NINTH CHAPTER

WORKS, DEVOTION AND KNOWLEDGE

(All the truth that has developed itself at this length step by step, each bringing forward a fresh aspect of the integral knowledge and founding on it some result of spiritual state and action, has now to take a turn of immense importance. The Teacher therefore takes care first to draw attention to the decisive character of what he is about to say, so that the mind of Arjuna may be awakened and attentive. For he is going to open his mind to the knowledge and sight of the integral Divinity and lead up to the vision of the eleventh book, by which the warrior of Kurukshetra becomes i conscious of the author and upholder of his being and action and mission, the Godhead in man and the world, whom nothing in man and world limits or bind?, because all proceeds form him, is a. movement in his infinite being, continues and is supported by his will, is justified in his divine self-knowledge, has him always for its origin, substance and end. Arjuna is to become aware of himself as existing only in God and as acting only by the power within him, his workings only an instrumentality of the divine action, his egoistic consciousness only a veil and to his ignorance a misrepresentation of the real being within him which is an immortal spark and portion of the supreme Godhead.)

1.The Blessed Lord said: What I am going to tell the, the uncarping, is the most secret thing of all, the essential knowledge attended with all the comprehensive knowledge, by knowing which thou shalt be released from evil.

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2. This is the king-knowledge, the king-secret (the wisdom of all wisdoms, the secret of all secrets ), it is a pure and supreme light which one can verify by direct spiritual experience, it is the right and just knowledge, the very law of being. It is easy to practise and imperishable.

3. (But faith¹ is necessary). The soul that fails to get faith in the higher truth and law, 0 Parantapa, not attaining to Me, must return into the path of ordinary mortal living ( subject to death and error and evil.)

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l For this is a truth which has to be lived,—and lived in the soul's growing light, not argued out in the mind's darkness. One has to grow into it, one has to become it,—that is the only way to verify it. It is only by an exceeding of the lower self that one can become the real divine self and live the truth of our spiritual existence. All the apparent truths one can oppose to it are appearances of the lower Nature. The release from the evil and the defect of the lower Nature, ashubham, can only come by accepting a higher knowledge in which all this apparent evil becomes convinced of ultimate unreality, is shown to be a creation of our darkness. But to grow thus into the freedom of the divine Nature one must accept and believe'' in the Godhead secret within our present limited nature. For the reason why the practice of this Yoga becomes possible and easy is that in doing it we give up the whole working of all that we naturally are into the hands of that inner divine Purusha. The Godhead works out the divine birth in us progressively, simply, infallibly, by taking up our being into his and by filling it with his own knowledge and power, jnanadipena bhaswata; he lays hands on our obscure ignorant nature and transforms it into his own light and wideness. What with entire faith and without egoism we believe in and impelled by him will to be, the God within will surely accomplish. But the egoistic mind and life we now and apparently are must first surrender itself for transformation into the hands of that inmost secret Divinity within us.

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4. By Me,¹ all this universe has been extended in the ineffable mystery of My being; all existences are [situated in Me, not I in them.

5. And yet all existences are not situated in Me, behold My divine Yoga ² ; Myself is that which sup- ports all being and constitutes their existence.

6. It is as the great, the all-pervading ³ aerial principle dwells in the etheric that all existences dwell in Me, that is how you have to conceive of it.

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1 The Gita then proceeds to unveil the supreme and integral secret, the one thought and truth in which the seeker of perfection and liberation must learn to live and the one law of perfection of his spiritual members and of all their movements. This supreme secret is the mystery of the transcendent Godhead who is all and everywhere, yet so much greater and other than the universe and all its forms that nothing here contains him, nothing expresses him really, and no language which is borrowed from the appearances of things in space and time and their relations can suggest the truth of his unimaginable being. The consequent law of our perfection is an adoration by our whole nature and its self-surrender to its divine source and possessor. Our one ultimate way is the turning of our entire existence in the world, and not merely of this or that in it, into a single movement towards the Eternal. By the power and mystery of a. divine Yoga we have come out of his inexpressible secrecies into this bounded nature of phenomenal things. By a reverse movement of the same Yoga we must transcend the limns of phenomenal nature and recover the greater conscious- ness by which we can live in the Divine and the Eternal.

2 There is a Yoga of divine Power, by which the Supreme creates phenomena of himself in a spiritual, not a material, self-formulation of his own extended infinity, an extension of winch the material is only an image. .,

3. The universal existence is all-pervading and infinite and the self-existent too is all-pervading and infinite ; but the self- existent infinity is stable, static, immutable, the universal is an all-pervading movement. The Self is one, not many; but the universal expresses itself as all existence and is, as it seems, the

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7. All existences, 0 Kaunteya, return into My divine Nature (out of her action into her immobility and silence) in the lapse of the cycle ; at the beginning of the cycle again I loose them forth.

8. Leaning — pressing down upon my own Nature (Prakriti) I create (loose forth into various being) all this multitude of existences, all helplessly¹ subject to the control of Nature.

9. Nor do these works bind me, 0 Dhananjaya, for I am seated as if indifferent ² above, unattached to those actions.

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sum of all existences. One is Being; the other is Power of Being which moves and creates and acts in the existence of the fundamental, supporting, immutable Spirit. The Self does not dwell in all these existences or in any of them ; that is to say, he is not contained by any, —just as the ether here is not contained in any form, though all forms are derived ultimately from the ether. Nor is he contained in or constituted by all existences together — any more than the ether is contained in the mobile extension of the aerial principle or is constituted by"' the sum of its forms or its forces. But still in the movement also is the Divine; he dwells in the many as the Lord in each being. Both these relations are true of him at one and the same time.

1 Ignorant, the Jiva is subject to her cyclic whirl, not master of itself, but dominated by her ; only by return to the divine consciousness can it attain to mastery and freedom. The Divine too follows the cycle, not as subject to it, but as its informing Spirit and guide, not with his whole being involved in it, but with his power of being accompanying and shaping it.

2 If in his power he accompanies her and causes all her workings, he is outside it too, as if one seated above her universal action in the supracosmic mastery, not attached to her by any involving and mastering desire and not therefore bound by

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10. I am the presiding control of my own action of Nature, (not a spirit born in her, but) the creative spirit who causes her to produce all that appears in the manifestation. Because of this, 0 Kaunteya, the world proceeds in cycles.

11. Deluded¹ minds despise me lodged in the human body because they know not my supreme nature of being, Lord of all existences.

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her works, because he infinitely exceeds them and precedes them, is the same before, during and after all their procession in the cycles ^f Time. But also since this action is the action of the divine Nature, swa prakritih, and the divine Nature can never be separate from the Divine, in everything she creates the Godhead must be immanent. That is a relation which is not the whole truth of his being, but neither is it a truth which we can at all afford to ignore.

1 Mortal mind is bewildered by its ignorant reliance upon veils and appearances ; it sees only the outward human body, human mind, human way of living and catches no liberating glimpse of the Divinity who is lodged in the creature. It ignores the divinity within itself and cannot see it in other men, and even though the Divine manifest himself in humanity .as Avatar and Vibh'uti, it is still blind and ignores or despises the roiled Godhead. And if it ignores him in the living creature, still less can it see him in the objective world on which it looks rom its prison of separative ego through the barred windows of the finite mind. It does not see God in the universe ; it knows nothing of the supreme Divinity who is master of these planes ;full of various existences and dwell s within them; it is blind to -he vision by which all in the world grows divine and the soul itself awakens to its own inherent divinity and becomes of the Godhead, godlike. What it does see readily and to that it attaches itself with passion, is only the life of the ego hunting after finite things for their own sake and for the satisfaction of the earthly hunger of the intellect, body, senses. Those who have given themselves up too entirely to this outward drive of t-he mentality, fall into the hands of the lower nature, cling to ^and make it their foundation. They become a prey to the

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12. All their hope, action, knowledge are vain things (when judged by the Divine and eternal standard); they dwell in the Rakshasic and Asuric nature which deludes the will and the intelligence.

13. The great-souled,¹ 0 Partha, who dwell in the divine nature know Me (the Godhead lodged in human body) as the Imperishable from whom all existences originate and so knowing they turn to Me with a sole and entire love.

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nature of the Rakshasa in man who sacrifices everything to a violent and inordinate satisfaction of his separate vital ego and makes that the dark godhead of his will and thought and action and enjoyment. Or they are hurried onward in a fruitless cycle by the arrogant self-will, self-sufficient thought, self-regarding act, self-satisfied and yet ever unsatisfied intellectualised appetite of enjoyment of the Asuric nature. But to live persistently in this separative ego-consciousness. and make that the centre of all our activities is to miss altogether the true self-awareness. The charm it throws upon the misled instruments of the spirit is an enchantment that chains life to a profitless circling. All its hope, action, knowledge are vain things when judged by the divine and eternal standard, for it shuts out the great hope, excludes the liberating action, banishes the illuminating knowledge. It is a false knowledge that sees the phenomenon but misses the truth of phenomenon, a blind hope that chases after the transient but misses the eternal, a sterile action whose every profit is annulled by loss and amounts to a perennial labour of Sisyphus.

l The great-souled who open themselves to the light and largeness of the diviner nature of which man is capable, are alone on the path narrow in the beginning, inexpressibly wide in the end that leads to liberation and perfection. The growth of the god in man is man's proper business ; the steadfast turning of this lower Asuric and Rakshasic into the divine nature is the carefully hidden meaning of human life. As this growth increases, the veil falls and the soul comes to see the greater significance of action and the real truth of existence. The eye opens to the Godhead in man, to the Godhead in the world; it

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14. Always adoring Me, steadfast in spiritual endeavour, bowing down to Me with devotion, they worship Me ever in Yoga.

15. Others also seek Me out by the sacrifice of knowledge and worship Me in My oneness and in every separate being and in all My million universal faces ( fronting them in the world and its creatures ). ¹

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sees inwardly and comes to know outwardly the infinite Spirit, the Imperishable from whom all existences originate and who exists in all and by him and in him all exist always. Therefore when this vision, this knowledge seizes on the soul, its whole life- aspiration becomes a surpassing love and fathomless adoration of the Divine and Infinite. The mind attaches itself singly to the eternal, the spiritual, the living, the universal, the Real; it values nothing but for its sake, it delights only in the all- blissful Purusha. All the word and all the thought become one hymning of the universal greatness, Light, Beauty, Power and Truth that has revealed itself in its glory to the human spirit and a worship of the one supreme Soul and infinite Person. All the long stress of the inner self to break outward becomes a form now of spiritual endeavour and aspiration to possess the Divine in the soul and realise the Divine in the nature. All life becomes a constant Yoga and unification of that Divine and this human.spirit. This is the manner of the integral devotion ; it creates a single uplifting of our whole being and nature through sacrifice by the dedicated lieart to the eternal Puru- shottama.

1 This knowledge becomes easily an adoration, a large devotion, a vast self-giving, anintegral self-offering because it is the knowledge of a Spirit, the contact of a Being, the embrace of a supreme and universal Soul which claims all that we are even as it lavishes on us when we approach it all the treasures of its endless delight of existence.

The way of works too turns into an adoration and a devotior of self-giving because it is an entire-sacrifice of all our will and its activities to the one Purushottama. The outward Vedic rite is a powerful symbol, effective for a lighter thought still a heavenward purpose; but the real sacrifice is that inner

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16. I the ritual action, I the sacrifice, I the food-oblation, I the fire-giving herb, the mantra I, also the butter, I the flame, the offering I.

17. I the Father of this world, the Mother, the Ordainer, the first Creator, the object of Knowledge, the sacred syllable OM and also the Rik, Sama and Yajw (Vedas).

18. I the path and goal, the upholder, the master, the witness, the house and country, the refuge, the benignant friend ; I the birth and status and destructtion of apparent existence, I the imperishable seed of all and their eternal resting-place.

19. I give heat, I withhold and send forth the rain ; immortality and also death, existent and non-existent am I, 0 Arjuna.

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oblation in which the Divine All becomes himself the ritual action, the sacrifice and every single circumstance of the sacrifice. All the working and forms of that inner rite are the self-ordinance and self-expression of his power in us mounting by our aspiration towards the source of its energies. The Divine Inhabitant becomes himself the flame and the offering, because the flame is the Godward will and that will is God himself within us. And the offering too is form and force of the constituent Godhead in our nature and being; all that has been received from him is given up to the service and the worship of its own Reality, its own supreme Truth and Origin.

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20. The Knowers of the triple Veda, who drink the soma-wine, purify themselves from sin, worshipping Me with sacrifice, pray of Me the way to heaven ; they ascending to the heavenly worlds by their righteousness enjoy in paradise the divine feasts of the gods.

21. They, having enjoyed heavenly worlds of larger felicities, the reward of their good deeds exhausted return to mortal existence. Resorting to the virtues enjoined by the three Vedas, seeking the satisfaction of desire, they follow the cycle of birth and death.

22. To those men who worship Me making Me alone the' whole object of their thought, to those constantly in Yoga with Me, I spontaneously bring every good,¹

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1 Thus the Vedic ritualist of old learned the exoteric sense of the triple Veda, purified himself from sin, drank the wine of communion with the gods and sought by sacrifice and good deeds the rewards of heaven. This firm belief in a Beyond and this seeking of a diviner world secures to the soul in its passing the strength to attain to the joys of heaven on which its faith and seeking were centred: but the return to mortal existence imposes itself because the true aim of that existence has not been found and realised. Here and not elsewhere the highest Godhead has to be found, the soul's divine nature developed out of the imperfect physical human nature and through unity with God and man and universe the whole large truth of being discovered and lived and made visibly wonderful. That completes the long cycle of our becoming and admits us to a supreme result; that is the opportunity given to the soul by the human birth and, until that is accomplished, it cannot cease. The God-lover advances constantly towards this ultimate necessity of our birth in cosmos through a concentrated love and adoration by which he makes the supreme and universal Divine the whole object of his living—not either egoistic terrestrial satisfaction or the celestial worlds — and the whole object of his thought and his seeing. To see nothing but the Divine, to be at every moment in union with him, to love him in all ,creatures and have the delight of him in all things is the whole

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23. Even those who sacrifice to other godheads with devotion and faith, they also sacrifice to Me, 0 son of Kunti, though'not according to the true law.

24. It is I myself who am the enjoyer and the Lord of all sacrifices, but they do not know Me in the true principles and hence they fall,

25. They who worship¹ the gods go to the gods, to the (divinised) Ancestors go the Ancestor-worshippers, to elemental spirits go those who sacrifice to elemental spirits; but My worshippers come to Me.

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condition of his spiritual existence. His God-vision does not divorce him from life, nor does he miss anything of the fulness of life ; for God himself becomes the spontaneous bringer to him of every good and of all his inner and outer getting and having. The joy of heaven and the joy of earth are only a small shadow of his possesssions ; for as he grows into the Divine, the Divine too flows out upon him with all the light, power and joy of an infinite existence.

1 All sincere religious belief and practice is really a seeking after the one supreme and universal Godhead; for he always is the sole master of man's sacrifice and askesis and infinite enjoyer of his effort and aspiration. However small or low the form of the worship, however limited the idea of the godhead, however restricted the giving, the faith, the effort to get behind the veil of one's own ego-worship and limitation by material Nature, it yet forms a thread of connection between the soul of man and the All-soul and there is a response. Still the response, the fruit of the adoration and offering is according to the knowledge, the faith and the work and cannot exceed their limitations, and therefore from the point of' view of the greater God-knowledge, which alone gives the entire truth of being and becoming, this inferior offering is not given according

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26. He who offers to Me with devotion a leaf,¹ a flower, a fruit, a cup of water, that offering of love from the striving soul, is acceptable to Me.

27. Whatever thou doest, whatever thou enjoyest, whatever thou sacrificest, whatever thou givest, what-

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to the true and highest Jaw of the sacrifice. It is not founded. on a knowledge of the supreme Godhead in his integral existence and the true principle of his self-manifestation, but attaches itself to external and partial appearances. Therefore its sacrifice too is limited in its object, largely egoistic in its motive, partial and mistaken in its action and giving. An entire seeing of the Divine is the condition of an entire conscious self-surrender ; the rest attains to things that are incomplete and partial and has to fall back from them and return to enlarge itself in a greater seeking and wider God-experience. But to follow after the supreme and universal Godhead alone and utterly is to attain to all knowledge and result which other ways acquire while yet one is not limited by any aspect, though one finds the truth of. him in all aspects. This movement embraces all forms of divine being on its way to the supreme Pwushottama. This absolute self-giving, this one-minded surrender is the devotion I which the Gita makes the crown of its synthesis. All action and effort are by this devotion turned into an offering to the supreme and universal Godhead.

1 Here the least, the slightest circumstance of life, the most insignificant gift out of oneself or what one has, the smallest action assumes a divine significance and it becomes an acceptable offering to the Godhead who makes it a means for his possession of the soul and life of the God-lover. The distinctions made by desire and ego then disappear. As there is no straining after the good result of one's action, no shunning of unhappy result, but all action and result are given up to the Supreme to whom all work and fruit in the world belong for ever, there is no further bondage. For by an absolute self- giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner renunciation of its separate living. All will, all action, all result become that of the Godhead, work divinely through the purified and illumined nature and no longer belong to the limited personal ego. The finite nature thus surrendered becomes a free channel of the Infinite; the soul in its spiritual being, uplifted out of ignorance and the' limitation, returns to its oneness with the Eternal,

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ever energy of tapasya, of the soul's will or effort, thou puttest forth, make it an offering unto Me.

28. Thus salt thou be liberated from good and evil results which constitute the bonds of action ; with thy soul in union with the Divine through renunciation, thou shalt become free and attain to Me.

29. I (the Eternal Inhabitant) am equal ¹ in all existences, none is dear to Me, none hated; yet those who turn to Me with love and devotion, they are in Me and I also in them.

30. If even a man of very evil conduct turns to Me with a sole and entire love, he must be regarded as a saint, for the settled will of endeavour in him is a right and complete will.

31. Swiftly ² he becomes a soul of righteousness and obtains eternal peace. This is my word of promise, 0 Arjuna, that he who loves me shall not perish.

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1 He is the enemy of none and he is the partial lover of none; none has he cast out, none has he eternally condemned, none has he favoured by any despotism of arbitrary caprice: all at last equally come to him through their circlings in the ignorance. But it is only this perfect adoration that can make this indwelling of God in man and man in God a conscious thing and an engrossing and perfect union. Love of the Highest and a total self-surrender are the straight and swift way to this divine oneness.

2 A will of entire self-giving opens wide all the gates of the spirit and brings in response an entire descent and self-giving of the Godhead to the human being, and that at once reshapes

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32. Those who take refuge with Me, 0 Partha, though outcastes, born from a womb of sin, women, Vaishiyas, even Shudras, they also¹ attain to the highest goal.

33. How much rather then holy Brahmins and devoted king-sages; thou who hast come to this transient and unhappy world, love and turn to Me.

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and, assimilates everything in us to the law of the divine existence by a rapid transformation of the lower into the spiritual nature. The will of self-giving forces away by its power the veil between God and man; it annuls every error and annihilates every obstacle. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of virtue or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Eternal; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to us and takes up our burden. To the ignorant he brings the light of divine knowledge, to the feeble- the power of the divine will, to the sinner the liberation of the divine purity, to the suffering the infinite spiritual joy and Ananda. Their weakness and the stumblings of their human strength make no difference.

1 Previous effort and preparation, the purity and the holiness of the Brahmin, the enlightened strength of the king- sage great in works and knowledge have their value, because they make it easier for the imperfect human creature to arrive at this wide vision and self-surrender; but even without this preparation all who take refuge in the divine Lover of man, the Vaishya once preoccupied with the narrowness of wealth- getting and the labour of production, the Shudra hampered by a thousand hard restrictions, woman shut in and stunted in her growth by the narrow circle society has drawn around her self- expansion, those too, papa-yongyah, on whom their past Karma has imposed even the very worst of births, the outcaste, the Pariah, the Chandala, find at once the gates of God opening before them. In the spiritual life all the external distinctions of which men make so much because they appeal with an opppressive force to the outward mind, cease before the equality of the divine Light and the wide omnipotence of an impartial Power.

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34. Become my minded, my lover and adorer, a sacrificer to me, bow thyself to me, thus united with me in the Self thou shalt come to me, having me as thy supreme goal .

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The earthly world preoccupied with the dualities and bound to the immediate transient relations of the hour and the moment is for man, so long as he dwells here attached-to these things and while he accepts the law they impose on him for the law of his life, a world of struggle, suffering and sorrow. The way to liberation is to turn from the outward to the inward, from the appearence created by the material life which lays its burden on the mind and imprisons it in the grooves of the life and the body to the divine Reality which waits to manifest itself through the freedom of the spirit.

Love of the world, the mask, must change into the love of God, the Truth. Once this secret and inner Godhead is known and is embraced, the whole being and the whole life will undergo a sovereign uplifting and a marvellous transmutation. In place of the ignorance of the lower Nature absorbed in its outward works and appearances the eye will open to the vision of God everywhere, to the unity and universality of the spirit. The world's sorrow and pain will disappear in the bliss of the All-blissful; our weakness and error and sin will be changed into the all-embracing and all-transforming strength, truth and purity of the Eternal. To make the mind one with the divine consciousness, to make the whole of our emotional nature one love of God everywhere, to make all our works one sacrifice to the Lord of the worlds and all our worship and aspiration one -adoration of him and self-surrender, to direct the whole self Godwards in an entire union is the way to rise out of a mundane into a divine existence. This is the Gita's teaching of divine love and devotion, in which knowledge, works and the heart's longing become one in a supreme unification, a merging of all their divergences, an intertwining of all their threads, a high fusion, a wide identifying movement.

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