Lord Krishn himself laid the basis of a question by stating “madgatenāntarātmanā” that the best yogi is one whose Self abides in God.
What does abiding firmly in God mean? Many a yogi attain to God, but they feel something missing somewhere. When does that stage appear at which there is not even the least imperfection? When does perfect knowledge of God come about ?
Lord Krishn now speaks the state in which such knowledge is attained to.
“Listen, O Parth, to how by taking refuge in me
and practicing yog with devotion,
you shall know me beyond any doubt
as the all-perfect Soul in all beings.”
The essential precondition of this complete awareness of God should be carefully noted. If Arjun wishes to have such knowledge, he has to practice yog with devotion and by casting himself at God’s mercy. But there are several other aspects of the problem which Lord Krishn is going to dwell upon, and he tells Arjun to listen carefully to him so that all his doubts are resolved. The importance of perfect knowledge of the many glories of God is stressed again.
Yogeshwar Krishn sings:
“I shall fully teach you this knowledge
as well as the all-pervasive action
that results from realization of God (vigyan),
after which there remains nothing better in the world to know.”
Lord Krishn offers to enlighten Arjun fully on the knowledge of God along with the knowledge that is here called “vigyan”. Knowledge is the attainment, in the moment of accomplishment, of the substance of immortality (amrit-tattwa) that is generated by yagya. Direct perception of the essence of God is knowledge.
But the other knowledge, called vigyan, is the attainment by a realized sage of the ability to act simultaneously everywhere. It is the knowledge of how God at the same time operates in all beings. It is the knowledge of how he makes us undertake action and of how he enables the Self to travel across the way to the identical Supreme Spirit. This way of God is vigyan.
“Hardly does one man among thousands
strive to know me and hardly does one among the thousands
who strive for this know my essence.”
Only rarely does a man endeavour to realize God and, among those who strive to do so, there is scarcely a man who succeeds inknowing his reality by direct perception.
Now, where is this total reality-the entire essence? Is it stationary at one place as a corporal body-a lump of matter, or is it all-pervading?
Lord Krishn now speaks of this.
“I am the creator of all nature with its eight divisions-earth,
water, fire, wind, ether, mind, intellect, and ego.”
From Lord Krishn, God, has arisen nature with all its components. This nature with its eight parts is the lower nature.
“This nature, O the mighty-armed, is the lower,
insensate nature, but against it there is my conscious,
living nature which animates the whole world.”
The nature with eight parts is God’s lower nature, dull and insensible. But, along with this, there is his conscious nature which impregnates and gives life to the whole world. But the individual Soul too is “nature” because it is associated with the other, lower nature.
Lord Krishn adds:
“Know that all beings arise from these two natures
and that I am both the creator and the end of the whole world.”
All beings spring from these animate and inanimate natures. These are the two sources of all life. God is the root of the whole universe, both its creator and destroyer. It springs from him and is also dissolved in him.
He is the spring of nature as long as it exists, but he is also the power that dissolves nature after a sage has overcome its limitations. But this is a matter of intuition.
Men have always been intrigued by these universal questions of creation and destruction, which is sometimes called “doom”. Almost all holy books of the world have attempted to explain these phenomena in one way or another. Some of them insist that the end of the world is brought about by submersion under water, while according to others the earth is annihilated because the sun comes too close to it and burns it. Some call the event the Day of Final Judgement, the day on which God judges all beings, while others explain away the idea of doom as a recurrent feature or as dependent on a specific cause.
According to Lord Krishn, however, nature is without beginning and end. Changes there have been, but it has never been completely destroyed. Doom, too, is an event that is revealed by God within the heart of a yogi.
When at the completion of the process of worship, worldly influences cease to be and only God remains in the yogi’s mind-that is doom. This dissolution is not an external phenomenon. Final doom is the inexpressible state of the total identity of Soul with God while the body yet is. This Is something that can be felt through action alone. Whether it is you or me, we are victims of delusion if we judge by the mind alone.
This is what we are told now.
“There is, O Dhananjay, not even one object other than me,
and the whole world is linked up with me like the pearls of a necklace.”
There is absolutely nothing else except God and the whole world is tied up with him. But it is possible to know this only when one engages in yog with total resignation to God, and never before this.
Participation in yog is an indispensable necessity.
~Revered Gurudev Swami Adgadanand Jee Paramhans~
©
_/l\_
Humble Wishes.
~mrityunjayanand~
