Bg 7.16
catur-vidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ su-kṛtino ’rjuna
ārto jijñāsur arthārthī jñānī ca bharatarṣabha
Bg 7.17
teṣāṁ jñānī nitya-yukta eka-bhaktir viśiṣyate
priyo hi jñānino ’tyartham ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ
Bg 7.18
udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tv ātmaiva me matam
āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā mām evānuttamāṁ gatim
Bg 7.19
bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate
vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā su-durlabhaḥ
Translation
16. Four kinds of virtuous men worship Me, O Arjuna, the dissatisfied, the seeker of (systematised) knowledge, the seeker of wealth, and the wise, O best among the Bharatas.
17. Of them the wise, ever steadfast and devoted to the One, excels; for, I am exceedingly dear to the wise, and he is dear to Me.
18. Noble indeed are all these, but the wise man, I deem, as My very Self; for, steadfast in mind he is established in Me alone as the Supreme Goal.
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.
Commentary
Since the Self is the source of all existence and energy, all other apparent activities that are seen at the level of matter, must come from the same great, grand motive force. Every part of a railway engine is made up of cold iron, and if the engine can run forward carrying along with it a train-load of passengers and goods, there must be something other than iron that is giving it the power to move. Similarly, when ego-centric deluded men, considering themselves to be their body or mind or intellect, act in the world outside, they express a kind of seeming dynamism through their matter vestures. When those who are living in the matter-outskirts of the Palace of Truth, struggle hard to eke out satisfaction and happiness, fulfilling their desires, they too act invoking all their energies from the Spirit.
Even when the deluded ego-centres want to live in their realm of ignorance and sorrows, they must necessarily invoke the required energy and sentiency from the Pure Consciousness, the Self. Whether they seek consolation in moments of distress, or whether they are mere seekers of satisfaction for the demands of the body, for the urges of the mind, for the questions of the intellect, or whether they be mere men of desires, striving hard to fulfil their desires or to satisfy their emotions --- they all need the energy to function, the capacity to feel and the ability to act. This dynamic motive power can reach the inert matter and vitalise it, only when the Spirit is invoked and contacted.
This invocation of the required type of energy to flow into a particular channel and act therein is called prayer (Bhajana). In all true prayers the ego surrenders itself to the Spirit with a demand to its Lord to manifest and function in any given scheme of activity. As an analogy we may take the example of how we make use of an electric plug on the wall. The various equipments such as the fan, or the heater, or the toaster, or the refrigerator --- all are in themselves mere iron and steel gadgets which have no capacity of their own to perform any work. Only when the electric current is flowing through them, can these machines serve society.
If I plug a fan into the wall-socket, it is an act where the fan is, as it were, invoking the dynamic "current" to flow through it. If the right instrument is contacted with the "current," I will be served by the required manifestation. But supposing, in winter, I switch the fan on, I have no right then to complain that the electricity is cruel to me. If, unintelligently, I invoke the Truth to play through my mind which is mal-adjusted with wrong tendencies, the Spirit flowing through such an instrument can bring about nothing but sorrows for myself and disturbances to others.
With this scriptural idea that the Self has the total monopoly of all sentience and life, Krishna says here that everyone, be he a sinner or a saint, foolish or wise, dull or energetic, cowardly or courageous, must "invoke Me" (Bhajana) and "I express Myself through the individual mental composition as the one who has the above qualities." "Each individual must approach Me," be it consciously or unconsciously, ere he can express himself at the intellectual, mental, or physical level of his personality.
If everyone must thus invoke the Self in expressing himself, or in fulfilling his ideas and emotions, then everyone is "sacred" and "virtuous," for, all of us, without an exception, are devotees at the Temple of the Spirit. Lord Krishna, the Self, now expounds how the numberless persons that reach him with endless prayers, can all be classified under four distinct groups:-
(a) Men who are dissatisfied with even the best in life (Arttah) approach this Life Energy in themselves, for fighting against and for gaining a total relief from the spiritual distress that is threatening them in their within. They turn to Me, the Lord.
(b) Seekers of knowledge and understanding, from a mere idle curiosity to study and come to know My Nature, ever invoke the grace of the Spirit.
(c) All men, throughout their life-time, spend themselves irresistibly in some field of activity or the other, under the whip of their desires. Fulfilment of desires is the urge under which every member of the living kingdom acts restlessly, all through his lifetime. The inert materials of the body and intellect cannot act unless the Spirit is invoked to play through them.
(d) We have yet a rare few, who approach the SANCTUM SANCTORUM of the Temple of the Spirit, demanding nothing, expecting nothing, carrying with them only themselves as their offerings. They offer themselves as an oblation in a pure spirit of love-inspired total self-surrender. The only cry in their heart is that the Spirit should end their sense of separation and accept them back into the embrace of the Lord, to be made one with Him. These Jnanis constitute the last type who try to invoke the Spirit.
OF THESE FOUR TYPES WHICH IS THE BEST?
Comparing and contrasting these four above-mentioned groups among themselves, the Lord declares here that the Jnani, who with a steadfast mind, surrenders himself to the Self, with an integrated heart of total devotion, which is not dissipated by other parallel aspirations, represents the best. Single-pointedness of mind can be gained only when the goal of the meditator is fixed and steady. The unbroken and all-out aspiration of the seeker to reach his own Real Nature, the Self, is called single-pointed-devotion (Eka bhaktih).
This is possible only when one withdraws oneself totally from all other extrovert demands of the lower nature in him. In the case of a Jnani, therefore, the Spirit is invoked not for the acquisition of anything, but for the annihilation of all the self-destructive channels through which his spiritual dynamism gushes out day-to-day, only to get wasted on the dry rocks of the world of hallucination. Naturally, therefore, the Self, as a personification in Krishna, declares in the Geeta that the Jnanis are the highest and the best among the living kingdom who reach the PORTALS OF TRUTH with their individual demands and aspirations, to experience their final merger in the Self.
To the truly wise "SUPREMELY DEAR AM I." Love is measured by the amount of identification the lover has gained with the beloved. Self-surrender is the tune in which the song of love is truly sung. Selfessness is the key in which the duet of love is played. Love demands "giving without expecting any return," at all times, in all circumstances. With this understanding of the nature of true love, when one tries to understand the attitude of the Jnani towards the Self, it is true that a Jnani alone knows how to love wholly, completely.
One-sided love never culminates in any consummation. Man may approach the Spiritual Centre in himself in an attitude of discrimination and surrender --- with all his aspiration and love --- but if it is not reciprocated by the Spirit, it might become as tragic as the case of the Greek boy who fell in love with his own reflection. Here, when Krishna declares, "AND HE IS DEAR TO ME," a great psychological truth has been expounded. It is the Eternal Law that love, with no strings attached to it, can not only order its own fulfilment, but can also convert even the base into the noble by its silent persuasions and mysterious charms.
Scientifically viewed, it is an observable fact that if a mind is powerfully charged with a certain emotion --- be it sorrow, hatred, jealousy, love or kindness --- it can bring about sympathetic vibrations of similar emotions in the chambers of the hearts that come near it. When one full of hatred approaches us, he can influence and fill our hearts to the full with hatred. So too, if we can give the required dose of pure and sincere love, unmotivated by any desire or selfishness, it is a law that even the bitterest enemies, with their hearts full of hatred, can be forced to reflect nothing but love towards us. This psychological truth, in all its implications, has been brought out vividly when the Geeta states that even the Infinite and Eternal Truth has, helplessly, to come under the charm of pure and selfless courting of the meditator with Eka bhaktih.
THEN, ARE NOT THE THREE OTHERS, THE DISSATISFIED AND THE REST, DEAR TO VASUDEVA? NOT SO. THEN HOW IS IT?
With the large-heartedness of a master-mind, Lord Krishna declares here that all creatures living the life of intelligent seeking and industrious efforts are blessed, inasmuch as they all are, in their own way, approaching the same fountain of
the Infinite for tapping out their required energies. Although some are invoking the Eternal Spiritual Strength for the purposes of reducing their distress, or for fulfilling their desires, they all are, for one reason or the other, approaching the Self, and therefore, relatively, diviner than the insentient 'mineral world.' However, comparing and contrasting them with the Jnanis, the Lord says: "BUT, THE MAN OF KNOWLEDGE, I REGARD AS MY OWN SELF."
It is very well-known that there is a lot of difference between maintaining one's friendship with the minister, and oneself becoming a minister. No doubt, to be a friend of a minister is to gain some amount of influence and power in society; but the entire might and glory come to the man when he himself becomes the minister. Similarly, to be capable of invoking and directing the Spiritual Strength is certainly divine; but a man of Knowledge is one who, courting Truth in a spirit of total identification with It, successfully attains the total transcendence of his individual mind-and-intellect, whereby his ego rediscovers itself to be nothing other than the Self. He becomes one with It.
Such a Jnani, thereafter, ever remains in the divine sense of identification with the self. This emphasis of extra preference to the status of a Man-of-Wisdom, is according to Krishna, his personal opinion (Matam).
That such pure Men-of-Wisdom are necessarily few in the history of the world, is the declaration here, which, in decadent Hinduism, we have learnt to consider as an extremely pessimistic assertion (VI-45). A little thought should clearly make the fallacy of this wild conclusion quite evident to us. The entire human kingdom is, indeed, a very negligible and small proportion of the total sentient creatures in the world. In the community of man, not all have a fully developed instrument of rational thinking and divine emotion.
Even among those who have fully developed mental and intellectual capacities, it is a rare few that seriously take up the study of the scriptures. All those who STUDY scriptures do not LIVE the scriptures, but they come to feel fulfilled in a mere understanding of its contents. Therefore, it becomes evident that only a rare few can ever reach the goal of evolution and come to discover their true Divine Nature of Perfection.
Like Darwin in our own days, the ancient Rishis also had observed in their times, that this development can take place only when, in the flood of time, the different circumstances have rubbed down and polished the imperfect into the shape and beauty of the perfect. It takes trillions of years for an organism to evolve from one given form of existence into a higher form of life. Naturally, it becomes quite clear that for rational being of subtlest potentialities, it should take an indefinitely large number of lives in different manifestations to scrape off all his ignorance, and thereby, ultimately reach the Perfect Realm of all Knowledge.
This DOES NOT MEAN that none among us, now striving so hard, has any chance of reaching the goal of life in this very birth. It is not in any pessimistic hopelessness and total despair, that this statement is made by the Lord in the Geeta. On the other hand, it is solely for bringing into the recognition of the student the urgency of his faithful pursuit of the higher life. The very fact that a seeker has come to feel a disappointment with his present state of existence, and the fact that he has discovered enough intellectual capacity to appreciate and comprehend the subtle thoughts of the Upanishadic lore, clearly shows that he has reached the very archway to the temple of the Self. A little more sincere and steady self-application can take him to the highest state of his evolution.
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
catur-vidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ su-kṛtino ’rjuna
ārto jijñāsur arthārthī jñānī ca bharatarṣabha
Bg 7.17
teṣāṁ jñānī nitya-yukta eka-bhaktir viśiṣyate
priyo hi jñānino ’tyartham ahaṁ sa ca mama priyaḥ
Bg 7.18
udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tv ātmaiva me matam
āsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā mām evānuttamāṁ gatim
Bg 7.19
bahūnāṁ janmanām ante jñānavān māṁ prapadyate
vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā su-durlabhaḥ
Translation
16. Four kinds of virtuous men worship Me, O Arjuna, the dissatisfied, the seeker of (systematised) knowledge, the seeker of wealth, and the wise, O best among the Bharatas.
17. Of them the wise, ever steadfast and devoted to the One, excels; for, I am exceedingly dear to the wise, and he is dear to Me.
18. Noble indeed are all these, but the wise man, I deem, as My very Self; for, steadfast in mind he is established in Me alone as the Supreme Goal.
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.
Commentary
Since the Self is the source of all existence and energy, all other apparent activities that are seen at the level of matter, must come from the same great, grand motive force. Every part of a railway engine is made up of cold iron, and if the engine can run forward carrying along with it a train-load of passengers and goods, there must be something other than iron that is giving it the power to move. Similarly, when ego-centric deluded men, considering themselves to be their body or mind or intellect, act in the world outside, they express a kind of seeming dynamism through their matter vestures. When those who are living in the matter-outskirts of the Palace of Truth, struggle hard to eke out satisfaction and happiness, fulfilling their desires, they too act invoking all their energies from the Spirit.
Even when the deluded ego-centres want to live in their realm of ignorance and sorrows, they must necessarily invoke the required energy and sentiency from the Pure Consciousness, the Self. Whether they seek consolation in moments of distress, or whether they are mere seekers of satisfaction for the demands of the body, for the urges of the mind, for the questions of the intellect, or whether they be mere men of desires, striving hard to fulfil their desires or to satisfy their emotions --- they all need the energy to function, the capacity to feel and the ability to act. This dynamic motive power can reach the inert matter and vitalise it, only when the Spirit is invoked and contacted.
This invocation of the required type of energy to flow into a particular channel and act therein is called prayer (Bhajana). In all true prayers the ego surrenders itself to the Spirit with a demand to its Lord to manifest and function in any given scheme of activity. As an analogy we may take the example of how we make use of an electric plug on the wall. The various equipments such as the fan, or the heater, or the toaster, or the refrigerator --- all are in themselves mere iron and steel gadgets which have no capacity of their own to perform any work. Only when the electric current is flowing through them, can these machines serve society.
If I plug a fan into the wall-socket, it is an act where the fan is, as it were, invoking the dynamic "current" to flow through it. If the right instrument is contacted with the "current," I will be served by the required manifestation. But supposing, in winter, I switch the fan on, I have no right then to complain that the electricity is cruel to me. If, unintelligently, I invoke the Truth to play through my mind which is mal-adjusted with wrong tendencies, the Spirit flowing through such an instrument can bring about nothing but sorrows for myself and disturbances to others.
With this scriptural idea that the Self has the total monopoly of all sentience and life, Krishna says here that everyone, be he a sinner or a saint, foolish or wise, dull or energetic, cowardly or courageous, must "invoke Me" (Bhajana) and "I express Myself through the individual mental composition as the one who has the above qualities." "Each individual must approach Me," be it consciously or unconsciously, ere he can express himself at the intellectual, mental, or physical level of his personality.
If everyone must thus invoke the Self in expressing himself, or in fulfilling his ideas and emotions, then everyone is "sacred" and "virtuous," for, all of us, without an exception, are devotees at the Temple of the Spirit. Lord Krishna, the Self, now expounds how the numberless persons that reach him with endless prayers, can all be classified under four distinct groups:-
(a) Men who are dissatisfied with even the best in life (Arttah) approach this Life Energy in themselves, for fighting against and for gaining a total relief from the spiritual distress that is threatening them in their within. They turn to Me, the Lord.
(b) Seekers of knowledge and understanding, from a mere idle curiosity to study and come to know My Nature, ever invoke the grace of the Spirit.
(c) All men, throughout their life-time, spend themselves irresistibly in some field of activity or the other, under the whip of their desires. Fulfilment of desires is the urge under which every member of the living kingdom acts restlessly, all through his lifetime. The inert materials of the body and intellect cannot act unless the Spirit is invoked to play through them.
(d) We have yet a rare few, who approach the SANCTUM SANCTORUM of the Temple of the Spirit, demanding nothing, expecting nothing, carrying with them only themselves as their offerings. They offer themselves as an oblation in a pure spirit of love-inspired total self-surrender. The only cry in their heart is that the Spirit should end their sense of separation and accept them back into the embrace of the Lord, to be made one with Him. These Jnanis constitute the last type who try to invoke the Spirit.
OF THESE FOUR TYPES WHICH IS THE BEST?
Comparing and contrasting these four above-mentioned groups among themselves, the Lord declares here that the Jnani, who with a steadfast mind, surrenders himself to the Self, with an integrated heart of total devotion, which is not dissipated by other parallel aspirations, represents the best. Single-pointedness of mind can be gained only when the goal of the meditator is fixed and steady. The unbroken and all-out aspiration of the seeker to reach his own Real Nature, the Self, is called single-pointed-devotion (Eka bhaktih).
This is possible only when one withdraws oneself totally from all other extrovert demands of the lower nature in him. In the case of a Jnani, therefore, the Spirit is invoked not for the acquisition of anything, but for the annihilation of all the self-destructive channels through which his spiritual dynamism gushes out day-to-day, only to get wasted on the dry rocks of the world of hallucination. Naturally, therefore, the Self, as a personification in Krishna, declares in the Geeta that the Jnanis are the highest and the best among the living kingdom who reach the PORTALS OF TRUTH with their individual demands and aspirations, to experience their final merger in the Self.
To the truly wise "SUPREMELY DEAR AM I." Love is measured by the amount of identification the lover has gained with the beloved. Self-surrender is the tune in which the song of love is truly sung. Selfessness is the key in which the duet of love is played. Love demands "giving without expecting any return," at all times, in all circumstances. With this understanding of the nature of true love, when one tries to understand the attitude of the Jnani towards the Self, it is true that a Jnani alone knows how to love wholly, completely.
One-sided love never culminates in any consummation. Man may approach the Spiritual Centre in himself in an attitude of discrimination and surrender --- with all his aspiration and love --- but if it is not reciprocated by the Spirit, it might become as tragic as the case of the Greek boy who fell in love with his own reflection. Here, when Krishna declares, "AND HE IS DEAR TO ME," a great psychological truth has been expounded. It is the Eternal Law that love, with no strings attached to it, can not only order its own fulfilment, but can also convert even the base into the noble by its silent persuasions and mysterious charms.
Scientifically viewed, it is an observable fact that if a mind is powerfully charged with a certain emotion --- be it sorrow, hatred, jealousy, love or kindness --- it can bring about sympathetic vibrations of similar emotions in the chambers of the hearts that come near it. When one full of hatred approaches us, he can influence and fill our hearts to the full with hatred. So too, if we can give the required dose of pure and sincere love, unmotivated by any desire or selfishness, it is a law that even the bitterest enemies, with their hearts full of hatred, can be forced to reflect nothing but love towards us. This psychological truth, in all its implications, has been brought out vividly when the Geeta states that even the Infinite and Eternal Truth has, helplessly, to come under the charm of pure and selfless courting of the meditator with Eka bhaktih.
THEN, ARE NOT THE THREE OTHERS, THE DISSATISFIED AND THE REST, DEAR TO VASUDEVA? NOT SO. THEN HOW IS IT?
With the large-heartedness of a master-mind, Lord Krishna declares here that all creatures living the life of intelligent seeking and industrious efforts are blessed, inasmuch as they all are, in their own way, approaching the same fountain of
the Infinite for tapping out their required energies. Although some are invoking the Eternal Spiritual Strength for the purposes of reducing their distress, or for fulfilling their desires, they all are, for one reason or the other, approaching the Self, and therefore, relatively, diviner than the insentient 'mineral world.' However, comparing and contrasting them with the Jnanis, the Lord says: "BUT, THE MAN OF KNOWLEDGE, I REGARD AS MY OWN SELF."
It is very well-known that there is a lot of difference between maintaining one's friendship with the minister, and oneself becoming a minister. No doubt, to be a friend of a minister is to gain some amount of influence and power in society; but the entire might and glory come to the man when he himself becomes the minister. Similarly, to be capable of invoking and directing the Spiritual Strength is certainly divine; but a man of Knowledge is one who, courting Truth in a spirit of total identification with It, successfully attains the total transcendence of his individual mind-and-intellect, whereby his ego rediscovers itself to be nothing other than the Self. He becomes one with It.
Such a Jnani, thereafter, ever remains in the divine sense of identification with the self. This emphasis of extra preference to the status of a Man-of-Wisdom, is according to Krishna, his personal opinion (Matam).
That such pure Men-of-Wisdom are necessarily few in the history of the world, is the declaration here, which, in decadent Hinduism, we have learnt to consider as an extremely pessimistic assertion (VI-45). A little thought should clearly make the fallacy of this wild conclusion quite evident to us. The entire human kingdom is, indeed, a very negligible and small proportion of the total sentient creatures in the world. In the community of man, not all have a fully developed instrument of rational thinking and divine emotion.
Even among those who have fully developed mental and intellectual capacities, it is a rare few that seriously take up the study of the scriptures. All those who STUDY scriptures do not LIVE the scriptures, but they come to feel fulfilled in a mere understanding of its contents. Therefore, it becomes evident that only a rare few can ever reach the goal of evolution and come to discover their true Divine Nature of Perfection.
Like Darwin in our own days, the ancient Rishis also had observed in their times, that this development can take place only when, in the flood of time, the different circumstances have rubbed down and polished the imperfect into the shape and beauty of the perfect. It takes trillions of years for an organism to evolve from one given form of existence into a higher form of life. Naturally, it becomes quite clear that for rational being of subtlest potentialities, it should take an indefinitely large number of lives in different manifestations to scrape off all his ignorance, and thereby, ultimately reach the Perfect Realm of all Knowledge.
This DOES NOT MEAN that none among us, now striving so hard, has any chance of reaching the goal of life in this very birth. It is not in any pessimistic hopelessness and total despair, that this statement is made by the Lord in the Geeta. On the other hand, it is solely for bringing into the recognition of the student the urgency of his faithful pursuit of the higher life. The very fact that a seeker has come to feel a disappointment with his present state of existence, and the fact that he has discovered enough intellectual capacity to appreciate and comprehend the subtle thoughts of the Upanishadic lore, clearly shows that he has reached the very archway to the temple of the Self. A little more sincere and steady self-application can take him to the highest state of his evolution.
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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