 ॥
मत्तः परतरं नान्यत्किञ्चिदस्ति धनञ्जय ।
मयि सर्वमिदं प्रोतं सूत्रे मणिगणा इव ॥ 7 ॥
मयि सर्वमिदं प्रोतं सूत्रे मणिगणा इव ॥ 7 ॥
रसोஉहमप्सु कौन्तेय प्रभास्मि शशिसूर्ययोः ।
प्रणवः सर्ववेदेषु शब्दः खे पौरुषं नृषु ॥ 8 ॥
प्रणवः सर्ववेदेषु शब्दः खे पौरुषं नृषु ॥ 8 ॥
पुण्यो गन्धः पृथिव्यां च तेजश्चास्मि विभावसौ ।
जीवनं सर्वभूतेषु तपश्चास्मि तपस्विषु ॥ 9 ॥
जीवनं सर्वभूतेषु तपश्चास्मि तपस्विषु ॥ 9 ॥
बीजं मां सर्वभूतानां विद्धि पार्थ सनातनम् ।
बुद्धिर्बुद्धिमतामस्मि तेजस्तेजस्विनामहम् ॥ 10 ॥
बुद्धिर्बुद्धिमतामस्मि तेजस्तेजस्विनामहम् ॥ 10 ॥
बलं बलवतां चाहं कामरागविवर्जितम् ।
धर्माविरुद्धो भूतेषु कामोஉस्मि भरतर्षभ ॥ 11 ॥
धर्माविरुद्धो भूतेषु कामोஉस्मि भरतर्षभ ॥ 11 ॥
ये चैव सात्त्विका भावा राजसास्तामसाश्च ये ।
मत्त एवेति तान्विद्धि न त्वहं तेषु ते मयि ॥ 12 ॥
मत्त एवेति तान्विद्धि न त्वहं तेषु ते मयि ॥ 12 ॥
त्रिभिर्गुणमयैर्भावैरेभिः सर्वमिदं जगत् ।
मोहितं नाभिजानाति मामेभ्यः परमव्ययम् ॥ 13 ॥
मोहितं नाभिजानाति मामेभ्यः परमव्ययम् ॥ 13 ॥
दैवी ह्येषा गुणमयी मम माया दुरत्यया ।
मामेव ये प्रपद्यन्ते मायामेतां तरन्ति ते ॥ 14 ॥
मामेव ये प्रपद्यन्ते मायामेतां तरन्ति ते ॥ 14 ॥
न मां दुष्कृतिनो मूढाः प्रपद्यन्ते नराधमाः ।
माययापहृतज्ञाना आसुरं भावमाश्रिताः ॥ 15 ॥
माययापहृतज्ञाना आसुरं भावमाश्रिताः ॥ 15 ॥
चतुर्विधा भजन्ते मां जनाः सुकृतिनोஉर्जुन ।
आर्तो जिज्ञासुरर्थार्थी ज्ञानी च भरतर्षभ ॥ 16 ॥
आर्तो जिज्ञासुरर्थार्थी ज्ञानी च भरतर्षभ ॥ 16 ॥
तेषां ज्ञानी नित्ययुक्त एकभक्तिर्विशिष्यते ।
प्रियो हि ज्ञानिनोஉत्यर्थमहं स च मम प्रियः ॥ 17 ॥
प्रियो हि ज्ञानिनोஉत्यर्थमहं स च मम प्रियः ॥ 17 ॥
उदाराः सर्व एवैते ज्ञानी त्वात्मैव मे मतम् ।
आस्थितः स हि युक्तात्मा मामेवानुत्तमां गतिम् ॥ 18 ॥
आस्थितः स हि युक्तात्मा मामेवानुत्तमां गतिम् ॥ 18 ॥
बहूनां जन्मनामन्ते ज्ञानवान्मां प्रपद्यते ।
वासुदेवः सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभः ॥ 19 ॥
वासुदेवः सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभः ॥ 19 ॥
कामैस्तैस्तैर्हृतज्ञानाः प्रपद्यन्तेஉन्यदेवताः ।
तं तं नियममास्थाय प्रकृत्या नियताः स्वया ॥ 20 ॥
तं तं नियममास्थाय प्रकृत्या नियताः स्वया ॥ 20 ॥
यो यो यां यां तनुं भक्तः श्रद्धयार्चितुमिच्छति ।
तस्य तस्याचलां श्रद्धां तामेव विदधाम्यहम् ॥ 21 ॥
तस्य तस्याचलां श्रद्धां तामेव विदधाम्यहम् ॥ 21 ॥
स तया श्रद्धया युक्तस्तस्याराधनमीहते ।
लभते च ततः कामान्मयैव विहितान्हि तान् ॥ 22 ॥
लभते च ततः कामान्मयैव विहितान्हि तान् ॥ 22 ॥
अन्तवत्तु फलं तेषां तद्भवत्यल्पमेधसाम् ।
देवान्देवयजो यान्ति मद्भक्ता यान्ति मामपि ॥ 23 ॥
देवान्देवयजो यान्ति मद्भक्ता यान्ति मामपि ॥ 23 ॥
अव्यक्तं व्यक्तिमापन्नं मन्यन्ते मामबुद्धयः ।
परं भावमजानन्तो ममाव्ययमनुत्तमम् ॥ 24 ॥
परं भावमजानन्तो ममाव्ययमनुत्तमम् ॥ 24 ॥
नाहं प्रकाशः सर्वस्य योगमायासमावृतः ।
मूढोஉयं नाभिजानाति लोको मामजमव्ययम् ॥ 25 ॥
मूढोஉयं नाभिजानाति लोको मामजमव्ययम् ॥ 25 ॥
वेदाहं समतीतानि वर्तमानानि चार्जुन ।
भविष्याणि च भूतानि मां तु वेद न कश्चन ॥ 26 ॥
भविष्याणि च भूतानि मां तु वेद न कश्चन ॥ 26 ॥
इच्छाद्वेषसमुत्थेन द्वन्द्वमोहेन भारत ।
सर्वभूतानि संमोहं सर्गे यान्ति परन्तप ॥ 27 ॥
सर्वभूतानि संमोहं सर्गे यान्ति परन्तप ॥ 27 ॥
येषां त्वन्तगतं पापं जनानां पुण्यकर्मणाम् ।
ते द्वन्द्वमोहनिर्मुक्ता भजन्ते मां दृढव्रताः ॥ 28 ॥
ते द्वन्द्वमोहनिर्मुक्ता भजन्ते मां दृढव्रताः ॥ 28 ॥
जरामरणमोक्षाय मामाश्रित्य यतन्ति ये ।
ते ब्रह्म तद्विदुः कृत्स्नमध्यात्मं कर्म चाखिलम् ॥ 29 ॥
ते ब्रह्म तद्विदुः कृत्स्नमध्यात्मं कर्म चाखिलम् ॥ 29 ॥
साधिभूताधिदैवं मां साधियज्ञं च ये विदुः ।
प्रयाणकालेஉपि च मां ते विदुर्युक्तचेतसः ॥ 30 ॥
प्रयाणकालेஉपि च मां ते विदुर्युक्तचेतसः ॥ 30 ॥
ॐ तत्सदिति श्रीमद्भगवद्गीतासूपनिषत्सु ब्रह्मविद्यायां योगशास्त्रे श्रीकृष्णार्जुनसंवादे
ज्ञानविज्ञानयोगो नाम सप्तमोஉध्यायः ॥7 ॥
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https://youtu.be/fn1HXpzFfs0VII
The Yoga of Wisdom and Realisation
Summary of Seventh Discourse
Sri Krishna tells Arjuna that the supreme Godhead has to be realised in both its transcendent and immanent aspects. The Yogi who has reached this summit has nothing more to know.
This complete union with the Lord is difficult of attainment. Among many thousands of human beings, very few aspire for this union, and even among those who aspire for it, few ever reach the pinnacle of spiritual realisation.
The Lord has already given a clear description of the all-pervading static and infinite state of His. Now He proceeds to explain His manifestations as the universe and the power behind it. He speaks of these manifestations as His lower and higher Prakritis. The lower Prakriti is made up of the five elements, mind, ego and intellect. The higher Prakriti is the life-element which upholds the universe, activates it and causes its appearance and final dissolution.
Krishna says that whatever exists is nothing but Himself. He is the cause of the appearance of the universe and all things in it. Everything is strung on Him like clusters of gems on a string. He is the essence, substance and substratum of everything, whether visible or invisible. Although everything is in Him, yet He transcends everything as the actionless Self. Prakriti or Nature is made up of the three Gunas or qualities—Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas. These three qualities delude the soul and make it forget its true nature, which is one with God. This delusion, termed Maya, can only be removed by the Grace of the Lord Himself.
Thus far Arjuna has been taught the highest form of devotion, which leads to union with God in His static aspect as also with His dynamic Prakriti. Krishna tells him that there are also other forms of devotion which are inferior as they are performed with various motives. The distressed, the seeker of divine wisdom, and he who desires wealth, worship Him, as also the wise. Of these the Lord deems the wise as dearest to Him. Such a devotee loves the Lord for the sake of pure love alone. Whatever form the devotee worships, the ultimate goal is the Lord Himself. The Lord accepts such worship, knowing that it is directed to Him only.
Sri Bhagavaan Uvaacha:
Mayyaasaktamanaah paartha yogam yunjanmadaashrayah;
Asamshayam samagram maam yathaa jnaasyasi tacchrinu.
Asamshayam samagram maam yathaa jnaasyasi tacchrinu.
The Blessed Lord said:
1. O Arjuna, hear how you shall without doubt know Me fully, with the mind intent on Me, practising Yoga and taking refuge in Me!
COMMENTARY: If you sing the glories and attributes of the Lord, you will develop love for Him and then your mind will be ever fixed on Him. Intense love for the Lord is real devotion. With this you must surely get full knowledge of the Self.
Jnaanam te’ham savijnaanam idam vakshyaamyasheshatah;
Yajjnaatwaa neha bhooyo’nyaj jnaatavyamavashishyate.
Yajjnaatwaa neha bhooyo’nyaj jnaatavyamavashishyate.
2. I shall declare to thee in full this knowledge combined with direct realisation, after knowing which nothing more here remains to be known.
Manushyaanaam sahasreshu kashchidyatati siddhaye;
Yatataamapi siddhaanaam kashchinmaam vetti tattwatah.
Yatataamapi siddhaanaam kashchinmaam vetti tattwatah.
3. Among thousands of men, one perchance strives for perfection; even among those successful strivers, only one perchance knows Me in essence.
Bhoomiraapo’nalo vaayuh kham mano buddhireva cha;
Ahamkaara iteeyam me bhinnaa prakritirashtadhaa.
Ahamkaara iteeyam me bhinnaa prakritirashtadhaa.
4. Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and egoism—thus is My Nature divided eightfold.
Apareyamitastwanyaam prakritim viddhi me paraam;
Jeevabhootaam mahaabaaho yayedam dhaaryate jagat.
Jeevabhootaam mahaabaaho yayedam dhaaryate jagat.
5. This is the inferior Prakriti, O mighty-armed (Arjuna)! Know thou as different from it My higher Prakriti (Nature), the very life-element by which this world is upheld.
Etadyoneeni bhootaani sarvaaneetyupadhaaraya;
Aham kritsnasya jagatah prabhavah pralayastathaa.
Aham kritsnasya jagatah prabhavah pralayastathaa.
6. Know that these two (My higher and lower Natures) are the womb of all beings. So, I am the source and dissolution of the whole universe.
Mattah parataram naanyat kinchidasti dhananjaya;
Mayi sarvamidam protam sootre maniganaa iva.
Mayi sarvamidam protam sootre maniganaa iva.
7. There is nothing whatsoever higher than Me, O Arjuna! All this is strung on Me as clusters of gems on a string.
COMMENTARY: There is no other cause of the universe but Me. I alone am the cause of the universe.
Raso’hamapsu kaunteya prabhaasmi shashisooryayoh;
Pranavah sarvavedeshu shabdah khe paurusham nrishu.
Pranavah sarvavedeshu shabdah khe paurusham nrishu.
8. I am the sapidity in water, O Arjuna! I am the light in the moon and the sun; I am the syllable Om in all the Vedas, sound in ether, and virility in men.
Punyo gandhah prithivyaam cha tejashchaasmi vibhaavasau;
Jeevanam sarvabhooteshu tapashchaasmi tapaswishu.
Jeevanam sarvabhooteshu tapashchaasmi tapaswishu.
9. I am the sweet fragrance in earth and the brilliance in fire, the life in all beings; and I am austerity in ascetics.
Beejam maam sarvabhootaanaam viddhi paartha sanaatanam;
Buddhir buddhimataamasmi tejastejaswinaamaham.
Buddhir buddhimataamasmi tejastejaswinaamaham.
10. Know Me, O Arjuna, as the eternal seed of all beings; I am the intelligence of the intelligent; the splendour of the splendid objects am I!
Balam balavataam asmi kaamaraagavivarjitam;
Dharmaaviruddho bhooteshu kaamo’smi bharatarshabha.
Dharmaaviruddho bhooteshu kaamo’smi bharatarshabha.
11. Of the strong, I am the strength devoid of desire and attachment, and in (all) beings, I am the desire unopposed to Dharma, O Arjuna!
Ye chaiva saattvikaa bhaavaa raajasaastaamasaashcha ye;
Matta eveti taanviddhi na twaham teshu te mayi.
Matta eveti taanviddhi na twaham teshu te mayi.
12. Whatever being (and objects) that are pure, active and inert, know that they proceed from Me. They are in Me, yet I am not in them.
Tribhirgunamayair bhaavairebhih sarvamidam jagat;
Mohitam naabhijaanaati maamebhyah paramavyayam.
Mohitam naabhijaanaati maamebhyah paramavyayam.
13. Deluded by these Natures (states or things) composed of the three qualities of Nature, all this world does not know Me as distinct from them and immutable.
Daivee hyeshaa gunamayee mama maayaa duratyayaa;
Maameva ye prapadyante maayaametaam taranti te.
Maameva ye prapadyante maayaametaam taranti te.
14. Verily this divine illusion of Mine made up of the qualities (of Nature) is difficult to cross over; those who take refuge in Me alone cross over this illusion.
Na maam dushkritino moodhaah prapadyante naraadhamaah;
Maayayaapahritajnaanaa aasuram bhaavamaashritaah.
Maayayaapahritajnaanaa aasuram bhaavamaashritaah.
15. The evil-doers and the deluded, who are the lowest of men, do not seek Me; they whose knowledge is destroyed by illusion follow the ways of demons.
Chaturvidhaa bhajante maam janaah sukritino’rjuna;
Aarto jijnaasurartharthee jnaanee cha bharatarshabha.
Aarto jijnaasurartharthee jnaanee cha bharatarshabha.
16. Four kinds of virtuous men worship Me, O Arjuna! They are the distressed, the seeker of knowledge, the seeker of wealth, and the wise, O lord of the Bharatas!
Teshaam jnaanee nityayukta eka bhaktirvishishyate;
Priyo hi jnaanino’tyarthamaham sa cha mama priyah.
Priyo hi jnaanino’tyarthamaham sa cha mama priyah.
17. Of them, the wise, ever steadfast and devoted to the One, excels (is the best); for, I am exceedingly dear to the wise and he is dear to Me.
Udaaraah sarva evaite jnaanee twaatmaiva me matam;
Aasthitah sa hi yuktaatmaa maamevaanuttamaam gatim.
Aasthitah sa hi yuktaatmaa maamevaanuttamaam gatim.
18. Noble indeed are all these; but I deem the wise man as My very Self; for, steadfast in mind, he is established in Me alone as the supreme goal.
Bahoonaam janmanaamante jnaanavaanmaam prapadyate;
Vaasudevah sarvamiti sa mahaatmaa sudurlabhah.
Vaasudevah sarvamiti sa mahaatmaa sudurlabhah.
19. At the end of many births the wise man comes to Me, realising that all this is Vasudeva (the innermost Self); such a great soul (Mahatma) is very hard to find.
Kaamaistaistairhritajnaanaah prapadyante’nyadevataah;
Tam tam niyamamaasthaaya prakrityaa niyataah swayaa.
Tam tam niyamamaasthaaya prakrityaa niyataah swayaa.
20. Those whose wisdom has been rent away by this or that desire, go to other gods, following this or that rite, led by their own nature.
Yo yo yaam yaam tanum bhaktah shraddhayaarchitum icchati;
Tasya tasyaachalaam shraddhaam taameva vidadhaamyaham.
Tasya tasyaachalaam shraddhaam taameva vidadhaamyaham.
21. Whatsoever form any devotee desires to worship with faith—that (same) faith of his I make firm and unflinching.
Sa tayaa shraddhayaa yuktastasyaaraadhanameehate;
Labhate cha tatah kaamaan mayaiva vihitaan hi taan.
Labhate cha tatah kaamaan mayaiva vihitaan hi taan.
22. Endowed with that faith, he engages in the worship of that (form), and from it he obtains his desire, these being verily ordained by Me (alone).
Antavattu phalam teshaam tadbhavatyalpamedhasaam;
Devaan devayajo yaanti madbhaktaa yaanti maamapi.
Devaan devayajo yaanti madbhaktaa yaanti maamapi.
23. Verily the reward (fruit) that accrues to those men of small intelligence is finite. The worshippers of the gods go to them, but My devotees come to Me.
Avyaktam vyaktimaapannam manyante maamabuddhayah;
Param bhaavamajaananto mamaavyayamanuttamam.
Param bhaavamajaananto mamaavyayamanuttamam.
24. The foolish think of Me, the Unmanifest, as having manifestation, knowing not My higher, immutable and most excellent nature.
Naaham prakaashah sarvasya yogamaayaasamaavritah;
Moodho’yam naabhijaanaati loko maamajamavyayam.
Moodho’yam naabhijaanaati loko maamajamavyayam.
25. I am not manifest to all (as I am), being veiled by the Yoga Maya. This deluded world does not know Me, the unborn and imperishable.
Vedaaham samateetaani vartamaanaani chaarjuna;
Bhavishyaani cha bhootani maam tu veda na kashchana.
Bhavishyaani cha bhootani maam tu veda na kashchana.
26. I know, O Arjuna, the beings of the past, the present and the future, but no one knows Me.
Icchaadweshasamutthena dwandwamohena bhaarata;
Sarvabhootaani sammoham sarge yaanti parantapa.
Sarvabhootaani sammoham sarge yaanti parantapa.
27. By the delusion of the pairs of opposites arising from desire and aversion, O Bharata, all beings are subject to delusion at birth, O Parantapa!
Yeshaam twantagatam paapam janaanaam punyakarmanaam;
Te dwandwamohanirmuktaa bhajante maam dridhavrataah.
Te dwandwamohanirmuktaa bhajante maam dridhavrataah.
28. But those men of virtuous deeds whose sins have come to an end, and who are freed from the delusion of the pairs of opposites, worship Me, steadfast in their vows.
Jaraamaranamokshaaya maamaashritya yatanti ye;
Te brahma tadviduh kritsnam adhyaatmam karma chaakhilam.
Te brahma tadviduh kritsnam adhyaatmam karma chaakhilam.
29. Those who strive for liberation from old age and death, taking refuge in Me, realise in full that Brahman, the whole knowledge of the Self and all action.
Saadhibhootaadhidaivam maam saadhiyajnam cha ye viduh;
Prayaanakaale’pi cha maam te vidur yuktachetasah.
Prayaanakaale’pi cha maam te vidur yuktachetasah.
30. Those who know Me with the Adhibhuta (pertaining to the elements), the Adhidaiva (pertaining to the gods), and Adhiyajna (pertaining to the sacrifice), know Me even at the time of death, steadfast in mind.
COMMENTARY: They who are steadfast in mind, who have taken refuge in Me, who know Me as knowledge of elements on the physical plane, as knowledge of gods on the celestial or mental plane, as knowledge of sacrifice in the realm of sacrifice,—they are not affected by death.
Hari Om Tat Sat
Iti Srimad Bhagavadgeetaasoopanishatsu Brahmavidyaayaam
Yogashaastre Sri Krishnaarjunasamvaade
Jnaanavijnaanayogo Naama Saptamo’dhyaayah
Iti Srimad Bhagavadgeetaasoopanishatsu Brahmavidyaayaam
Yogashaastre Sri Krishnaarjunasamvaade
Jnaanavijnaanayogo Naama Saptamo’dhyaayah
Thus in the Upanishads of the glorious Bhagavad Gita, the science of the Eternal, the scripture of Yoga, the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, ends the seventh discourse entitled:
“The Yoga of Wisdom and Realisation”
Swami Sivananda.
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https://youtu.be/Gjks33ciNtQ
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Commentary on the Bhagavadgita
by Swami Krishnananda
Discourse 19: The Seventh Chapter Begins – Transcending the Sankhya
Yesterday we briefly summed up the first six chapters of the Bhagavadgita that were previously covered. We noticed that the emphasis is particularly on self-discipline—or rather, to put it in a more technical way, the emphasis is on self-integration in the different levels of the operation of the human psyche.
Now, what happens after the expected goal of self-integration is reached by way of direct restraint of the senses and the mind, and meditation as per the suggestions given in the Sixth Chapter? Meditation on what? There is not much detail on this subject in the first six chapters. There was a reference to the Atman towards the end of the Fifth Chapter, and this continues throughout the Sixth Chapter: ātmanyeva vaśaṁ nayet (6.26). This has been reiterated several times. The restraint of the mind and the senses is intended for the purpose of achieving Self-identity—the establishment of consciousness in the Atman. We have heard this word ‘Atman’ a number of times, but in the Sixth Chapter the Bhagavadgita does not go into detail as to what this Atman is, though it says that it is immortal and it is pervading everything.
From the Seventh Chapter onwards, we enter into a new field of observation and study—namely, the encounter of the individual with the cosmic purpose. Very little of the cosmos is mentioned in the first six chapters other than a reference to the three gunas of prakriti, etc., in the Third Chapter. But a direct onslaught, as it were, on this great subject of the Universal Being having an organic connection with the individual, and God being the Creator of the world, did not receive adequate emphasis. “Do this.” “Do not do this.” “Restrain yourself.” We heard this many a time in the first six chapters.
From the Seventh Chapter onwards, the Supreme Lord assumes an important position. In the first six chapters, Sri Krishna speaks as an instructor, as a mentor, as a good guide—a friend, philosopher and guide, as it is said. Now he speaks in a different tone altogether, as a representative of the Almighty Himself. He is no more a teacher of the ordinary type. He is not a simple friend of Arjuna or a philosopher par excellence, but is God Himself speaking. He is the mouthpiece of the Almighty. Therefore, the ideas of “Come to Me. Resort to Me. Be intent on Me. Depend on Me. Surrender yourself to Me,” are more prominently emphasised from the Seventh Chapter onwards. God speaks as the mighty originator of the cosmos, and the be-all and the end-all of all things. Thus, we enter into the field of true religion—spirituality, we may say—from the Sixth Chapter onwards. From the beginning until the Sixth Chapter, we were in the field of psychology mostly—the constituency of the inner psyche and its modus operandi in relation to the gunas of prakriti, and more properly, the way of right action in human society.
Here is something which is directly religious, in the sense that we come in direct contact with God Who speaks to us face to face, as it were. Mayyāsaktamanāḥ pārtha yogaṁ yuñjan madāśrayaḥ, asaṁśayaṁ samagraṁ māṁ yathā jñāsyasi tac chṛṇu (7.1): “O Arjuna! When you are devoted to Me, intent on Me only”—mayyāsaktamanāḥ—“and for the purpose of uniting yourself with Me, you practise yoga, what happens to you? You attain to a total experience and you will know Me in totality.” That is to say, God speaks to the individual represented by Arjuna as the specimen of mankind and says, “You shall know Me in totality.” Samagraṁ: “You will not know Me merely as your protector and guide. You will not know Me merely as the Creator of the cosmos. You will know Me in totality, which includes whatever you can conceive in your mind.” Samagraṁ māṁ yathā jñāsyasi: “How will you know Me in totality? I shall now tell you.”
Jñānaṁ te’haṁ savijñānam idaṁ vakṣyāmyaśeṣataḥ, yaj jñātvā neha bhūyo’nyaj jñātavyam avaśiṣyate(7.2): “After having heard what I am going to tell you, there will be nothing left for you to know. Vijnana and jnana, both I shall place before you.” In commentaries of the Bhagavadgita, the interpreters vary in the meaning they give to the words ‘vijnana’ and ‘jnana’. The Amarakosha, the famous dictionary of Sanskrit, says mokshe dhirjnanam anyatra vijnanam silpasastrayoh: When you are endowed with the wisdom of the Ultimate Reality which is moksha, that wisdom is called jnana; and vijnana is the arts and the sciences of the world, such as architecture, sculpture, etc.—vijnanam silpasastrayoh. But Acharya Sankara and certain other teachers say vijnana is the direct experience of what one has already known through jnana, or what may be called lower knowledge.
Reference to two kinds of knowledge—apara vidya and para vidya—is also made in the Mundaka Upanishad. These days we consider the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, Atharvaveda, Itihasa, Purana, Siksha and other Angas, or auxiliaries of the Vedas, as the highest form of learning; but here this learning, which we adore as the highest possible reach, is considered as lower knowledge. Atha parā yayā tad akṣaram adhigamyate (M.U. 1.1.5): That is called para vidya, or Supreme Knowledge, through which we directly enter into the imperishable Reality of the cosmos. We may become enlightened by the study of the Vedas or the Puranas or the Itihasas or other scriptures, but that knowledge is not adequate to enable us to enter the imperishable Reality. Merely knowing about it is not enough. Lord Krishna says, “I shall tell you both these things—that which is helpful to you as analytical knowledge of the structure of the cosmos, and also that which will directly take you to Me, the Supreme Being.”
Manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye, yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ (7.3). Millions of people live in this world. Do they all want God? Very few even think of God. They very rarely put forth any effort in the direction of knowing and realising God. There is a small percentage of humanity who want God, and they would very much like to practise yoga for the sake of the realisation of God; but among those who strive, even ardently, all may not reach God. Yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ: “Even among those who devoutly seek Me—even among those—only very few really do reach Me.” How difficult it is! The difficulty in contacting God is stated here briefly: manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye, yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ.
The cosmological principles which God created, as it were, at the time of His willing this cosmos are now mentioned briefly along the lines of the Sankhya, and also the Vedanta. We heard something about the Sankhya when we studied the Second and Third Chapters. The Sankhya enumerates the categories of the constituents of prakriti, and says that there is a purusha that superintends over all the activities of prakriti as an immutable universal consciousness. Somehow or the other, Sankhya falls into the chasm of the duality of purusha and prakriti. It is not possible for Sankhya to bring about a unity between consciousness and matter.
Even today we cannot easily say what the relationship between consciousness and matter is; and psychologists are in the dark as to the relationship between mind and body. Does the body determine the mind, or does the mind determine the body? When we have a mental shock, the body is affected. Or if we swallow poison, the mind is affected. So interiorly they seem to be interconnected. But what is the meaning of ‘interconnection’? Who causes this connection between mind and body? This question is still being raised in psychological circles. The principles of Sankhya, which enumerate the constituents of prakriti, are very highly informative knowledge indeed, but we are still left in the dark as to what connection purusha has with prakriti. What happens to us when we attain Self-realisation? Where does the prakriti stand at that time? Prakriti is supposed to be there permanently—eternal, never dying. Is prakriti still eternally there even after Self-realisation? If that is the case, will the Self-realised entity be conscious of prakriti?
These are the difficulties that Sankhya poses before us. When we realise the Universal purusha—‘Universal’ is to be underlined, which means to say all-pervading and existing everywhere—and we are established in that Universal Consciousness which is supposed to be liberation even according to the Sankhya, where is the stance of prakriti? If the purusha knows prakriti, then it is in contact with prakriti, and that is bondage. The whole point is that consciousness should not be in contact with prakriti. The moment it comes in contact with prakriti, it enters into the state of bondage; but if we say that purusha is not conscious of prakriti, it is not omniscient. So here is a snag in the Sankhya philosophy, which the Bhagavadgita gradually gets over as it proceeds.
Bhūmir āpo’nalo vāyuḥ khaṁ mano buddhir eva ca, ahaṁkāra itīyaṁ me bhinnā prakṛtir aṣṭadhā (7.4): “My prakriti, the material out of which I have created this cosmos, can be classified under eight principles.” Earth, water, fire, air, and ether are five well-known physical elements; they are known as bhūmir āpo’nalo vāyuḥ khaṁ. These are the gross manifestations of the subtle substances behind them, which are known as tanmatras: sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa and gandha. These five elements are the principal building bricks of the cosmos. Then there is the mind, which is the subtle, rarefied matter which reflects consciousness through it as a mirror reflects one’s face. Then there is buddhiwhich understands, decides, and logically concludes, and ahamkara which is self-conscious. So earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and egoism are the eight categories out of which the whole cosmos has been manufactured, as it were, by God.
Apareyam itas tvanyāṁ prakṛtiṁ viddhi me parām, jīvabhūtāṁ mahābāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat (7.5): “What I have mentioned to you up to this time as the eightfold constituents of the cosmos are lower categories; but there is something which is higher—through which, by which, I sustain the cosmos.” It is not enough if we have only these categories, just as building material does not make the building. It has to be synthesised, organised, given a living touch by a mason or an architect; only then the building material becomes a house to live in. So, all these that have been mentioned as the eight constituents are the building bricks of the cosmos. They are the material. But who will build the house? “I myself build it by entering into it as the mason, as it were, and giving life to it.” Unless there is a cohesive force, there cannot be the coming together of the discrete items which are prakriti’s constituents.
As cement is necessary to bring together all the bricks into a coherent structure, something is necessary to bring all these eight things into a state of harmony and unity of purpose, as they themselves cannot achieve it. Here there is earth, here there is water, here there is fire, but it does not make a cosmos—just as here we have bone, here we have flesh, here we have blood, but it does not make a human being. There is something else in man, other than his anatomy or physiology, which makes him a man, a human being. Man is not anatomy and physiology. There is something else in him, and it is called humanity. That is the life principle which gives value to the physical structure of the body. In the same way as cement holds the bricks together and the building does not crumble, there is something which gives value to the elements of the cosmos. Jīvabhūtāṁ mahābāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat: “I become the cosmic jiva. I, as the jiva tattva of the cosmos, the vitality of the cosmos, keep all these elements in unison so that you see a universe rather than chaos.” We do not see building material spread out everywhere; we see a structure beautifully placed before us as this wondrous creation—grand, very systematic, working as methodically and precisely as mathematics.
Science is able to predict certain consequences of present contingencies in nature on account of there being a mathematical precision and positivity in the working of nature. “If we do this now, tomorrow this will happen to us”—and this also applies morally, ethically, socially and medically because there is a connection between the present condition and the future condition of the body and the mind. As there cannot be a connection unless there is a vital principle, Lord Krishna says, “I myself act as the cosmic vitality.” Here jīvabhūta does not mean the ordinary, individual jiva; it means the cosmic jiva. This cosmic jiva tattva has been given various names in the different schools of thought. Vedanta generally calls these stages of the entry of God into the materials of creation as Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat. God enters through these gradations. The Atman enters this body and gives it life through the karana sarira, sukshma sarira, etc. In the same way, the cosmos becomes a living organic entity, beautiful to look at and meaningful in every way, when the Universal Consciousness enters into it. Hence, that higher principle is a greater prakriti than the eight lower ones mentioned earlier.
Etadyonīni bhūtāni sarvāṇītyupadhāraya, ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā (7.6). “You may consider all these things to be instrumental in the production of the cosmos. They are everything. Whatever you touch, whatever you feel, whatever you see in this universe is just these eight principles operating with My help, as I invisibly animate the whole cosmos. But, finally, I shall tell you I am everything. I can dismantle this universe if I wish, and if I withdraw Myself from the universal structure, it will crumble and fall like an old house whose cement has deteriorated. But I am very active and do not allow the universe to disintegrate into bits of matter. I shall tell you the truth.” Ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā: “I am the origin and the sustenance of the whole universe. I not only created this and brought it into being, but I also maintain it. I created the universe with My will, and I sustain it as My own Soul.”
This body is sustained by the entry of the soul into the mind, intellect, etc. We are physically alive because of the Atman inside. That Atman does not directly interfere with the bodily structure. It works incidentally, successively through its permeation in the three koshas—the mind, intellect, and prana—in the same way as the cosmic structure is also maintained through certain gradations and subtleties of the descent of the one God.
In the Panchadasi and other Vedantic scriptures, much is told to us about the way in which Brahman becomes Ishvara, Ishvara becomes Hiranyagarbha, Hiranyagarbha becomes Virat. The illustration given in the Sixth Chapter of the Panchadasi is that Brahman is like a clean cloth. Ishvara is like the very same cloth stiffened with starch. The painter cannot paint directly on the cloth. The cloth must first be stiffened. Starch is applied to the cloth—that is, the cloth assumes a concretised form, as it were. It is not the pure cloth that it was, but the cloth is still there as the base. Without the cloth, there cannot be the starchiness; but without the starch, the cloth cannot be a good background for any painting. Similarly, there cannot be a movie in a cinema without the screen. Though we are not going to the cinema to see the screen, we know very well how important the screen is. The painting on the canvas is very attractive indeed and we go on looking at it, but we never think of the background on which the painting has been made. We never recognise its existence, just as we do not think of the building’s foundation when we look at it.
This foundation is the cloth, and it gradually stiffens itself into a will to create, just as the cloth is stiffened by the application of starch. That stiffened form, which is the will of Brahman, as they call it, is Ishvara-tattva. Then what does the painter do? After the cloth is stiffened with starch, he draws an outline of the picture that he will paint; with a pencil or a slight touch of ink, he draws an outline. This outline of the universe which is not yet fully manifest is Hiranyagarbha. We have a faint idea as to what will be the character of the universe that is going to be created, even as by seeing the pencil drawing, we can know what the painter is actually going to paint. The full painting is the Virat. The drawing on the canvas is filled with ink of various colours, and then we have the beautiful picture of the painting. This is the Virat—the whole cosmos looking so beautiful, the finest and the most complete manifestation of that which was only an outline in Hiranyagarbha, and which was only the will to create in Ishvara, with Brahman as the background. Ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā.
The cloth can say that it is the entire painting because without it there would be no painting at all. Though we see only the painting and do not appreciate or even think of the cloth on which it is made, where would the painting be without the cloth? In the same way, Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat—this beautiful creation that we see—cannot exist if there is no universal background, which is Brahman. Brahman is totally invisible as is the cloth behind the painting, but it is very, very substantial; and without it, nothing can be. Therefore, Lord Krishna says, “I am everything. I am the origin and the sustenance of this cosmos.”
Mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanaṁjaya (7.7). Very emphatically the Lord says, “Nothing outside Me can exist, not even this universe.” He becomes very bold now and even transcends the universe by saying, “Even this universe that I have been describing to you cannot be there without Me; and higher than Me, nothing can be.” Parataraṁ can mean ‘external to Me’ or ‘higher than Me’. “Beyond Me, there is nothing. Outside Me, there is nothing. There is nothing either as the fourteen worlds, the gods in heaven or what is called prakriti; nothing of that kind can be outside Me.”
Now the Sankhya has been transcended. The Purusha Supreme is speaking: “Prakriti cannot be outside Me.” But the Sankhya says that prakriti is immortal, that it is as indestructible as purushaitself. If that is the case, there is a predicament regarding the relationship between consciousness and matter, purusha and prakriti, which is transcended here in the Vedanta of the Bhagavadgita. “I transcend everything, even prakriti, and it cannot exist without Me. It cannot even be outside Me, let alone without Me.” If that is the case, if the whole cosmos is not outside God, then it is permeated by the immanence of God, and every atom in the cosmos dances with the power of the Soul which it assumes from the Almighty Himself: mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanaṁjaya.
Mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ sūtre maṇigaṇā iva: “As beads are strung on a thread, the whole universe is strung on Me.” The beads cannot become a garland or a mala unless there is a thread. “There would be no cohesion, no principle, no meaning, no future, and no sense in anything if there was no thread underneath to connect the little bits of creation. I am that thread—the Supreme Soul—and, therefore, I am everything.”
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Yesterday we briefly summed up the first six chapters of the Bhagavadgita that were previously covered. We noticed that the emphasis is particularly on self-discipline—or rather, to put it in a more technical way, the emphasis is on self-integration in the different levels of the operation of the human psyche.
Now, what happens after the expected goal of self-integration is reached by way of direct restraint of the senses and the mind, and meditation as per the suggestions given in the Sixth Chapter? Meditation on what? There is not much detail on this subject in the first six chapters. There was a reference to the Atman towards the end of the Fifth Chapter, and this continues throughout the Sixth Chapter: ātmanyeva vaśaṁ nayet (6.26). This has been reiterated several times. The restraint of the mind and the senses is intended for the purpose of achieving Self-identity—the establishment of consciousness in the Atman. We have heard this word ‘Atman’ a number of times, but in the Sixth Chapter the Bhagavadgita does not go into detail as to what this Atman is, though it says that it is immortal and it is pervading everything.
From the Seventh Chapter onwards, we enter into a new field of observation and study—namely, the encounter of the individual with the cosmic purpose. Very little of the cosmos is mentioned in the first six chapters other than a reference to the three gunas of prakriti, etc., in the Third Chapter. But a direct onslaught, as it were, on this great subject of the Universal Being having an organic connection with the individual, and God being the Creator of the world, did not receive adequate emphasis. “Do this.” “Do not do this.” “Restrain yourself.” We heard this many a time in the first six chapters.
From the Seventh Chapter onwards, the Supreme Lord assumes an important position. In the first six chapters, Sri Krishna speaks as an instructor, as a mentor, as a good guide—a friend, philosopher and guide, as it is said. Now he speaks in a different tone altogether, as a representative of the Almighty Himself. He is no more a teacher of the ordinary type. He is not a simple friend of Arjuna or a philosopher par excellence, but is God Himself speaking. He is the mouthpiece of the Almighty. Therefore, the ideas of “Come to Me. Resort to Me. Be intent on Me. Depend on Me. Surrender yourself to Me,” are more prominently emphasised from the Seventh Chapter onwards. God speaks as the mighty originator of the cosmos, and the be-all and the end-all of all things. Thus, we enter into the field of true religion—spirituality, we may say—from the Sixth Chapter onwards. From the beginning until the Sixth Chapter, we were in the field of psychology mostly—the constituency of the inner psyche and its modus operandi in relation to the gunas of prakriti, and more properly, the way of right action in human society.
Here is something which is directly religious, in the sense that we come in direct contact with God Who speaks to us face to face, as it were. Mayyāsaktamanāḥ pārtha yogaṁ yuñjan madāśrayaḥ, asaṁśayaṁ samagraṁ māṁ yathā jñāsyasi tac chṛṇu (7.1): “O Arjuna! When you are devoted to Me, intent on Me only”—mayyāsaktamanāḥ—“and for the purpose of uniting yourself with Me, you practise yoga, what happens to you? You attain to a total experience and you will know Me in totality.” That is to say, God speaks to the individual represented by Arjuna as the specimen of mankind and says, “You shall know Me in totality.” Samagraṁ: “You will not know Me merely as your protector and guide. You will not know Me merely as the Creator of the cosmos. You will know Me in totality, which includes whatever you can conceive in your mind.” Samagraṁ māṁ yathā jñāsyasi: “How will you know Me in totality? I shall now tell you.”
Jñānaṁ te’haṁ savijñānam idaṁ vakṣyāmyaśeṣataḥ, yaj jñātvā neha bhūyo’nyaj jñātavyam avaśiṣyate(7.2): “After having heard what I am going to tell you, there will be nothing left for you to know. Vijnana and jnana, both I shall place before you.” In commentaries of the Bhagavadgita, the interpreters vary in the meaning they give to the words ‘vijnana’ and ‘jnana’. The Amarakosha, the famous dictionary of Sanskrit, says mokshe dhirjnanam anyatra vijnanam silpasastrayoh: When you are endowed with the wisdom of the Ultimate Reality which is moksha, that wisdom is called jnana; and vijnana is the arts and the sciences of the world, such as architecture, sculpture, etc.—vijnanam silpasastrayoh. But Acharya Sankara and certain other teachers say vijnana is the direct experience of what one has already known through jnana, or what may be called lower knowledge.
Reference to two kinds of knowledge—apara vidya and para vidya—is also made in the Mundaka Upanishad. These days we consider the Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda, Atharvaveda, Itihasa, Purana, Siksha and other Angas, or auxiliaries of the Vedas, as the highest form of learning; but here this learning, which we adore as the highest possible reach, is considered as lower knowledge. Atha parā yayā tad akṣaram adhigamyate (M.U. 1.1.5): That is called para vidya, or Supreme Knowledge, through which we directly enter into the imperishable Reality of the cosmos. We may become enlightened by the study of the Vedas or the Puranas or the Itihasas or other scriptures, but that knowledge is not adequate to enable us to enter the imperishable Reality. Merely knowing about it is not enough. Lord Krishna says, “I shall tell you both these things—that which is helpful to you as analytical knowledge of the structure of the cosmos, and also that which will directly take you to Me, the Supreme Being.”
Manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye, yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ (7.3). Millions of people live in this world. Do they all want God? Very few even think of God. They very rarely put forth any effort in the direction of knowing and realising God. There is a small percentage of humanity who want God, and they would very much like to practise yoga for the sake of the realisation of God; but among those who strive, even ardently, all may not reach God. Yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ: “Even among those who devoutly seek Me—even among those—only very few really do reach Me.” How difficult it is! The difficulty in contacting God is stated here briefly: manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu kaścid yatati siddhaye, yatatām api siddhānāṁ kaścin māṁ vetti tattvataḥ.
The cosmological principles which God created, as it were, at the time of His willing this cosmos are now mentioned briefly along the lines of the Sankhya, and also the Vedanta. We heard something about the Sankhya when we studied the Second and Third Chapters. The Sankhya enumerates the categories of the constituents of prakriti, and says that there is a purusha that superintends over all the activities of prakriti as an immutable universal consciousness. Somehow or the other, Sankhya falls into the chasm of the duality of purusha and prakriti. It is not possible for Sankhya to bring about a unity between consciousness and matter.
Even today we cannot easily say what the relationship between consciousness and matter is; and psychologists are in the dark as to the relationship between mind and body. Does the body determine the mind, or does the mind determine the body? When we have a mental shock, the body is affected. Or if we swallow poison, the mind is affected. So interiorly they seem to be interconnected. But what is the meaning of ‘interconnection’? Who causes this connection between mind and body? This question is still being raised in psychological circles. The principles of Sankhya, which enumerate the constituents of prakriti, are very highly informative knowledge indeed, but we are still left in the dark as to what connection purusha has with prakriti. What happens to us when we attain Self-realisation? Where does the prakriti stand at that time? Prakriti is supposed to be there permanently—eternal, never dying. Is prakriti still eternally there even after Self-realisation? If that is the case, will the Self-realised entity be conscious of prakriti?
These are the difficulties that Sankhya poses before us. When we realise the Universal purusha—‘Universal’ is to be underlined, which means to say all-pervading and existing everywhere—and we are established in that Universal Consciousness which is supposed to be liberation even according to the Sankhya, where is the stance of prakriti? If the purusha knows prakriti, then it is in contact with prakriti, and that is bondage. The whole point is that consciousness should not be in contact with prakriti. The moment it comes in contact with prakriti, it enters into the state of bondage; but if we say that purusha is not conscious of prakriti, it is not omniscient. So here is a snag in the Sankhya philosophy, which the Bhagavadgita gradually gets over as it proceeds.
Bhūmir āpo’nalo vāyuḥ khaṁ mano buddhir eva ca, ahaṁkāra itīyaṁ me bhinnā prakṛtir aṣṭadhā (7.4): “My prakriti, the material out of which I have created this cosmos, can be classified under eight principles.” Earth, water, fire, air, and ether are five well-known physical elements; they are known as bhūmir āpo’nalo vāyuḥ khaṁ. These are the gross manifestations of the subtle substances behind them, which are known as tanmatras: sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa and gandha. These five elements are the principal building bricks of the cosmos. Then there is the mind, which is the subtle, rarefied matter which reflects consciousness through it as a mirror reflects one’s face. Then there is buddhiwhich understands, decides, and logically concludes, and ahamkara which is self-conscious. So earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and egoism are the eight categories out of which the whole cosmos has been manufactured, as it were, by God.
Apareyam itas tvanyāṁ prakṛtiṁ viddhi me parām, jīvabhūtāṁ mahābāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat (7.5): “What I have mentioned to you up to this time as the eightfold constituents of the cosmos are lower categories; but there is something which is higher—through which, by which, I sustain the cosmos.” It is not enough if we have only these categories, just as building material does not make the building. It has to be synthesised, organised, given a living touch by a mason or an architect; only then the building material becomes a house to live in. So, all these that have been mentioned as the eight constituents are the building bricks of the cosmos. They are the material. But who will build the house? “I myself build it by entering into it as the mason, as it were, and giving life to it.” Unless there is a cohesive force, there cannot be the coming together of the discrete items which are prakriti’s constituents.
As cement is necessary to bring together all the bricks into a coherent structure, something is necessary to bring all these eight things into a state of harmony and unity of purpose, as they themselves cannot achieve it. Here there is earth, here there is water, here there is fire, but it does not make a cosmos—just as here we have bone, here we have flesh, here we have blood, but it does not make a human being. There is something else in man, other than his anatomy or physiology, which makes him a man, a human being. Man is not anatomy and physiology. There is something else in him, and it is called humanity. That is the life principle which gives value to the physical structure of the body. In the same way as cement holds the bricks together and the building does not crumble, there is something which gives value to the elements of the cosmos. Jīvabhūtāṁ mahābāho yayedaṁ dhāryate jagat: “I become the cosmic jiva. I, as the jiva tattva of the cosmos, the vitality of the cosmos, keep all these elements in unison so that you see a universe rather than chaos.” We do not see building material spread out everywhere; we see a structure beautifully placed before us as this wondrous creation—grand, very systematic, working as methodically and precisely as mathematics.
Science is able to predict certain consequences of present contingencies in nature on account of there being a mathematical precision and positivity in the working of nature. “If we do this now, tomorrow this will happen to us”—and this also applies morally, ethically, socially and medically because there is a connection between the present condition and the future condition of the body and the mind. As there cannot be a connection unless there is a vital principle, Lord Krishna says, “I myself act as the cosmic vitality.” Here jīvabhūta does not mean the ordinary, individual jiva; it means the cosmic jiva. This cosmic jiva tattva has been given various names in the different schools of thought. Vedanta generally calls these stages of the entry of God into the materials of creation as Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat. God enters through these gradations. The Atman enters this body and gives it life through the karana sarira, sukshma sarira, etc. In the same way, the cosmos becomes a living organic entity, beautiful to look at and meaningful in every way, when the Universal Consciousness enters into it. Hence, that higher principle is a greater prakriti than the eight lower ones mentioned earlier.
Etadyonīni bhūtāni sarvāṇītyupadhāraya, ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā (7.6). “You may consider all these things to be instrumental in the production of the cosmos. They are everything. Whatever you touch, whatever you feel, whatever you see in this universe is just these eight principles operating with My help, as I invisibly animate the whole cosmos. But, finally, I shall tell you I am everything. I can dismantle this universe if I wish, and if I withdraw Myself from the universal structure, it will crumble and fall like an old house whose cement has deteriorated. But I am very active and do not allow the universe to disintegrate into bits of matter. I shall tell you the truth.” Ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā: “I am the origin and the sustenance of the whole universe. I not only created this and brought it into being, but I also maintain it. I created the universe with My will, and I sustain it as My own Soul.”
This body is sustained by the entry of the soul into the mind, intellect, etc. We are physically alive because of the Atman inside. That Atman does not directly interfere with the bodily structure. It works incidentally, successively through its permeation in the three koshas—the mind, intellect, and prana—in the same way as the cosmic structure is also maintained through certain gradations and subtleties of the descent of the one God.
In the Panchadasi and other Vedantic scriptures, much is told to us about the way in which Brahman becomes Ishvara, Ishvara becomes Hiranyagarbha, Hiranyagarbha becomes Virat. The illustration given in the Sixth Chapter of the Panchadasi is that Brahman is like a clean cloth. Ishvara is like the very same cloth stiffened with starch. The painter cannot paint directly on the cloth. The cloth must first be stiffened. Starch is applied to the cloth—that is, the cloth assumes a concretised form, as it were. It is not the pure cloth that it was, but the cloth is still there as the base. Without the cloth, there cannot be the starchiness; but without the starch, the cloth cannot be a good background for any painting. Similarly, there cannot be a movie in a cinema without the screen. Though we are not going to the cinema to see the screen, we know very well how important the screen is. The painting on the canvas is very attractive indeed and we go on looking at it, but we never think of the background on which the painting has been made. We never recognise its existence, just as we do not think of the building’s foundation when we look at it.
This foundation is the cloth, and it gradually stiffens itself into a will to create, just as the cloth is stiffened by the application of starch. That stiffened form, which is the will of Brahman, as they call it, is Ishvara-tattva. Then what does the painter do? After the cloth is stiffened with starch, he draws an outline of the picture that he will paint; with a pencil or a slight touch of ink, he draws an outline. This outline of the universe which is not yet fully manifest is Hiranyagarbha. We have a faint idea as to what will be the character of the universe that is going to be created, even as by seeing the pencil drawing, we can know what the painter is actually going to paint. The full painting is the Virat. The drawing on the canvas is filled with ink of various colours, and then we have the beautiful picture of the painting. This is the Virat—the whole cosmos looking so beautiful, the finest and the most complete manifestation of that which was only an outline in Hiranyagarbha, and which was only the will to create in Ishvara, with Brahman as the background. Ahaṁ kṛtsnasya jagataḥ prabhavaḥ pralayas tathā.
The cloth can say that it is the entire painting because without it there would be no painting at all. Though we see only the painting and do not appreciate or even think of the cloth on which it is made, where would the painting be without the cloth? In the same way, Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat—this beautiful creation that we see—cannot exist if there is no universal background, which is Brahman. Brahman is totally invisible as is the cloth behind the painting, but it is very, very substantial; and without it, nothing can be. Therefore, Lord Krishna says, “I am everything. I am the origin and the sustenance of this cosmos.”
Mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanaṁjaya (7.7). Very emphatically the Lord says, “Nothing outside Me can exist, not even this universe.” He becomes very bold now and even transcends the universe by saying, “Even this universe that I have been describing to you cannot be there without Me; and higher than Me, nothing can be.” Parataraṁ can mean ‘external to Me’ or ‘higher than Me’. “Beyond Me, there is nothing. Outside Me, there is nothing. There is nothing either as the fourteen worlds, the gods in heaven or what is called prakriti; nothing of that kind can be outside Me.”
Now the Sankhya has been transcended. The Purusha Supreme is speaking: “Prakriti cannot be outside Me.” But the Sankhya says that prakriti is immortal, that it is as indestructible as purushaitself. If that is the case, there is a predicament regarding the relationship between consciousness and matter, purusha and prakriti, which is transcended here in the Vedanta of the Bhagavadgita. “I transcend everything, even prakriti, and it cannot exist without Me. It cannot even be outside Me, let alone without Me.” If that is the case, if the whole cosmos is not outside God, then it is permeated by the immanence of God, and every atom in the cosmos dances with the power of the Soul which it assumes from the Almighty Himself: mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanaṁjaya.
Mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ sūtre maṇigaṇā iva: “As beads are strung on a thread, the whole universe is strung on Me.” The beads cannot become a garland or a mala unless there is a thread. “There would be no cohesion, no principle, no meaning, no future, and no sense in anything if there was no thread underneath to connect the little bits of creation. I am that thread—the Supreme Soul—and, therefore, I am everything.”
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Discourse 20: The Seventh Chapter Continues – The Glory of God and His CreationA- A+ 
God assumes a glorified form through the personality of the great incarnation Bhagavan Sri Krishna. “I am all. Surrender yourself to Me.” These statements are actually the statements of the Supreme, Who is revealed in the personality of Bhagavan Sri Krishna. In future, wherever the word ‘I’ is used by the great Master, we should be careful to note as to who this ‘I’ is. “Come unto Me all who are weary and heavy laden,” said Christ—‘me’ with a capital M.
Vṛṣṇīnāṁ vāsudevosmi (10.37) is told in the Tenth Chapter: “I am Vasudeva among the Vrishnis.” This statement could not have been made by Krishna himself. Somebody else was speaking. It was the personality of Nara-Narayana incarnated as Bhagavan Sri Krishna and Arjuna, the spokesmen of the Supreme Absolute. The Eternal spoke through the personality of Bhagavan Sri Krishna. It is the Supreme Brahman, the Absolute that said, “I am the all.” It was said, “Outside Me nothing can be, higher than Me nothing exists, external to Me nothing can be real.” Mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanaṁjaya, mayi sarvam idaṁ protaṁ sūtre maṇigaṇā iva (7.7): “As beads are strung on a thread, the whole universe is strung on Me. I remain as the connecting Soul of all particulars.”
The details of the varieties of manifestation that we shall read in the Tenth Chapter are briefly premonitioned, as it were, in the verses that follow. We will find that the succeeding chapters are something like a commentary on the preceding one. “I am the taste in water.” Water is the embodiment, but the taste in the water is God’s presence: raso’aham apsu kaunteya prabhāsmi śaśisūryayoḥ (7.8). The radiance that we experience as emanating from the sun is a shadow, as it were, cast by the Supreme Absolute Sun. It is said in the Vedas, yasya chāyā amritaṁ yasya mrityuḥ: “Immortality is a shadow cast by the Absolute, and death is another shadow that is cast by It.” The highest conception of liberation that we may have in our minds falls short of what it really is.
It is described in the Moksha Dharma Parva of the Mahabharata that when Narada went to have darshan of Narayana in Vaikuntha, he saw a vast Cosmic Being who said, “You are seeing only an illusion. My reality is something else.” Even the cosmic being-ness of the Absolute is considered as peripheral to its essential nature. All light comes from It. All taste, all sensibility, all understanding, all feeling, anything that is of any worthwhile nature in the world, whatever significance we can see anywhere—any meaning whatsoever in life—is an emanation from that Supreme Being.
Raso’aham apsu kaunteya prabhāsmi śaśisūryayoḥ, praṇavaḥ sarvavedeṣu. Pranava is Omkara, Om. In the Manusmriti it is said that Brahma expanded the three letters A, U and M that constitute Omkara into the three metres of the Gayatri mantra. The three feet of the Gayatri mantra are the expanded forms of the three components of Omkara—A, U, M. The three sections of the Purusha Sukta of the Veda are further expansions of the three feet of the Gayatri mantra. The three Vedas—Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda—are further expansions of the three sections of the Purusha Sukta. If we extract the essence of the three Vedas, we will get the Purusha Sukta. If we extract the essence of the Purusha Sukta, we will get the Gayatri mantra. If we extract the meaning of the Gayatri mantra, we will get pranava, which is the seed.
There was no Veda in the Krita Yuga; pranava was the Veda in the Krita Yuga. The Veda did not manifest itself in its present form in the Treta Yuga also, because the present form of the Vedas is nothing but the classifications made by Veda Vyasa Krishna Dvaipayana, who was a contemporary of Bhagavan Sri Krishna in the Dvapara Yuga. Perhaps in the earlier cycles of creation, the exposition of the great Truth in words or in detailed forms of expression was not felt necessary. Therefore, Sri Krishna says, “Essentially I am the Omkara—the supreme vibration which gradually became concretised into the visible universe.”
That pure vibration is the unimaginable continuum, which is originally nothing but motion and force. Even according to modern science, there is only motion and force—vibration, as it were—trying to get condensed into tangible substances finer than even atoms, which gradually descend into more grosser forms of molecules, cells, organisms, and the huge cosmos of physical elements. “The origin of all things I am, and the exposition of it is here in the form of pranava. The supreme vibration that caused the whole cosmos is Me; and the vibration emanated from My will, the central will of Ishvara.”
Śabdaḥ khe: The reverberation of sound that is caused by space when we make any sound anywhere is also caused by the universal existence of Ishvara in space itself. Otherwise, there would not be a reverberation of sound; it would be only inside our ears. Pauruṣaṁ nṛṣu: The heroism, the strength, the virility, the energy that people feel in themselves, that also comes from God. It does not come merely from the food that we eat, because thrusting food into a corpse will not give it energy. The vitality that is necessary for the body to digest food and make it its own comes from Vaisvanara Agni, which is the universal fire. Pacāmyannaṁ caturvidham (15.14): “I digest your fourfold food working as the cosmic fire, Vaisvanara Agni, in the stomach.”
The energy content in the cosmos, the energy quantum in any person, in anything whatsoever—even the energy of the elephant or the lion—is a manifestation of that immaculate, immeasurable energy, the shakti of Brahman. Puṇyo gandhaḥ pṛthivyāṁ (7.9): The fragrance of the flower and the beautiful scent from things in the world are components of the earth. The space principle, akasha, has only one quality: the production and reverberation of sound. Air has two qualities: in the form of wind it can make sound, and also it can be felt by us. Space cannot be felt. We can only see it as an expanse that is the cause and the reverberation of sound. Fire not only makes sound and we can feel it, but it also has colour, which air does not have. So as we come down, the number of qualities increases by one. Thus, there is only sound in space; there is sound and touch in air; there is sound, touch, and colour in fire; there is sound, touch, colour, and taste in water; and there is sound, touch, colour, taste and smell in earth. “The smell which is in anything that is formed of earth, even in the highest rarefied form in a flower—it is My presence in it that gives life to things in the form of the fragrance.”
Tejaś cāsmi vibhāvasau: “The brilliance of the sun is My brilliance.” The sun’s light is borrowed light. Na tatra sūryo bhāti (Katha 2.2.15): In that Supreme Light of lights, the sun does not shine. The sun’s light is like darkness before that Supreme Radiance. Of all the light that we can think of, we can think of only sunlight as the greatest. They say that there are stars which are bigger than the sun, more brilliant that the sun, towards which the entire galaxy is moving. All these things are unthinkable. We cannot even dream of what those stars could be in their majesty of largeness and radiance—eighty thousand times more than the sun; and countless millions of times more brilliant is the brilliance of God. We can only speak like this, but we cannot know what it actually means. It is something beyond our conception because however much we go on glorifying the Light of lights, we still confine ourselves only to the light of the sun. The best we can do is to multiply the quantity of the sunlight in order that we may have an idea of what that great Light is. But the spiritual Light is not merely an expansion in quantum; it is also qualitatively more intense. We are not fit even to think what it is: tejaś cāsmi vibhāvasau.
Jīvanaṁ sarvabhūteṣu: “The vitality, the very life-principle in all things is Myself.” Tapaś cāsmi tapasviṣu: The energy that we produce by sense control, mental control and tapasya is an intensified expression of the energy of God. The more are we self-controlled, the more is the chance of the energy of God entering into us. The senses and the mind, which go in the direction of objects outside, do not permit the entry of the universal energy into our personality and, therefore, we do not feel strong. We become weak by decay and old age. The more is our capacity to withdraw the energy that gets depleted through the sense organs and the mind, the greater is the quantum of energy that is held in us. Tapas shakti, or the power of yoga—the energy of the sages who can bless us or curse us—is nothing but the enhanced entry of God-energy into us through tapas. “That energy of tapas is Myself,” says the Almighty.
Bījaṁ māṁ sarvabhūtānāṁ viddhi pārtha sanātanam (7.10): “I am the origin, the seed of all things. Whatever be the diversity that you see in this world—milk is different from stone, mango is different from sand, water is different from honey—whatever be the difference visible to the eyes and to your sensory experience, the seed of all these so-called diversifications is Me alone.” We are told that things differ in their chemical composition on account of the atomic particles differing in their number and velocity. If the number and the velocity of the atoms in milk change, it can become poison; and if the number and the velocity of the atoms in poison are either increased or decreased as would be required, it can become milk. Nectar can become poison and poison can become nectar by the permutation and combination of the inner components. In science, they are called atomic particles. Whatever be the diversity that we see in this world—varieties of fruit, honey, the fragrance of beautiful things—can we imagine they all come from the sun, which is a blazing mass of atomic energy? There must be some miracle working in the blazing heat of the sun where everything must be in a potential form—else nothing could be on earth, which has come from it. So everything is there in an unimaginable form, in the seed of all things. Bījaṁ māṁ sarvabhūtānāṁ viddhi pārtha sanātanam: “Know Me as the eternal seed of all things, in all variety or diversity.”
Buddhir buddhimatām asmi: If we have intelligence, it is a ray of the light that is emanating from God’s brilliance. An intelligent person is more sattvic than an unintelligent person in the sense that the buddhi of the intelligent person is less dominated by rajas and tamas and, therefore, the Atman’s light can shine through in the sattvic intellect of an intelligent person. The intelligence quotient of a person—the IQ, as it is called these days—is dependent entirely on the extent of the Atman’s light that can be reflected through the buddhi. The intellect is only a vehicle, like a mirror. It itself does not think and understand, as a mirror does not shine unless there is light. The light has to come from the Atman within through the three koshas, but that cannot happen if rajas and tamas cloud the intellect. Thus, an intelligent person, a genius, a great scholar, a highly learned person with great insight—such a person has the blessing of embodying in his own or her own intellect the mighty wisdom of God. Buddhir buddhimatām asmi: “The intelligence of the intelligent is My consciousness—the Supreme Intelligence, jnana, that is reflected there through the intellects of people.”
Tejas tejasvinām aham: The valour of people, the zest that we feel, the enthusiasm that we have, the vigour that we manifest in our daily activity, the indomitable power that we sometimes manifest, and the indefatigability with which we manifest our capacity to work—they come from God.
Balaṁ balavatāṁ cāhaṁ (7.11): Whoever has got tremendous strength, that strength comes from the permeation of the cosmic energy through the body by the permutation and combination of physical particles or cells of the person. The more we are free from kama and raga, the stronger will we be. The more are we infested with desire or kama and raga, attachment and desire, the weaker will we be in our memory, in our mind, in our understanding, in our intellect, and in our body. Strength, even physical strength, can be seen to be superior in its manifestation in tapasvins than in bhogis, or indulgent persons. When people indulge too much through the sense organs, the mind and the sentiments become weak. Only the self-controlled are really strong. They are indefatigable. There is a divine shakti operating in strong people, the strength coming from tapas, or the freedom that one has from raga, dvesha, kama, raga. The greater is the desire to indulge in the sense organs, in the objects of sense and in the attachment to things, the weaker we become. The less is the attachment and the desire of the senses to plunge into activity and contact things, the less is the sense activity. The greater the energy inside, the stronger we become, and we will never be tired.
Kāmarāgavivarjitam, dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu kāmo’asmi bharatarṣabha: We desire always That. There are varieties of desires within That. A desire which is not opposed to dharma is an evocation from God Himself. If God were not present in some form in our desires, we would not have even the desire to attain God. When the desire gets diversified and split into fragments, as it were, when it passes through the sense organs, it becomes contaminated by the vicious forces of centrifugality; and that becomes a binding medium for the individual manifesting such a desire in an externalised form. If the desire is integrating—if it is a desire to unselfishly serve people in the world, a desire to study the scriptures, a desire to sit alone and meditate, a desire to be alone to oneself and not be in the midst of people, a desire to unite oneself with the Cosmic Being—these also are desires, but they are in consonance with the dharma, or the unifying principle, of the cosmos. “Such desires are Myself manifesting through you.” This is not the type of desire that is mentioned in the previous line as depleting our energy and decreasing our strength. Dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu kāmo’asmi bharatarṣabha. Dharma, artha, kama and moksha are the four objectives of life; and when they are blended in the proper proportion, they become the energy that is necessary for us to rocket forth to the Supreme Absolute.
Ye caiva sātvikā bhāvā rājasās tāmasāś ca ye, matta eveti tān viddhi na tvahaṁ teṣu te mayi (7.12): “Even the good things and the bad things seem to be really there due to My presence in them in some positive or negative manner.” People say that the world is unreal, that it does not exist. There cannot be a consciousness of the non-existence of the world unless it exists in some form, because if the world is not there at all, there is no necessity for us to say it does not exist. We have a suspicion that it exists and, therefore, we say it does not exist. If it is really not there, why should we go on saying it does not exist? Even appearance cannot appear to us unless there is a reality behind it, as a snake cannot appear unless there is a rope on which it appears. The world may be an appearance, but how do we know that it is an appearance unless there is a reality behind it? Appearance per se cannot be known at all as an appearance. The knowledge of there being such a thing as an appearance implies that the appearance contacts reality, and it shines in borrowed feathers.
The qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas are the activities of prakriti—which correspond to light or radiance, desire, and torpidity of nature—and are various degrees of the manifestation of the Supreme Absolute. For instance, the Absolute exists in stone. Stone exists. It is. This is-ness, or the existence of stone, is due to the existence of something behind it—the be-ness, as we call it. Stone exists, but it cannot think. There is no consciousness in it. It cannot even know that it exists. The existence aspect of the Absolute is manifest in inanimate things like stone. The life principle, which is vitality, is manifest in plants and trees, which breathe and feel hunger and thirst. The consciousness aspect in a translucent—not transparent—form manifests itself in animals in the form of instinct; and in a more perspicuous way, consciousness, chit, manifests itself in the intelligence of the human being.
Thus, in the process of evolution, existence gradually becomes consciousness. But bliss is not fully manifest in the human individual. We have existence, we have consciousness, but we are not happy people. That is because our consciousness is mixed with a little of rajas and tamas. We are overactive in an externalised sense, taking the world as a total reality that is external to us. This causes distraction of the mind and senses to such an extent that the integral bliss of the Absolute cannot manifest itself in us. Thus the human being, though called the image of God, is only an image to some extent in the existence and the consciousness aspects. The consciousness in the human being is distracted, so full insight is not available, and the bliss is completely obliterated. The bliss aspect of the Absolute is manifest in some way in the deep sleep state, where the mind and the sense organs do not operate. How can we be so happy in the condition of deep sleep, which is uncontaminated by the powers of the senses and the mind, and where we have no food to eat, no friends to talk to, no world to think of, and nothing whatsoever? In that state we are practically annihilated, and the bliss of that self-annihilation far supersedes all the best conceivable happiness of even an emperor. All these things can be found in great detail in the Panchadasi.
Therefore, whether these manifestations are sattvic, rajasic or tamasic, or even the so-called evil things in the world, they can exist only if there is an existent aspect to them. Evil cannot exist unless God’s existence permeates it. The distortion that is the characteristic of the outer form of it makes it evil or a sin, but it cannot be unless the be-ness of God is at the back of it. Ye caiva sātvikā bhāvā rājasās tāmasāś ca ye.
Api ced asi pāpebhyaḥ sarvebhyaḥ pāpakṛttamaḥ (4.36): “Whatever is sattvic, whatever is rajasic, and whatever is the worst of things conceivable, it manifests from Me. I am at the back of it. I am the destructive power also.”
Matta eveti tān viddhi na tvahaṁ teṣu te mayi: “Know that everything—sattva, rajas, tamas, and all their permutations and combinations—manifests from Me. They are in Me, but I am not in them.” Existence-consciousness is present in name and form, but name and form is not in existence. The variety is in the unity, but the unity is not in the variety. The integrality is present in the diversity, but the diversity is not in the integrality. God is in all things, but things are not in God. This is a peculiarity which we have to note when God says, “Everything is in Me, but I am not in anything.” This is because all particulars hang on the Universal. The particulars cannot exist unless the Universal is there, but the Universal can exist without the particulars. Hence, “Everything is in Me, but I am not in them”—na tv ahaṁ teṣu te mayi.
Tribhir guṇamayair bhāvair ebhiḥ sarvam idaṁ jagat, mohitaṁ nābhijānāti mām ebhyaḥ param avyayam(7.13): “I am above the three gunas. Deluded and confounded by the dominance of sattva, rajas and tamas, which characterise the fourteen realms of existence, the entire creation is confounded because of the preponderance of the three gunas; but they do not know Me, and even the gods in heaven cannot know Me.”
Devair atrāpi vicikitsitam purā, na hi suvijñeyam, aṇur eṣa dharmaḥ (Katha 1.1.21): Yama, the great Lord, speaks to Nachiketas, “The gods in heaven cannot understand what you are expecting from me, and you want it to be given to you so easily.” Aham ādir hi devānāṁ (10.2): “The gods cannot know. I am prior to even the gods. I am the origin of even the gods and, therefore, how can the gods know? How can people who came much later know Me? Because of My transcendence, the divisions of the world, which are the particulars or the individuals, cannot know Me.” That which is the transcendent cannot be known by that which is subsumed under this transcendence. The higher can know the lower, but the lower cannot know the higher. God knows all things, but things cannot know God.
Daivī hyeṣā guṇamayī mama māyā duratyayā (7.14): Divine is this power of delusion which we generally call maya. It is nothing but the operation of the three gunas. The trigunas are the so-called maya. The power of the action of the gunas of prakriti—sattva, rajas and tamas—blinds our vision completely. The gunas blind us completely, and it is not easy for anyone to overcome them. We cannot overcome them because our very personality is constituted of the three gunas. Who are we to overcome them? The body, the mind and the sense organs, which are our property and our asset and our very existence, so-called, as we are constituted of them—how can we overcome them unless there is a power that is above what we are constituted of? Mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te: “You cannot overcome these three gunas until you resort to Me.”
This point can be illustrated by the action of a fishing net. The fisherman throws the net far away from him, and fish which are far away are caught by net; but those fish near the feet of the fisherman are not caught. The nearer is the fish to the feet of the fisherman, the less is the chance of it being caught. The farther it is, the greater the chance of it being caught. So, do not go away from God. Catch hold of His feet. Once we take resort at the feet of the Almighty, maya vanishes like mist before the sun. But if we try to overcome these three gunas with our own personal effort minus the grace of the Almighty, it will not work.
In a sense, we may say there is a power that is more than what we can conceive in this world, and only that power is the final resting place for us. It is the resort of all people. We must surrender ourselves completely and abolish our egos, and not project our intellectual, physical or mental powers too much—because, after all, these powers that we manifest through our individuality are the compositions of sattva, rajas and tamas. We must abolish the individuality itself in our self-surrender to God. “Those who come to Me in that way transcend maya and the three gunas.” Mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te: Unless we resort to God’s feet, there is no way of escape from the clutches of the three gunas. Human effort alone is not sufficient.
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Discourse 21: The Seventh Chapter Continues – The Gospel of Universal Religion
The glory of God and His creation is the subject of the Seventh Chapter, as we have been noticing; and the basic principles of a universal religion are laid down in this chapter and in the Ninth Chapter particularly, which we shall read later on. It is not possible to have contact with God if one’s eyes are blinded by the operation of the three gunas of prakriti, which are also known as maya.
Na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ, māyayāpahṛtajñānā āsuraṁ bhāvam āśritāḥ (7.15): “Dominated by the asuric prakriti of rajas and tamas, blinded by the power of the sense organs running in the direction of objects, conscious only of the external world of matter and knowing nothing of the higher values of life, such people cannot know Me.” They cannot have an insight into the Almighty’s supra-conscious existence.
The Bhagavadgita says that there are four kinds of devotees, who approach God for various purposes. Caturvidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ sukṛtino’rjuna, ārto jijñāsur arthārthī jñānī ca bharatarṣabha(7.16): When we are in distress, when we are in a state of utter poverty, when we are in a dying condition, when we are suffering from an incurable disease, when we are harassed up to the point of death, and when there is no help coming from anywhere and sorrow is hanging on our heads like a Damocles’ sword, we cry to God for help. These are one kind of devotee: they love God and cry to God because they are in grief, and they want God to redress all the sorrows in which they are sunk. Perhaps if they were well off—very healthy, wealthy, and all was well with them in this world—the idea of resorting to God might not have arisen in their minds. Nevertheless, God is very kind, compassionate and so gracious as to accept that even these people are His devotees, though they have come to Him only for material gains in the sense that they want only redressal of sorrow, and if they are free from sorrow they shall be highly satisfied. Artha is a person who is in grief, in a state of distress socially, politically, physically, mentally—in whatever way. A distressed person crying for God is a kind of devotion which is specific and unique in itself.
There are other devotees who do not cry for God to remove their suffering in the world. They are the jijnasu—those who want wisdom of life. Learning sometimes evokes a desire to worship Saraswati and such other goddesses. Those who want power, domination and might worship Lord Siva and such other gods, and so on. Those who are jijnasus are lovers of knowledge—of insight into the reality of things. We may even say they are lovers of spiritual knowledge. They crave that God should bless them with this wondrous wisdom.
It is described in the Devi Mahatmya that there were two devotees of Devi. One was a king and the other a Vaisya, a trader. When Devi appeared before them and asked them what boon they wished for, the king said, “I want to regain my kingdom, which I have lost.” But the Vaisya said, “I want wisdom of life.” Devi blessed both of them with the purpose for which they had worshipped her. Hence, there are devotees who are jijnasus—who want wisdom, knowledge, acumen, intelligence, genius, and spiritual realisation, and for that purpose they worship God.
There is a third kind of devotee, designated here as artharthi. Commentators have interpreted this word in various ways, because artha means an object of material satisfaction. These devotees want material gains—wealth, prosperity in this world socially or even politically; they want to gain earthly suzerainty. Maybe they even want to become kings and emperors, presidents and so on. These people who want the highest pitch of material glory are also devotees of God.
Artha means material value. But some interpreters of the Bhagavadgita feel that here, perhaps, arthahas some other meaning, because there appears to be a gradual ascent in the sequence of the devotional spirit that is mentioned; and as a jnani is supposed to be the best, he would be mentioned last. The distressed is mentioned first, and the one who seeks knowledge is supposed to be the second. Naturally, we cannot say that the seeker of knowledge is inferior to the one who asks for redressal of sorrow. So there seems to be a superiority of the grade of devotion in each succeeding stage, especially as the last one is supposed to be the best. Thus, we should infer from this sequence that the third type, which is artharthi, cannot be a person who seeks material gains, because that would be inferior to the previous type, who seeks knowledge. Therefore, artharthi has been interpreted by others as one who seeks the fulfilment of the purusharthas of life. The supreme aims of existence are called purusharthas, consisting of dharma, artha, kama and moksha. Those who have a longing to blend these supreme values of life in their practical existence for the purpose of ultimate liberation may be considered to be artharthis—that is, purusha artharthis—superior even to those who seek knowledge. But—there is a ‘but’—God considers all these devotees as dear to Him in some way because they resort to Him. Even if a child cries, it is listened to and the proper response is given.
“One in distress seeks Me. Merely because he seeks Me, I consider him as My devotee, whatever be the motive behind it. Those who are in search of knowledge also seek Me. Those who are in need of material gain, or the purusharthas, also want something from Me. The whole point is, these people want something from Me. The distressed ones want Me to free them from sorrow. That is, they are using Me as a kind of instrument to free them from sorrow.” Those who want knowledge also consider God as an instrument for gaining knowledge. The other type also uses God as an instrument. They do not consider God as the ultimate aim. If we want anything from God—from God, through God, utilising God for the achievement of a purpose—we certainly consider that purpose as superior to God Himself. We are using God as an instrument in the fulfilment of our desires, whatever those desires be—even the most glorious of desires, the love for wisdom. We are asking God to give us wisdom, as if God Himself is not equal to that. But the Lord says that the jnaniis the best of the devotees because he does not want anything from God. He has ceased to have any kind of expectation from the world, and does not have any kind of ulterior motive. The devotee who wants only God, and wants nothing from God or through God, is the jnani. Anybody who wants something from God or through God is a lesser devotee.
Udārāḥ sarva evaite (7.18). “All are good. I am pleased with them,” says the Lord. “But I consider the jnani as the supreme because he does not expect anything from Me. He wants only Me.” Do we not think that the giver of boons is greater than the boons themselves? So how is it that we are so foolish as to expect boons from God, not knowing that God is greater than all the boons that He can give? Only a jnani knows that. “I consider the jnani as the best of My devotees, because he loves Me as his own self.” If I love you as my own self, that is showing a greater affection to you than showing my affection in any other way, such as by way of material gifts, by good words, by hospitality. Nothing that I can do for you or give to you is real affection in comparison with that affection which considers my self as your self and your self as my self. The identity of souls is the highest of devotion, and is the highest that we can expect from anybody in this world. The unity of one with the other is the highest friendship. Two friends cannot be real friends unless they are merged into a single soul. If they are two souls, they are ultimately not reliable friends. They will not be friends in need, because each one has his own soul and he has not merged his soul with the other. Even if the friends appear to be inseparable, if each one has his own egoistic individuality by maintaining his own individual soul, he will not be a good friend. He will desert you one day or the other.
Paul and Peter were very great friends. They were very close. One day when they were in the forest, a bear pursued them and wanted to pounce on them. Paul climbed to the top of a tree to save himself. Peter did not know how to climb. He lay down on the ground and held his breath as if he was dead, because he heard it said that animals do not attack corpses, they attack only living beings. Even lions do not eat what they themselves have not killed. The bear came and sniffed Peter in the ear and in the nose, and concluded that he was not a living being. It went away.
When the bear left, Paul came down and humorously asked, “What was the bear whispering in your ear, my dear friend?”
Peter replied, “It whispered to me, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ You simply climbed the tree, leaving me alone here.”
The son of a king and the son of a minister were close friends; they were inseparable. They ate together, walked together, talked together and slept together. They were always together. The public felt that their friendship was very dangerous because one day one boy would become the king and the other boy would become the minister, and their closeness would not make for a good government. There must be some difference between the minister and the king. What is the use of having a minister if he is equal to a king, and what is the use of having a king if he is equal to a minister? Everybody felt that the two boys should be separated, but could not think of how, as they were always together.
One man had a brainwave and said, “I shall separate them in a minute.”
The two boys were going for a walk, hand in hand. “Gentlemen!” he said and called the minister’s son, “Please, come just for a minute. There is something that I want to tell you.”
When the boy came, the man whispered in his ear, “One paddy contains only one grain of rice.”
“Eh!” the boy said. “This is all that you want to tell me?” And he went back.
Then the king’s son asked, “What did he say?”
“Eh! Stupid! He said that one paddy contains only one grain of rice,” replied the boy.
“No, it cannot be,” said the king’s son. “A man will not call you to secretly tell you that. You are not telling me the truth.”
Immediately the two boys were separated and their friendship was ended. They would not talk to each other after that.
Here is a mystery. Anybody who expects anything from God is not as dear to God as the one who wants God only. Vidura expressed his love to Sri Krishna and forgot himself completely in total communion with the Master. In the Bible there is the story of Mary and Martha. When Christ went to their house, Mary just sat at his feet and did not ask him what he wanted. She did not offer even water or extend any kind of expected hospitality; she just sat. Martha was very busy cooking food and whatnot. She was not conscious of the presence of Christ but was conscious of the preparations that she was making for the honoured guest, whereas Mary sat still and did not offer even a drop of water. “Martha, you are too busy with things,” Christ told her. Similarly, we may be too busy with things, and that is not what God expects from us. We have to be busy only with Him, and not busy with anything other than Him.
Udārāḥ sarva evaite. God’s kindness is greater than anybody else’s kindness. Most merciful is God that He considers even the littlest devotion to be a very wonderful thing. Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to be so kind to people. He considered even the blabbering of a child to be a great lecture and presented the child with a tin of biscuits, praising the wonderful lecture, even though the child was just babbling nonsense. If anyone danced, even with crooked movements, it was praised as a wonderful dance, and a present was given. And if anyone sang, even with a hoarse voice and without any melody, they were given a present of a tin of biscuits and fruit. That is, encouragement was given in every line which a person wanted to pursue, even in the smallest, humblest way.
Draupadi cried to God because she was in distress, and her cry was immediately responded to. She was not asking for knowledge, she was not thinking of the purusharthas, nor was she thinking of communion with God. She was in intense distress, unimaginable distress; and there was an immediate response. So even the lowest category of devotion calls God with equal force as do the higher types of devotion. The way of God is a very great mystery indeed. He says the jnani is the best, which implies that the others are naturally the second and the third categories, but He responded immediately to the call of Draupadi. Instantaneous, timeless action was taken, even if she did not fall into our definition of a jnani. So God’s ways, only God knows. We cannot say anything about His wonderful ways.
However, Lord Krishna says teṣāṁ jñānī nityayukta ekabhaktir viśiṣyate: “Because of his unstinted, concentrated, whole-souled, communion-like devotion to Me, I consider the jnani as the best. The jnani is Me and I am the jnani, whereas other devotees stand apart, as they are individuals expecting something from God.” Teṣāṁ jñānī nityayukta ekabhaktir viśiṣyate, priyo hi jñānino’tyartham ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ (7.17): “I am dearest to the jnani, and the jnani is dearest to Me”—because what can be dearer than the self? If we love the self of God as our own self and God loves us as His own self, there is a communion of the so-called two into a single existence. That love is the greatest love which needs no object before it. That love is the greatest which does not want any kind of recompense. That love is not love which expects a response from the beloved. “If I love you, then you should also love me; but if I have no response from you in spite of my affection for you, then you are not worthy of my affection.” This kind of affection is no affection. The soul has to commune with the soul, and this happens only in the case of jnana and not in the other cases, notwithstanding the fact that God is immensely merciful to consider even a child like Prahlada or Dhruva to be as great a devotee as Suka, Vyasa or Vasishtha.
Udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tv ātmaiva me matam, āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā mām evānuttamāṁ gatim (7.18): “All these devotees that I mentioned are very good people, yet he stands first who is a jnani, who is Me and is inseparable from Me.” He who considers nothing else as the goal of life except God Himself, who day in and day out plants God in the heart of his own personality, who feels God in the soul of his own self, who implants the Universal in his particular individuality and thus melts his individuality into the Cosmic Universality, who exists as the Universal Soul itself in meditation and experience—that person is a jnani. He is veritably God Himself. We can call him a jivanmukta, if we like.
It is very difficult to achieve this kind of devotion. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ (7.19): It is difficult to love God. The love of things is so attractive, so promising and rewarding that the invisible God may not be as attractive to the senses. We take a series of incarnations—millions of births—to come to the human level, and then only is it possible for an individual to think in terms of pros and cons, and entertain logical judgments, which is not available in the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. After taking many an incarnation and passing through many bodies of various species, we become human beings. Even as human beings, it is not easy for everybody to reach God because there are categories of human beings. There are demoniacal human beings, selfish human beings, cut-throat human beings, tit-for-tat human beings, so they are not in a position to attain God. It is a blessed one who has polished his personality through austerity, by means of the practice of the various stages of yoga in the different incarnations that he has taken. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante: “After the completion of many, many lives—then only the jnani attains to Me as the only goal, resorts to Me as the only purpose in life.”
Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ: Such a person is indeed rare in this world who has the conviction that God is all, that Narayana is all, Vasudeva is all, the Almighty is all. Such a conviction cannot arise in ordinary people. After many millions of births, such a conviction may arise. The sense organs will not play havoc with that person who knows in an integral manner that God is all, because their feeling and understanding merge into a kind of intuition; and then there is no use of expecting anything from this world. “The world merges in God as I myself also merge in God.” Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ.
Sri Aurobindo said that when the British put him in prison due to a bombing and he was summoned by the magistrate, suddenly in the courtroom he had the vision of Narayana. He saw the police as Sri Krishna, Narayana. He saw the magistrate as Narayana. He saw the doors, the windows and the iron bars as Narayana. Everything was Narayana shining everywhere, and even the prosecutor was Narayana. Narayana was flooding the entire court, right from the policemen and the prosecutor to the magistrate sitting there. He mentions this experience in a beautiful and powerful style in his speech called the Uttarapara speech. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ. Such an experience is rare.
Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā(7.20): “Not knowing Me as the All, people resort to so many gods.” The ‘so many gods’ are to be considered as influxes and emanations of the Supreme Being. We may worship Ganesha, Devi, Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Vishnu, Siva, Surya, Kartikeya, Skanda, or any god, provided we do not consider them as individual gods standing independently in their own sphere; otherwise, we will receive from them a blessing that is completely limited. A limited god can bless us only in a limited way. There is no harm in worshipping these gods, but we should consider them as a hand or a finger of the one Almighty. Whether it is Siva or Vishnu or Christ or Buddha or Mohammed or anyone, they are facets of the single crystal of the Supreme Being. Any facet of the crystal reflects the whole crystal. Therefore, there is no harm in worshipping individual gods. But if we consider them as independent gods—Mohammed is different from Christ, Christ is different from Krishna, Krishna is different from Devi, and they have no connection with one another, we want something from Devi and something else from Krishna—if that is the case, we will get what we want.
Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ: With desires which are discrete and diversified in nature, people run to all sorts of divinities—a stone, a snake, a tree, a symbol, a diagram. Everything is a god for a person with desires of various types. Such people who have multifarious desires of a rajasic and perhaps a tamasic nature and who worship varieties of divinities independently, as it were, will have their own result granted to them. Taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā: “In My ordinance, I have arranged that these people also shall be given whatever they want.” If we ask for a handful, we will get only a handful. If we ask for a bucketful, we will get a bucketful, and if we ask for the whole earth, we will get the whole earth. But we will get only what we want, not more than that.
There was a person who wanted that any thought that arose in his mind should materialise, and he was blessed with that boon. Whenever he thought something, it would materialise. He was very happy, and felt that now the whole world was under his control. He sat under a tree and thought: “Let there be mangoes on the tree.” Immediately mangoes dropped from the tree. “Let there be cool water for me to drink,” and immediately cool water flowed in front. “Let there be many servants to massage my feet,” and servants came. “Let me have a good bed to lie down on and rest,” and a bed immediately appeared. While he was lying down, he thought: “This is a forest. Suppose a tiger pounces on me, what will happen?” Immediately a tiger came and pounced on him, and he was finished. This is what happens if we have desires which are not controlled by real knowledge, wisdom. Therefore, we should not propitiate small deities in order to fulfil petty desires when we have the great Master who can grant us all that we want with His oceanic mercy. Anyway, in His goodness and mercy He says: “Even if the little gods are worshipped, you will get something. Don’t bother yourself.” Immensely merciful is God. He knows the futility of our efforts and the foolishness of our worships, but in spite of that He says, “I’ll give you what you want.” So kind is God!
Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā: The universal religion of the equality of worship and the equality of the vision of all faiths, cults and creeds is a way to God. Whatever be the way in which we approach the Ultimate Reality, that is a religion, no matter how devious and circuitous that way may be, provided we are conscious that every other path also equally leads to the same goal and all religions merge into a single religion of man’s desire for God. This is the gospel of universal religion.
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The glory of God and His creation is the subject of the Seventh Chapter, as we have been noticing; and the basic principles of a universal religion are laid down in this chapter and in the Ninth Chapter particularly, which we shall read later on. It is not possible to have contact with God if one’s eyes are blinded by the operation of the three gunas of prakriti, which are also known as maya.
Na māṁ duṣkṛtino mūḍhāḥ prapadyante narādhamāḥ, māyayāpahṛtajñānā āsuraṁ bhāvam āśritāḥ (7.15): “Dominated by the asuric prakriti of rajas and tamas, blinded by the power of the sense organs running in the direction of objects, conscious only of the external world of matter and knowing nothing of the higher values of life, such people cannot know Me.” They cannot have an insight into the Almighty’s supra-conscious existence.
The Bhagavadgita says that there are four kinds of devotees, who approach God for various purposes. Caturvidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ sukṛtino’rjuna, ārto jijñāsur arthārthī jñānī ca bharatarṣabha(7.16): When we are in distress, when we are in a state of utter poverty, when we are in a dying condition, when we are suffering from an incurable disease, when we are harassed up to the point of death, and when there is no help coming from anywhere and sorrow is hanging on our heads like a Damocles’ sword, we cry to God for help. These are one kind of devotee: they love God and cry to God because they are in grief, and they want God to redress all the sorrows in which they are sunk. Perhaps if they were well off—very healthy, wealthy, and all was well with them in this world—the idea of resorting to God might not have arisen in their minds. Nevertheless, God is very kind, compassionate and so gracious as to accept that even these people are His devotees, though they have come to Him only for material gains in the sense that they want only redressal of sorrow, and if they are free from sorrow they shall be highly satisfied. Artha is a person who is in grief, in a state of distress socially, politically, physically, mentally—in whatever way. A distressed person crying for God is a kind of devotion which is specific and unique in itself.
There are other devotees who do not cry for God to remove their suffering in the world. They are the jijnasu—those who want wisdom of life. Learning sometimes evokes a desire to worship Saraswati and such other goddesses. Those who want power, domination and might worship Lord Siva and such other gods, and so on. Those who are jijnasus are lovers of knowledge—of insight into the reality of things. We may even say they are lovers of spiritual knowledge. They crave that God should bless them with this wondrous wisdom.
It is described in the Devi Mahatmya that there were two devotees of Devi. One was a king and the other a Vaisya, a trader. When Devi appeared before them and asked them what boon they wished for, the king said, “I want to regain my kingdom, which I have lost.” But the Vaisya said, “I want wisdom of life.” Devi blessed both of them with the purpose for which they had worshipped her. Hence, there are devotees who are jijnasus—who want wisdom, knowledge, acumen, intelligence, genius, and spiritual realisation, and for that purpose they worship God.
There is a third kind of devotee, designated here as artharthi. Commentators have interpreted this word in various ways, because artha means an object of material satisfaction. These devotees want material gains—wealth, prosperity in this world socially or even politically; they want to gain earthly suzerainty. Maybe they even want to become kings and emperors, presidents and so on. These people who want the highest pitch of material glory are also devotees of God.
Artha means material value. But some interpreters of the Bhagavadgita feel that here, perhaps, arthahas some other meaning, because there appears to be a gradual ascent in the sequence of the devotional spirit that is mentioned; and as a jnani is supposed to be the best, he would be mentioned last. The distressed is mentioned first, and the one who seeks knowledge is supposed to be the second. Naturally, we cannot say that the seeker of knowledge is inferior to the one who asks for redressal of sorrow. So there seems to be a superiority of the grade of devotion in each succeeding stage, especially as the last one is supposed to be the best. Thus, we should infer from this sequence that the third type, which is artharthi, cannot be a person who seeks material gains, because that would be inferior to the previous type, who seeks knowledge. Therefore, artharthi has been interpreted by others as one who seeks the fulfilment of the purusharthas of life. The supreme aims of existence are called purusharthas, consisting of dharma, artha, kama and moksha. Those who have a longing to blend these supreme values of life in their practical existence for the purpose of ultimate liberation may be considered to be artharthis—that is, purusha artharthis—superior even to those who seek knowledge. But—there is a ‘but’—God considers all these devotees as dear to Him in some way because they resort to Him. Even if a child cries, it is listened to and the proper response is given.
“One in distress seeks Me. Merely because he seeks Me, I consider him as My devotee, whatever be the motive behind it. Those who are in search of knowledge also seek Me. Those who are in need of material gain, or the purusharthas, also want something from Me. The whole point is, these people want something from Me. The distressed ones want Me to free them from sorrow. That is, they are using Me as a kind of instrument to free them from sorrow.” Those who want knowledge also consider God as an instrument for gaining knowledge. The other type also uses God as an instrument. They do not consider God as the ultimate aim. If we want anything from God—from God, through God, utilising God for the achievement of a purpose—we certainly consider that purpose as superior to God Himself. We are using God as an instrument in the fulfilment of our desires, whatever those desires be—even the most glorious of desires, the love for wisdom. We are asking God to give us wisdom, as if God Himself is not equal to that. But the Lord says that the jnaniis the best of the devotees because he does not want anything from God. He has ceased to have any kind of expectation from the world, and does not have any kind of ulterior motive. The devotee who wants only God, and wants nothing from God or through God, is the jnani. Anybody who wants something from God or through God is a lesser devotee.
Udārāḥ sarva evaite (7.18). “All are good. I am pleased with them,” says the Lord. “But I consider the jnani as the supreme because he does not expect anything from Me. He wants only Me.” Do we not think that the giver of boons is greater than the boons themselves? So how is it that we are so foolish as to expect boons from God, not knowing that God is greater than all the boons that He can give? Only a jnani knows that. “I consider the jnani as the best of My devotees, because he loves Me as his own self.” If I love you as my own self, that is showing a greater affection to you than showing my affection in any other way, such as by way of material gifts, by good words, by hospitality. Nothing that I can do for you or give to you is real affection in comparison with that affection which considers my self as your self and your self as my self. The identity of souls is the highest of devotion, and is the highest that we can expect from anybody in this world. The unity of one with the other is the highest friendship. Two friends cannot be real friends unless they are merged into a single soul. If they are two souls, they are ultimately not reliable friends. They will not be friends in need, because each one has his own soul and he has not merged his soul with the other. Even if the friends appear to be inseparable, if each one has his own egoistic individuality by maintaining his own individual soul, he will not be a good friend. He will desert you one day or the other.
Paul and Peter were very great friends. They were very close. One day when they were in the forest, a bear pursued them and wanted to pounce on them. Paul climbed to the top of a tree to save himself. Peter did not know how to climb. He lay down on the ground and held his breath as if he was dead, because he heard it said that animals do not attack corpses, they attack only living beings. Even lions do not eat what they themselves have not killed. The bear came and sniffed Peter in the ear and in the nose, and concluded that he was not a living being. It went away.
When the bear left, Paul came down and humorously asked, “What was the bear whispering in your ear, my dear friend?”
Peter replied, “It whispered to me, ‘A friend in need is a friend indeed.’ You simply climbed the tree, leaving me alone here.”
The son of a king and the son of a minister were close friends; they were inseparable. They ate together, walked together, talked together and slept together. They were always together. The public felt that their friendship was very dangerous because one day one boy would become the king and the other boy would become the minister, and their closeness would not make for a good government. There must be some difference between the minister and the king. What is the use of having a minister if he is equal to a king, and what is the use of having a king if he is equal to a minister? Everybody felt that the two boys should be separated, but could not think of how, as they were always together.
One man had a brainwave and said, “I shall separate them in a minute.”
The two boys were going for a walk, hand in hand. “Gentlemen!” he said and called the minister’s son, “Please, come just for a minute. There is something that I want to tell you.”
When the boy came, the man whispered in his ear, “One paddy contains only one grain of rice.”
“Eh!” the boy said. “This is all that you want to tell me?” And he went back.
Then the king’s son asked, “What did he say?”
“Eh! Stupid! He said that one paddy contains only one grain of rice,” replied the boy.
“No, it cannot be,” said the king’s son. “A man will not call you to secretly tell you that. You are not telling me the truth.”
Immediately the two boys were separated and their friendship was ended. They would not talk to each other after that.
Here is a mystery. Anybody who expects anything from God is not as dear to God as the one who wants God only. Vidura expressed his love to Sri Krishna and forgot himself completely in total communion with the Master. In the Bible there is the story of Mary and Martha. When Christ went to their house, Mary just sat at his feet and did not ask him what he wanted. She did not offer even water or extend any kind of expected hospitality; she just sat. Martha was very busy cooking food and whatnot. She was not conscious of the presence of Christ but was conscious of the preparations that she was making for the honoured guest, whereas Mary sat still and did not offer even a drop of water. “Martha, you are too busy with things,” Christ told her. Similarly, we may be too busy with things, and that is not what God expects from us. We have to be busy only with Him, and not busy with anything other than Him.
Udārāḥ sarva evaite. God’s kindness is greater than anybody else’s kindness. Most merciful is God that He considers even the littlest devotion to be a very wonderful thing. Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj used to be so kind to people. He considered even the blabbering of a child to be a great lecture and presented the child with a tin of biscuits, praising the wonderful lecture, even though the child was just babbling nonsense. If anyone danced, even with crooked movements, it was praised as a wonderful dance, and a present was given. And if anyone sang, even with a hoarse voice and without any melody, they were given a present of a tin of biscuits and fruit. That is, encouragement was given in every line which a person wanted to pursue, even in the smallest, humblest way.
Draupadi cried to God because she was in distress, and her cry was immediately responded to. She was not asking for knowledge, she was not thinking of the purusharthas, nor was she thinking of communion with God. She was in intense distress, unimaginable distress; and there was an immediate response. So even the lowest category of devotion calls God with equal force as do the higher types of devotion. The way of God is a very great mystery indeed. He says the jnani is the best, which implies that the others are naturally the second and the third categories, but He responded immediately to the call of Draupadi. Instantaneous, timeless action was taken, even if she did not fall into our definition of a jnani. So God’s ways, only God knows. We cannot say anything about His wonderful ways.
However, Lord Krishna says teṣāṁ jñānī nityayukta ekabhaktir viśiṣyate: “Because of his unstinted, concentrated, whole-souled, communion-like devotion to Me, I consider the jnani as the best. The jnani is Me and I am the jnani, whereas other devotees stand apart, as they are individuals expecting something from God.” Teṣāṁ jñānī nityayukta ekabhaktir viśiṣyate, priyo hi jñānino’tyartham ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ (7.17): “I am dearest to the jnani, and the jnani is dearest to Me”—because what can be dearer than the self? If we love the self of God as our own self and God loves us as His own self, there is a communion of the so-called two into a single existence. That love is the greatest love which needs no object before it. That love is the greatest which does not want any kind of recompense. That love is not love which expects a response from the beloved. “If I love you, then you should also love me; but if I have no response from you in spite of my affection for you, then you are not worthy of my affection.” This kind of affection is no affection. The soul has to commune with the soul, and this happens only in the case of jnana and not in the other cases, notwithstanding the fact that God is immensely merciful to consider even a child like Prahlada or Dhruva to be as great a devotee as Suka, Vyasa or Vasishtha.
Udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tv ātmaiva me matam, āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā mām evānuttamāṁ gatim (7.18): “All these devotees that I mentioned are very good people, yet he stands first who is a jnani, who is Me and is inseparable from Me.” He who considers nothing else as the goal of life except God Himself, who day in and day out plants God in the heart of his own personality, who feels God in the soul of his own self, who implants the Universal in his particular individuality and thus melts his individuality into the Cosmic Universality, who exists as the Universal Soul itself in meditation and experience—that person is a jnani. He is veritably God Himself. We can call him a jivanmukta, if we like.
It is very difficult to achieve this kind of devotion. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ (7.19): It is difficult to love God. The love of things is so attractive, so promising and rewarding that the invisible God may not be as attractive to the senses. We take a series of incarnations—millions of births—to come to the human level, and then only is it possible for an individual to think in terms of pros and cons, and entertain logical judgments, which is not available in the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. After taking many an incarnation and passing through many bodies of various species, we become human beings. Even as human beings, it is not easy for everybody to reach God because there are categories of human beings. There are demoniacal human beings, selfish human beings, cut-throat human beings, tit-for-tat human beings, so they are not in a position to attain God. It is a blessed one who has polished his personality through austerity, by means of the practice of the various stages of yoga in the different incarnations that he has taken. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante: “After the completion of many, many lives—then only the jnani attains to Me as the only goal, resorts to Me as the only purpose in life.”
Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ: Such a person is indeed rare in this world who has the conviction that God is all, that Narayana is all, Vasudeva is all, the Almighty is all. Such a conviction cannot arise in ordinary people. After many millions of births, such a conviction may arise. The sense organs will not play havoc with that person who knows in an integral manner that God is all, because their feeling and understanding merge into a kind of intuition; and then there is no use of expecting anything from this world. “The world merges in God as I myself also merge in God.” Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ.
Sri Aurobindo said that when the British put him in prison due to a bombing and he was summoned by the magistrate, suddenly in the courtroom he had the vision of Narayana. He saw the police as Sri Krishna, Narayana. He saw the magistrate as Narayana. He saw the doors, the windows and the iron bars as Narayana. Everything was Narayana shining everywhere, and even the prosecutor was Narayana. Narayana was flooding the entire court, right from the policemen and the prosecutor to the magistrate sitting there. He mentions this experience in a beautiful and powerful style in his speech called the Uttarapara speech. Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ. Such an experience is rare.
Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā(7.20): “Not knowing Me as the All, people resort to so many gods.” The ‘so many gods’ are to be considered as influxes and emanations of the Supreme Being. We may worship Ganesha, Devi, Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Vishnu, Siva, Surya, Kartikeya, Skanda, or any god, provided we do not consider them as individual gods standing independently in their own sphere; otherwise, we will receive from them a blessing that is completely limited. A limited god can bless us only in a limited way. There is no harm in worshipping these gods, but we should consider them as a hand or a finger of the one Almighty. Whether it is Siva or Vishnu or Christ or Buddha or Mohammed or anyone, they are facets of the single crystal of the Supreme Being. Any facet of the crystal reflects the whole crystal. Therefore, there is no harm in worshipping individual gods. But if we consider them as independent gods—Mohammed is different from Christ, Christ is different from Krishna, Krishna is different from Devi, and they have no connection with one another, we want something from Devi and something else from Krishna—if that is the case, we will get what we want.
Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ: With desires which are discrete and diversified in nature, people run to all sorts of divinities—a stone, a snake, a tree, a symbol, a diagram. Everything is a god for a person with desires of various types. Such people who have multifarious desires of a rajasic and perhaps a tamasic nature and who worship varieties of divinities independently, as it were, will have their own result granted to them. Taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā: “In My ordinance, I have arranged that these people also shall be given whatever they want.” If we ask for a handful, we will get only a handful. If we ask for a bucketful, we will get a bucketful, and if we ask for the whole earth, we will get the whole earth. But we will get only what we want, not more than that.
There was a person who wanted that any thought that arose in his mind should materialise, and he was blessed with that boon. Whenever he thought something, it would materialise. He was very happy, and felt that now the whole world was under his control. He sat under a tree and thought: “Let there be mangoes on the tree.” Immediately mangoes dropped from the tree. “Let there be cool water for me to drink,” and immediately cool water flowed in front. “Let there be many servants to massage my feet,” and servants came. “Let me have a good bed to lie down on and rest,” and a bed immediately appeared. While he was lying down, he thought: “This is a forest. Suppose a tiger pounces on me, what will happen?” Immediately a tiger came and pounced on him, and he was finished. This is what happens if we have desires which are not controlled by real knowledge, wisdom. Therefore, we should not propitiate small deities in order to fulfil petty desires when we have the great Master who can grant us all that we want with His oceanic mercy. Anyway, in His goodness and mercy He says: “Even if the little gods are worshipped, you will get something. Don’t bother yourself.” Immensely merciful is God. He knows the futility of our efforts and the foolishness of our worships, but in spite of that He says, “I’ll give you what you want.” So kind is God!
Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā: The universal religion of the equality of worship and the equality of the vision of all faiths, cults and creeds is a way to God. Whatever be the way in which we approach the Ultimate Reality, that is a religion, no matter how devious and circuitous that way may be, provided we are conscious that every other path also equally leads to the same goal and all religions merge into a single religion of man’s desire for God. This is the gospel of universal religion.
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Discourse 22: The Seventh Chapter Continues – Worshipping Deities
Devotees often have the erroneous notion that a god is only in one place—here is Ganesha, here is Devi, here is Surya—and one has no connection with the other. Devotees think that the different gods can grant different boons—that what one god grants, another cannot grant—and that for the purpose of a particular boon, they have to approach a particular god. Offering different prayers for different kinds of ailments—physical, social or mental—is a lesser religion of the masses. “They shall be granted their boons,” is the proclamation of the great Lord. Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā (7.20). This means to say that even if we want a cup of tea and expect to get it from our god, it will be given to us, though it is a petty, flimsy thing that we are expecting from our adored deity.
This is religion indeed, in the sense that there is a desire to be devoted to an ‘other than oneself’, which is considered as a god capable of bestowing all boons. But these are limited fruits consequent upon limited devotion coming from a limited god who appears to be in one place—in Kailasa only, in Vaikuntha only, in Brahmaloka only, or in the sky only as Suryanarayana—and not anywhere else. That the god is not anywhere else is the peculiarity of a limited devotion to a particular isolated concept of the deity.
Yo yo yāṁ yāṁ tanuṁ bhaktaḥ śraddhayārcitum, icchati tasya tasyācalāṁ śraddhāṁ tām eva vidadhāmyaham (7.21). The force of the Universal Being animates these different deities as the replica of that Supreme Being, and so they have in them a power to evoke devotion, and it is mistaken for the evocation coming from that particular deity only. The idea is that when we see a brilliant electric bulb, we are carried away by the bulb’s power; we adore it, and worship it, and put a garland over it, saying, “O Thou that is giving me brilliant light every day” and so on, not knowing that the brilliance does not come from the bulb. It is pumped from a universal source whose generating centre is somewhere else. Similarly, even the capacity of a particular god to bless us comes from a universal source. The poor devotee who is clinging to a little concept of a localised entity does not know this.
Our own limitation of thought binds us, though there is a large reservoir of abundance that is ready to pour upon us whatever we want. But even if the granter is ready to give us all things, we ask for little; and so we are rewarded with that which we deserve. If we ask, it shall be given; but it shall be given only in the measure that we ask, in the manner that we expect, and in the quantum that we deserve. Here is a religious outlook which is so catholic in its nature that it does not condemn, denounce or deprecate any concept of god, any faith, any cult or any religious outlook. It only considers them as insufficient and inadequate for the purpose of attaining the final goal of life.
There are various degrees of satisfactions in this world. If we have a cool drink, it is a satisfaction. If we have a good meal, it is a satisfaction. If we have a good rest, it is a satisfaction. If we have glory, praise and status in society, it is also a satisfaction. But these are brittle, localised, with a beginning and an end, and so there is a desire in us to go for higher satisfactions which are more than the meal or the available things in the world. That is why people worship gods. They have little gods in their homes, in their temples, on a shelf in a cabinet; and something called a little prayer is offered. This little prayer, this little Jaya Jagadisha Hare that we sing while lighting a candle or even an incense stick, is the outcome of our feeling of there being something higher than us.
We have kept a little idol in a corner of our room, but our feeling is of a different nature altogether. Though the sense organs tell us that it is a little piece of wood or metal, or a painted picture that is in front of us, we consider it as embodying some capacity to overcome our limitations. That means to say, we are somehow or the other conceptually implanting in that idol, or symbol, a power that is not easily available to any man in this world—not available even to all humanity. So there is a double-dealing on the part of the devotee, who knows that the little deity, the little idol is not going to bless him. It is made of a material substance. It is in one place. It looks small. What kind of blessing can be expected from it? Yet the feeling is so powerful that the devotee unconsciously feels the presence of something in it which he cannot easily comprehend intellectually. It is a superior inundation, a capacity that theoretically comes from somewhere else—just as a child knows that the light comes from somewhere else, though he does not know from where it comes.
Because of our persistent sensory limitation of that god—limiting that god to one particular place only—the blessing is delimited. Nevertheless, whatever our faith is shall be considered as worthwhile because of the fact that whatever our faith is, it is, after all, a faith in something higher than our own self. All religion is great, and every concept of God is adorable in the sense that it is a worship of something greater than one’s own self and, therefore, it supersedes the individual ego. In that sense, every religion is good and every notion of God is worthwhile. All concepts of spirituality are equally adorable from the point of view that they lift our minds from our own egoistic centre and we unconsciously ask for something that is beyond us, above us, more than us, and infinitely greater than us. Here is a beautiful presentation of universal religion—which has no communal touch and no hatred of any kind, and considers every cult, every creed, every type of worship, every faith, and every form of adoration as good enough from its own point of view, though inadequate from the highest point of view.
Sa tayā śraddhayā yuktas tasyārādhanam īhate, labhate ca tataḥ kāmān mayaivaḥ vihitān hi tān (7.22): “If Ganesha blesses you or Devi blesses you or Surya blesses you or anybody blesses you, ultimately it is My blessing that is coming. I am conscious of what you are thinking and feeling.” The omniscient Absolute is aware of our intentions, our limitations, our foibles, and our poor approach to the deity, which is based on our mental conception. Nevertheless, the omniscient eye, which sees through the very deity that we are worshipping, grants, with its omnipotence, the energy that our deity requires to grant the boon that is expected by us. Lord Siva’s power or Lord Vishnu’s power or anybody’s power is the power of the Absolute, and the omniscience and omnipotence of the Absolute is the reason why any god is capable of blessing us. But just as the quantum of water flows according to the thickness of the pipe, the blessings that we receive from these gods will also be limited by the ‘pipe’ of the personality that we have foisted on these deities. Yet, we will get it.
Antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ (7.23): Poor indeed is the result that follows from this kind of limited worship. “Though I agree that worship is good in every way, you could have asked for better things.” But how can we ask for better things? Our minds are limited, like little cups, and can contain only cupfuls and not the entire ocean. This is because our minds are limited to the concepts of space, time and objects and, therefore, even our spiritual expectations are limited to these objectively presented dimensions, which are limitations, and which will end. The whole point is that whatever has a beginning will also have an end. Therefore, it is good for us to ask for something infinite, which has neither a beginning nor an end. But that infinite can respond only if the infinite in us rouses its spirit and asks for the infinite. The infinite within us alone can ask for the infinite outside. The little soul in us cannot ask for the infinite. It can ask only for its counterpart. Just as a sweeper’s friend is a sweeper, a labourer’s friend is a labourer, a driver’s friend is a driver, a fisherman’s friend is a fisherman, and so on, we expect from our deity whatever we are in ourselves.
If our deepest soul does not rise to the occasion, the highest Universal Soul will not respond. If it is only a mental asking, a psychological, sentimental craving, and even a biological expectation, that will be given to us, but the infinite will not be given. The infinite can respond and grant us infinite blessing only if we approach it as an infinite soul. The total man has to rise to the total occasion in order that the total reality may respond. Otherwise, all results of worship will be limited. They will have a beginning and an end; and when we go, the result also goes.
Antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ tad bhavatyalpamedhasām: A poor understanding of the nature of spiritual life—not knowing that God is everything, and expecting something ulterior from God—is not true spirituality or religion. Not knowing this, people with a lesser intellect commit this error and get reborn—though perhaps into a better world on account of their devotion.
Devān devayajo yānti madbhaktā yānti mām api: We shall reach that which we are thinking in our minds. What will we reach after death? Whatever we are expecting now, that we will reach. If we want union with a particular deity, we will attain union with that particular deity in that particular higher realm—a different realm of being. “But those who worship Me as the total infinite, reach Me.” Devān devayajo yānti madbhaktā yānti mām api. Here mām means ‘Me, the total Absolute’ speaking through the personality of Bhagavan Sri Krishna and including all the gods. Did we not notice that all the gods were there in the Visvarupa? Right from earth to heaven—everything was spread out, and every deity was shining in the different limbs of the Virat Svarupa. That Visvarupa is speaking here as the All-in-all, the be-all and end-all of all things.
Avyaktaṁ vyaktim āpannaṁ manyante mām abuddhayaḥ, paraṁ bhāvam ajānanto mamāvyayam anuttamam (7.24). Here Bhagavan Sri Krishna is referring to Himself. “People think that I look like a human being. My higher nature is not known to those with poor understanding.” The personality of Sri Krishna is a concretisation and a beaming forth of a resplendence that is all pervading. There is a larger reality behind this presentation in the form of the personality of Sri Krishna. To the friend, he looked like a friend in human form; to the warrior, he looked like a warrior. But behind him, behind his personality, there was an oceanic expanse which was pumping energy into him indefinitely and infinitely. He wielded purna shakti. We say that Bhagavan Sri Krishna is krishnastu bhagavan svayamand shodashakala purna avatara. That is what is generally believed. The idea is that the perfect God manifested Himself in this perfect personality. The whole of the Absolute was concentrated into a pinpoint, as it were, and that was the power of Sri Krishna’s complete incarnation. Yet, “I am actually the Total Whole that is concentrated through this personality, but do not mistake this personality itself for the Total Whole. Your senses see only My little form, but I represent another light altogether—which is beaming through Me, which is larger than this visible form. But those with poor understanding do not recognise this. People think that I am endowed with a human personality, that I think like a human being and walk like a human being, but I am the Infinite that is made visible to the eyes of man as an incarnation for a particular purpose that has arisen.”
Nāhaṁ prakāśaḥ sarvasya (7.25): “Everybody cannot see Me. I am not visible to all people.” Only our soul can behold it—not our sense organs, not our sentiments, and not our longing or desire.
Yogamāyāsamāvṛtaḥ: “I have covered Myself with the veil of the presentation of this world of prakriti—sattva, rajas and tamas.” The Absolute has put on a dress, as it were, and we see only this dress of the manifestation in the form of the three gunas of prakriti. When we open our eyes and see, we see only the manifestation of prakriti in the form of this world—the three gunas. The essence behind it, the purusha behind the prakriti, is not cognised by the vision of our eyes or the action of any of our sense organs. Nāhaṁ prakāśaḥ sarvasya yogamāyāsamāvṛtaḥ. Here, yogamaya means the veil that God seems to be putting on Himself in the form of His creation. The radiance of the sun may blind our eyes to such an extent that we may not be able to see the sun.
Tat tvaṁ pūṣan āpāvṛṇu satyadharmāya dṛṣṭaye (Isa 15) is a prayer in the Isavasya Upanishad: “O Sun! Withdraw your rays, the golden cover that you are hiding yourself with, so that I may behold you in your essence.” The glory of God in the form of this creation blinds our eyes to such an extent that we cannot see God behind this glory. The radiance of a nugget of gold may blind us to the real perception of it. So too is the wonder of this world that tantalises us, attracts us, promises us all things, and gives us immense satisfaction. It is a cover that God has put on Himself so that we may be blinded with the attraction for the things of sense—which is the veil that is referred to as maya—and, therefore, we will not be able to behold Him that is behind. We will see the dramatic personae, but the director Himself is not seen.
Mūḍho’yaṁ nābhijānāti loko mām ajam avyayam: “I am the eternal in the process of time, but the temporal mind that is in this world of space and time concentrates itself only on that which is visible to the eyes.” Mūḍha is the word that is used here. Fools are they, idiots, who think that the visible is the real while the invisible alone is the real. They go for the objects of visible perception. The invisible does not attract them in any way whatsoever because all attraction is sensory, and the senses cannot see or behold that which is unmanifest. They see only the manifest world of sense objects. Therefore, deluded are these people. Mūḍhoyaṁ nābhijānāti loko mām ajam avyayam: “The immortal and uncreated essence that I am cannot be beheld by deluded people who only look through their eyes, hear through their ears, and enjoy through their physical personality.”
Vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna (7.26): “I know everything, Arjuna, but you do not know anything. I know all that was, all that is, and all that will be.” Sri Krishna also says, “I too have undergone many a form. Several incarnations I have taken, as you also have taken several incarnations, Arjuna. The only difference is that I know that I have passed through all these stages of incarnations, but you do not know that you have undergone these incarnations. I have detached Myself from the forms in which I appear to people, whereas you are attached to the form that you appear to your own self.”
Vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna, bhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṁ tu veda na kaścana: “I know everything, but nobody can know Me. I know everything because I am the universal light that permeates all things, and even the vision of the individuals is just a modicum of the reflection of this universal light.” So, it knows everything. It also knows how the individuals perceive things, but the individuals cannot know what is behind them.
Plato gives us the allegory of the cave. People are bound hand and foot in a dark cave for their entire life, without being able to see the entrance to the cave. But the entrance is open, and sunlight enters and falls on the wall of the cave. People are walking in the sunlight on the road above, and their shadows appear on the wall. The prisoners watch these two-dimensional shadow images dancing on the wall. Because they have been bound hand and foot right from the beginning and have never seen sunlight, they think that this is the only reality. They do not know what light is. They have always been under the impression that the whole world of reality is this two-dimensional dance. This world appears three-dimensional, but reality is four-dimensional. We are unable to conceive the four-dimensional reality, which is timeless and spaceless, because of our being bound to the concept of only three dimensions—length, breadth and height. But suppose these prisoners are released, and they are brought to the sunlit road. They will be surprised to see that the three-dimensional figures are people walking, and they will be blinded by the sunlight. They will not know what has happened to them because they have seen only the two-dimensional shadows cast by people who were walking on the road.
Due to a peculiar structure of our sense organs and mind, we see things only as length, breadth and height, even though there is no such thing as length, breadth and height. It is an illusion that is created by the peculiar structure of our sense organs. There are actually no dimensions. That the world is dimensionless is proclaimed today by our modern scientists. So Sri Krishna says, “I know everything. But the world of three dimensions cannot know the four-dimensional Eternal.” Vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna, bhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṁ tu veda na kaścana: The four-dimensional Universal knows everything that is taking place in the three-dimensional world; but people bound to three-dimensional perception cannot know the transcendent, which is of four dimensions.
We think that there is no such thing as four dimensions, because we cannot imagine what it is. Dimensions are only length, breadth and height. What is the fourth dimension? That is the Universal. Nobody knows what universality is because they know only subjectivity and externality. Total universality is completely obliterated from our perception. It is only a dream for us, an imagination and an abstract concept. Yet, that is the true reality. The universal four-dimensional continuum—which is neither space nor time, which is neither object nor anything solid—is the reality, though we mistake solid, three-dimensional objects to be realities.
Hence, the Immortal Being, the timeless four-dimensional essence, says: “The Universal that I am, I know everything—past, present and future.” Because in a spaceless and timeless existence there is no past, present and future, at once there is a grasp of eternal instantaneous knowledge in the Supreme Absolute. One grasp is equal to a total grasp. The past, present and future are in the palm of our hand, as it were, because the past, present and future do not actually exist. They are only a three-partite division created by a peculiar structure of our mind and sense organs. In this sense, the world is illusory. It is not as it appears to be. Things are not what they seem.
Icchādveṣasamutthena dvandvamohena bhārata, sarvabhūtāni sammohaṁ sarge yānti paraṁtapa (7.27): The moment we are born, we are born into delusion. It is said in the Bhagavata Purana that when a child is in the womb, it knows its previous existence. It weeps and cries: “Why I am in this womb? Is it because of the karmas of my past? O Narayana! I shall not commit these mistakes, due to which I am in this womb now. I shall never make such mistakes. I will always resort to Narayana, and will never commit such mistakes which cause me to be born into the world.” Once the child comes out into the world, it forgets everything. The moment we are born into this world, the maya of the three dimensions, the prakritis, the gunas, catch hold of us to such an extent that all these prayers we made in the womb vanish into thin air and we are once again the same idiots, knowing not what has happened to us; and then we commit the same blunder. The mistake of erroneous perception is born together with the biological tabernacle which we put on at the time of birth. Ignorance is born with us and we get deluded right from childhood itself, right from babyhood, right from the time of coming into existence in this world.
What is the reason for this? Icchādveṣasamutthena: Throughout the different incarnations, the soul has been involved in likes and dislikes. There is no way of thinking except through likes and dislikes. Psychoanalytically, we should go deep into our own mind and see if we can think without the touch of love and hatred. It is impossible for us to think anything without a touch of some like for something and dislike for something else. Therefore, this division that we have unnecessarily created in our psyche creates a split personality in our own self. We are not whole persons at any time. We are double dealers, two-partite fractions, as it were, dovetailed together—like Jarasandha.
Jarasandha, a famous man in the Mahabharata, was born in two halves due to a defect in the process of conception; and because a demoness called Jara joined the two pieces together, he was called Jarasandha. Likewise, we are Jarasandhas. We are two different things altogether. The love aspect and the hatred aspect of our personality become dovetailed into a single individuality, as it were, making it appear that we are one individual. Actually we are two individuals, loving and hating people. Therefore, our perceptions are dual, and we never have an integrated perception of anything. There is non-alignment of our inner psyche. We are double-dealers in our own selves, let alone in respect of other people. Icchādveṣasamutthena: Because of this involvement in love and hatred.
Dvandvamohena bhārata: Because of the delusion that this dvandva, or duality, is the source of joy. Do we not think that it is a great happiness to be in a state of love and hatred? “I love this immensely, and hate that immensely.” This is the way that we live in this world, and it gives us great satisfaction. It is a great satisfaction to love something, and it is a greater satisfaction to hate something. Both are satisfactions only; and it is this kind of satisfaction that we get in this world. Mūḍhoyaṁ nābhijānāti: The idiotic mind does not understand anything.
Icchādveṣasamutthena dvandvamohena bhārata, sarvabhūtāni sammohaṁ sarge yānti paraṁtapa: All beings are deluded in this fashion. They see topsy-turvy. They do not know what is behind things.
In the Seventh Chapter of the Gita, we have been studying the essentials of a universal religion—an impartial religion of mankind with no denomination of any kind, where each god is equally as good as any other god, and yet no god is equal to the ultimate God. It was mentioned in this context that outside God nothing is—mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti (7.7)—and our aim is to attain God. The whole point in the practice of religion is the learning of the art of conducting oneself in the way of God. Otherwise, what is the good of religion? It is a way to God.
The whole point is that we have to reach God through religious practice. It has been mentioned that God is such that outside of It nothing can be, and beyond It there is nothing. We have to reach a God outside of Whom nothing is. How would we reach a God outside of Whom nothing is? There is no question of reaching—because when we conceive a question of reaching or moving in the direction of something, there is an outsideness already created. We cannot move towards anything which is not outside, and there is nothing outside God. It appears, therefore, that there is no such thing as an ordinarily conceived movement towards God. Hence, realisation, attainment, moksha, the goal of life—which is God—cannot be conceived in ordinary space-time related terms.
Then how do we reach God? The Bhagavadgita is the gospel of the art of reaching God, yet it confuses us by saying that we cannot easily reach God. Why we cannot easily reach God has been already mentioned in the earlier verses. It is because our mind is confused by its lodgement in a kind of split-psychic personality caused by love and hatred, which are the principles of mental operation. In any way, we have to get out of it. There is a necessity to integrate the psyche; we cannot go on living a split life. The object of final spiritual realisation is the total God, not a partial God.
It was conceded that the lesser gods are also equally good. They are equally good in the sense that they will give us some benefit—a benefit that has a beginning and an end. But liberation is not something that has a beginning and an end. Hence, a beginningless and endless achievement cannot be attempted by the worship of any kind of localised god—a god that is placed in some heaven and distinguished from other deities. Therefore, the merciful acquiescence of the Almighty in giving us permission to worship any kind of independent god does not mean that it is a solution to the problems of samsara. It is a solution to our daily problems, no doubt—problems regarding material prosperity, social status, freedom from illness, and joys of various kinds that this earth can give us. All these can be the boons that we can expect from our gods, but we will not get liberation. Liberation is a total merging in the Total Reality and, therefore, any localised god, conceptualised god, isolated god or limited god will not permit us this attainment.
Who is this ultimate God? How do we conceive Him? In his great compassion, Bhagavan Sri Krishna gives two verses which become the seed, as it were, for the next Chapter, which is the Eighth. These verses tell us how God has to be accommodated in our meditating consciousness. Meditation is the way in which we accommodate this total concept of God in our own self. We are not accustomed to total thinking. It was already mentioned that we are partial thinkers; we think along the lines of love and hatred. But that will not do. We have to learn the art of a complete thinking which will exclude nothing from its purview or its operation.
Jarāmaraṇamokṣāya mām āśritya yatanti ye (7.29). “Do you want liberation?” is the question that is raised here. Jara and marana are old age and death. “Do you want freedom from old age and death, and to not be born once again into this samsara, this misery of the earth? If that is the case, I shall tell you the recipe, and here it is: Resort to Me as the Ultimate Being for freedom from decay and death.” Te brahma tad viduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṁ karma cākhilam.
Sādhibhūtādhidaivaṁ māṁ sādhiyajñaṁ ca ye viduḥ, prayāṇakāle’pi ca māṁ te vidur yuktacetasaḥ (7.30). At the time of passing, at the time of leaving this body, what kind of consciousness is to take possession of us? It is told to us in the Eighth Chapter that the consciousness that will take possession of us at the time of passing will be the same consciousness that we entertain in our daily life—because as is the tree, so is the fruit. We cannot have apples from pickles. If we have been living a very distracted, erroneous, confused kind of life, how would we expect this total awareness to arise in our mind at the time of passing? That is told to us in the Eighth Chapter.
Devotees often have the erroneous notion that a god is only in one place—here is Ganesha, here is Devi, here is Surya—and one has no connection with the other. Devotees think that the different gods can grant different boons—that what one god grants, another cannot grant—and that for the purpose of a particular boon, they have to approach a particular god. Offering different prayers for different kinds of ailments—physical, social or mental—is a lesser religion of the masses. “They shall be granted their boons,” is the proclamation of the great Lord. Kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ prapadyantenyadevatāḥ, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā (7.20). This means to say that even if we want a cup of tea and expect to get it from our god, it will be given to us, though it is a petty, flimsy thing that we are expecting from our adored deity.
This is religion indeed, in the sense that there is a desire to be devoted to an ‘other than oneself’, which is considered as a god capable of bestowing all boons. But these are limited fruits consequent upon limited devotion coming from a limited god who appears to be in one place—in Kailasa only, in Vaikuntha only, in Brahmaloka only, or in the sky only as Suryanarayana—and not anywhere else. That the god is not anywhere else is the peculiarity of a limited devotion to a particular isolated concept of the deity.
Yo yo yāṁ yāṁ tanuṁ bhaktaḥ śraddhayārcitum, icchati tasya tasyācalāṁ śraddhāṁ tām eva vidadhāmyaham (7.21). The force of the Universal Being animates these different deities as the replica of that Supreme Being, and so they have in them a power to evoke devotion, and it is mistaken for the evocation coming from that particular deity only. The idea is that when we see a brilliant electric bulb, we are carried away by the bulb’s power; we adore it, and worship it, and put a garland over it, saying, “O Thou that is giving me brilliant light every day” and so on, not knowing that the brilliance does not come from the bulb. It is pumped from a universal source whose generating centre is somewhere else. Similarly, even the capacity of a particular god to bless us comes from a universal source. The poor devotee who is clinging to a little concept of a localised entity does not know this.
Our own limitation of thought binds us, though there is a large reservoir of abundance that is ready to pour upon us whatever we want. But even if the granter is ready to give us all things, we ask for little; and so we are rewarded with that which we deserve. If we ask, it shall be given; but it shall be given only in the measure that we ask, in the manner that we expect, and in the quantum that we deserve. Here is a religious outlook which is so catholic in its nature that it does not condemn, denounce or deprecate any concept of god, any faith, any cult or any religious outlook. It only considers them as insufficient and inadequate for the purpose of attaining the final goal of life.
There are various degrees of satisfactions in this world. If we have a cool drink, it is a satisfaction. If we have a good meal, it is a satisfaction. If we have a good rest, it is a satisfaction. If we have glory, praise and status in society, it is also a satisfaction. But these are brittle, localised, with a beginning and an end, and so there is a desire in us to go for higher satisfactions which are more than the meal or the available things in the world. That is why people worship gods. They have little gods in their homes, in their temples, on a shelf in a cabinet; and something called a little prayer is offered. This little prayer, this little Jaya Jagadisha Hare that we sing while lighting a candle or even an incense stick, is the outcome of our feeling of there being something higher than us.
We have kept a little idol in a corner of our room, but our feeling is of a different nature altogether. Though the sense organs tell us that it is a little piece of wood or metal, or a painted picture that is in front of us, we consider it as embodying some capacity to overcome our limitations. That means to say, we are somehow or the other conceptually implanting in that idol, or symbol, a power that is not easily available to any man in this world—not available even to all humanity. So there is a double-dealing on the part of the devotee, who knows that the little deity, the little idol is not going to bless him. It is made of a material substance. It is in one place. It looks small. What kind of blessing can be expected from it? Yet the feeling is so powerful that the devotee unconsciously feels the presence of something in it which he cannot easily comprehend intellectually. It is a superior inundation, a capacity that theoretically comes from somewhere else—just as a child knows that the light comes from somewhere else, though he does not know from where it comes.
Because of our persistent sensory limitation of that god—limiting that god to one particular place only—the blessing is delimited. Nevertheless, whatever our faith is shall be considered as worthwhile because of the fact that whatever our faith is, it is, after all, a faith in something higher than our own self. All religion is great, and every concept of God is adorable in the sense that it is a worship of something greater than one’s own self and, therefore, it supersedes the individual ego. In that sense, every religion is good and every notion of God is worthwhile. All concepts of spirituality are equally adorable from the point of view that they lift our minds from our own egoistic centre and we unconsciously ask for something that is beyond us, above us, more than us, and infinitely greater than us. Here is a beautiful presentation of universal religion—which has no communal touch and no hatred of any kind, and considers every cult, every creed, every type of worship, every faith, and every form of adoration as good enough from its own point of view, though inadequate from the highest point of view.
Sa tayā śraddhayā yuktas tasyārādhanam īhate, labhate ca tataḥ kāmān mayaivaḥ vihitān hi tān (7.22): “If Ganesha blesses you or Devi blesses you or Surya blesses you or anybody blesses you, ultimately it is My blessing that is coming. I am conscious of what you are thinking and feeling.” The omniscient Absolute is aware of our intentions, our limitations, our foibles, and our poor approach to the deity, which is based on our mental conception. Nevertheless, the omniscient eye, which sees through the very deity that we are worshipping, grants, with its omnipotence, the energy that our deity requires to grant the boon that is expected by us. Lord Siva’s power or Lord Vishnu’s power or anybody’s power is the power of the Absolute, and the omniscience and omnipotence of the Absolute is the reason why any god is capable of blessing us. But just as the quantum of water flows according to the thickness of the pipe, the blessings that we receive from these gods will also be limited by the ‘pipe’ of the personality that we have foisted on these deities. Yet, we will get it.
Antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ (7.23): Poor indeed is the result that follows from this kind of limited worship. “Though I agree that worship is good in every way, you could have asked for better things.” But how can we ask for better things? Our minds are limited, like little cups, and can contain only cupfuls and not the entire ocean. This is because our minds are limited to the concepts of space, time and objects and, therefore, even our spiritual expectations are limited to these objectively presented dimensions, which are limitations, and which will end. The whole point is that whatever has a beginning will also have an end. Therefore, it is good for us to ask for something infinite, which has neither a beginning nor an end. But that infinite can respond only if the infinite in us rouses its spirit and asks for the infinite. The infinite within us alone can ask for the infinite outside. The little soul in us cannot ask for the infinite. It can ask only for its counterpart. Just as a sweeper’s friend is a sweeper, a labourer’s friend is a labourer, a driver’s friend is a driver, a fisherman’s friend is a fisherman, and so on, we expect from our deity whatever we are in ourselves.
If our deepest soul does not rise to the occasion, the highest Universal Soul will not respond. If it is only a mental asking, a psychological, sentimental craving, and even a biological expectation, that will be given to us, but the infinite will not be given. The infinite can respond and grant us infinite blessing only if we approach it as an infinite soul. The total man has to rise to the total occasion in order that the total reality may respond. Otherwise, all results of worship will be limited. They will have a beginning and an end; and when we go, the result also goes.
Antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ tad bhavatyalpamedhasām: A poor understanding of the nature of spiritual life—not knowing that God is everything, and expecting something ulterior from God—is not true spirituality or religion. Not knowing this, people with a lesser intellect commit this error and get reborn—though perhaps into a better world on account of their devotion.
Devān devayajo yānti madbhaktā yānti mām api: We shall reach that which we are thinking in our minds. What will we reach after death? Whatever we are expecting now, that we will reach. If we want union with a particular deity, we will attain union with that particular deity in that particular higher realm—a different realm of being. “But those who worship Me as the total infinite, reach Me.” Devān devayajo yānti madbhaktā yānti mām api. Here mām means ‘Me, the total Absolute’ speaking through the personality of Bhagavan Sri Krishna and including all the gods. Did we not notice that all the gods were there in the Visvarupa? Right from earth to heaven—everything was spread out, and every deity was shining in the different limbs of the Virat Svarupa. That Visvarupa is speaking here as the All-in-all, the be-all and end-all of all things.
Avyaktaṁ vyaktim āpannaṁ manyante mām abuddhayaḥ, paraṁ bhāvam ajānanto mamāvyayam anuttamam (7.24). Here Bhagavan Sri Krishna is referring to Himself. “People think that I look like a human being. My higher nature is not known to those with poor understanding.” The personality of Sri Krishna is a concretisation and a beaming forth of a resplendence that is all pervading. There is a larger reality behind this presentation in the form of the personality of Sri Krishna. To the friend, he looked like a friend in human form; to the warrior, he looked like a warrior. But behind him, behind his personality, there was an oceanic expanse which was pumping energy into him indefinitely and infinitely. He wielded purna shakti. We say that Bhagavan Sri Krishna is krishnastu bhagavan svayamand shodashakala purna avatara. That is what is generally believed. The idea is that the perfect God manifested Himself in this perfect personality. The whole of the Absolute was concentrated into a pinpoint, as it were, and that was the power of Sri Krishna’s complete incarnation. Yet, “I am actually the Total Whole that is concentrated through this personality, but do not mistake this personality itself for the Total Whole. Your senses see only My little form, but I represent another light altogether—which is beaming through Me, which is larger than this visible form. But those with poor understanding do not recognise this. People think that I am endowed with a human personality, that I think like a human being and walk like a human being, but I am the Infinite that is made visible to the eyes of man as an incarnation for a particular purpose that has arisen.”
Nāhaṁ prakāśaḥ sarvasya (7.25): “Everybody cannot see Me. I am not visible to all people.” Only our soul can behold it—not our sense organs, not our sentiments, and not our longing or desire.
Yogamāyāsamāvṛtaḥ: “I have covered Myself with the veil of the presentation of this world of prakriti—sattva, rajas and tamas.” The Absolute has put on a dress, as it were, and we see only this dress of the manifestation in the form of the three gunas of prakriti. When we open our eyes and see, we see only the manifestation of prakriti in the form of this world—the three gunas. The essence behind it, the purusha behind the prakriti, is not cognised by the vision of our eyes or the action of any of our sense organs. Nāhaṁ prakāśaḥ sarvasya yogamāyāsamāvṛtaḥ. Here, yogamaya means the veil that God seems to be putting on Himself in the form of His creation. The radiance of the sun may blind our eyes to such an extent that we may not be able to see the sun.
Tat tvaṁ pūṣan āpāvṛṇu satyadharmāya dṛṣṭaye (Isa 15) is a prayer in the Isavasya Upanishad: “O Sun! Withdraw your rays, the golden cover that you are hiding yourself with, so that I may behold you in your essence.” The glory of God in the form of this creation blinds our eyes to such an extent that we cannot see God behind this glory. The radiance of a nugget of gold may blind us to the real perception of it. So too is the wonder of this world that tantalises us, attracts us, promises us all things, and gives us immense satisfaction. It is a cover that God has put on Himself so that we may be blinded with the attraction for the things of sense—which is the veil that is referred to as maya—and, therefore, we will not be able to behold Him that is behind. We will see the dramatic personae, but the director Himself is not seen.
Mūḍho’yaṁ nābhijānāti loko mām ajam avyayam: “I am the eternal in the process of time, but the temporal mind that is in this world of space and time concentrates itself only on that which is visible to the eyes.” Mūḍha is the word that is used here. Fools are they, idiots, who think that the visible is the real while the invisible alone is the real. They go for the objects of visible perception. The invisible does not attract them in any way whatsoever because all attraction is sensory, and the senses cannot see or behold that which is unmanifest. They see only the manifest world of sense objects. Therefore, deluded are these people. Mūḍhoyaṁ nābhijānāti loko mām ajam avyayam: “The immortal and uncreated essence that I am cannot be beheld by deluded people who only look through their eyes, hear through their ears, and enjoy through their physical personality.”
Vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna (7.26): “I know everything, Arjuna, but you do not know anything. I know all that was, all that is, and all that will be.” Sri Krishna also says, “I too have undergone many a form. Several incarnations I have taken, as you also have taken several incarnations, Arjuna. The only difference is that I know that I have passed through all these stages of incarnations, but you do not know that you have undergone these incarnations. I have detached Myself from the forms in which I appear to people, whereas you are attached to the form that you appear to your own self.”
Vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna, bhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṁ tu veda na kaścana: “I know everything, but nobody can know Me. I know everything because I am the universal light that permeates all things, and even the vision of the individuals is just a modicum of the reflection of this universal light.” So, it knows everything. It also knows how the individuals perceive things, but the individuals cannot know what is behind them.
Plato gives us the allegory of the cave. People are bound hand and foot in a dark cave for their entire life, without being able to see the entrance to the cave. But the entrance is open, and sunlight enters and falls on the wall of the cave. People are walking in the sunlight on the road above, and their shadows appear on the wall. The prisoners watch these two-dimensional shadow images dancing on the wall. Because they have been bound hand and foot right from the beginning and have never seen sunlight, they think that this is the only reality. They do not know what light is. They have always been under the impression that the whole world of reality is this two-dimensional dance. This world appears three-dimensional, but reality is four-dimensional. We are unable to conceive the four-dimensional reality, which is timeless and spaceless, because of our being bound to the concept of only three dimensions—length, breadth and height. But suppose these prisoners are released, and they are brought to the sunlit road. They will be surprised to see that the three-dimensional figures are people walking, and they will be blinded by the sunlight. They will not know what has happened to them because they have seen only the two-dimensional shadows cast by people who were walking on the road.
Due to a peculiar structure of our sense organs and mind, we see things only as length, breadth and height, even though there is no such thing as length, breadth and height. It is an illusion that is created by the peculiar structure of our sense organs. There are actually no dimensions. That the world is dimensionless is proclaimed today by our modern scientists. So Sri Krishna says, “I know everything. But the world of three dimensions cannot know the four-dimensional Eternal.” Vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna, bhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṁ tu veda na kaścana: The four-dimensional Universal knows everything that is taking place in the three-dimensional world; but people bound to three-dimensional perception cannot know the transcendent, which is of four dimensions.
We think that there is no such thing as four dimensions, because we cannot imagine what it is. Dimensions are only length, breadth and height. What is the fourth dimension? That is the Universal. Nobody knows what universality is because they know only subjectivity and externality. Total universality is completely obliterated from our perception. It is only a dream for us, an imagination and an abstract concept. Yet, that is the true reality. The universal four-dimensional continuum—which is neither space nor time, which is neither object nor anything solid—is the reality, though we mistake solid, three-dimensional objects to be realities.
Hence, the Immortal Being, the timeless four-dimensional essence, says: “The Universal that I am, I know everything—past, present and future.” Because in a spaceless and timeless existence there is no past, present and future, at once there is a grasp of eternal instantaneous knowledge in the Supreme Absolute. One grasp is equal to a total grasp. The past, present and future are in the palm of our hand, as it were, because the past, present and future do not actually exist. They are only a three-partite division created by a peculiar structure of our mind and sense organs. In this sense, the world is illusory. It is not as it appears to be. Things are not what they seem.
Icchādveṣasamutthena dvandvamohena bhārata, sarvabhūtāni sammohaṁ sarge yānti paraṁtapa (7.27): The moment we are born, we are born into delusion. It is said in the Bhagavata Purana that when a child is in the womb, it knows its previous existence. It weeps and cries: “Why I am in this womb? Is it because of the karmas of my past? O Narayana! I shall not commit these mistakes, due to which I am in this womb now. I shall never make such mistakes. I will always resort to Narayana, and will never commit such mistakes which cause me to be born into the world.” Once the child comes out into the world, it forgets everything. The moment we are born into this world, the maya of the three dimensions, the prakritis, the gunas, catch hold of us to such an extent that all these prayers we made in the womb vanish into thin air and we are once again the same idiots, knowing not what has happened to us; and then we commit the same blunder. The mistake of erroneous perception is born together with the biological tabernacle which we put on at the time of birth. Ignorance is born with us and we get deluded right from childhood itself, right from babyhood, right from the time of coming into existence in this world.
What is the reason for this? Icchādveṣasamutthena: Throughout the different incarnations, the soul has been involved in likes and dislikes. There is no way of thinking except through likes and dislikes. Psychoanalytically, we should go deep into our own mind and see if we can think without the touch of love and hatred. It is impossible for us to think anything without a touch of some like for something and dislike for something else. Therefore, this division that we have unnecessarily created in our psyche creates a split personality in our own self. We are not whole persons at any time. We are double dealers, two-partite fractions, as it were, dovetailed together—like Jarasandha.
Jarasandha, a famous man in the Mahabharata, was born in two halves due to a defect in the process of conception; and because a demoness called Jara joined the two pieces together, he was called Jarasandha. Likewise, we are Jarasandhas. We are two different things altogether. The love aspect and the hatred aspect of our personality become dovetailed into a single individuality, as it were, making it appear that we are one individual. Actually we are two individuals, loving and hating people. Therefore, our perceptions are dual, and we never have an integrated perception of anything. There is non-alignment of our inner psyche. We are double-dealers in our own selves, let alone in respect of other people. Icchādveṣasamutthena: Because of this involvement in love and hatred.
Dvandvamohena bhārata: Because of the delusion that this dvandva, or duality, is the source of joy. Do we not think that it is a great happiness to be in a state of love and hatred? “I love this immensely, and hate that immensely.” This is the way that we live in this world, and it gives us great satisfaction. It is a great satisfaction to love something, and it is a greater satisfaction to hate something. Both are satisfactions only; and it is this kind of satisfaction that we get in this world. Mūḍhoyaṁ nābhijānāti: The idiotic mind does not understand anything.
Icchādveṣasamutthena dvandvamohena bhārata, sarvabhūtāni sammohaṁ sarge yānti paraṁtapa: All beings are deluded in this fashion. They see topsy-turvy. They do not know what is behind things.
In the Seventh Chapter of the Gita, we have been studying the essentials of a universal religion—an impartial religion of mankind with no denomination of any kind, where each god is equally as good as any other god, and yet no god is equal to the ultimate God. It was mentioned in this context that outside God nothing is—mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti (7.7)—and our aim is to attain God. The whole point in the practice of religion is the learning of the art of conducting oneself in the way of God. Otherwise, what is the good of religion? It is a way to God.
The whole point is that we have to reach God through religious practice. It has been mentioned that God is such that outside of It nothing can be, and beyond It there is nothing. We have to reach a God outside of Whom nothing is. How would we reach a God outside of Whom nothing is? There is no question of reaching—because when we conceive a question of reaching or moving in the direction of something, there is an outsideness already created. We cannot move towards anything which is not outside, and there is nothing outside God. It appears, therefore, that there is no such thing as an ordinarily conceived movement towards God. Hence, realisation, attainment, moksha, the goal of life—which is God—cannot be conceived in ordinary space-time related terms.
Then how do we reach God? The Bhagavadgita is the gospel of the art of reaching God, yet it confuses us by saying that we cannot easily reach God. Why we cannot easily reach God has been already mentioned in the earlier verses. It is because our mind is confused by its lodgement in a kind of split-psychic personality caused by love and hatred, which are the principles of mental operation. In any way, we have to get out of it. There is a necessity to integrate the psyche; we cannot go on living a split life. The object of final spiritual realisation is the total God, not a partial God.
It was conceded that the lesser gods are also equally good. They are equally good in the sense that they will give us some benefit—a benefit that has a beginning and an end. But liberation is not something that has a beginning and an end. Hence, a beginningless and endless achievement cannot be attempted by the worship of any kind of localised god—a god that is placed in some heaven and distinguished from other deities. Therefore, the merciful acquiescence of the Almighty in giving us permission to worship any kind of independent god does not mean that it is a solution to the problems of samsara. It is a solution to our daily problems, no doubt—problems regarding material prosperity, social status, freedom from illness, and joys of various kinds that this earth can give us. All these can be the boons that we can expect from our gods, but we will not get liberation. Liberation is a total merging in the Total Reality and, therefore, any localised god, conceptualised god, isolated god or limited god will not permit us this attainment.
Who is this ultimate God? How do we conceive Him? In his great compassion, Bhagavan Sri Krishna gives two verses which become the seed, as it were, for the next Chapter, which is the Eighth. These verses tell us how God has to be accommodated in our meditating consciousness. Meditation is the way in which we accommodate this total concept of God in our own self. We are not accustomed to total thinking. It was already mentioned that we are partial thinkers; we think along the lines of love and hatred. But that will not do. We have to learn the art of a complete thinking which will exclude nothing from its purview or its operation.
Jarāmaraṇamokṣāya mām āśritya yatanti ye (7.29). “Do you want liberation?” is the question that is raised here. Jara and marana are old age and death. “Do you want freedom from old age and death, and to not be born once again into this samsara, this misery of the earth? If that is the case, I shall tell you the recipe, and here it is: Resort to Me as the Ultimate Being for freedom from decay and death.” Te brahma tad viduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṁ karma cākhilam.
Sādhibhūtādhidaivaṁ māṁ sādhiyajñaṁ ca ye viduḥ, prayāṇakāle’pi ca māṁ te vidur yuktacetasaḥ (7.30). At the time of passing, at the time of leaving this body, what kind of consciousness is to take possession of us? It is told to us in the Eighth Chapter that the consciousness that will take possession of us at the time of passing will be the same consciousness that we entertain in our daily life—because as is the tree, so is the fruit. We cannot have apples from pickles. If we have been living a very distracted, erroneous, confused kind of life, how would we expect this total awareness to arise in our mind at the time of passing? That is told to us in the Eighth Chapter.
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