Bg 7.20
kāmais tais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ prapadyante ’nya-devatāḥ
taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā
Bg 7.21
yo yo yāṁ yāṁ tanuṁ bhaktaḥ śraddhayārcitum icchati
tasya tasyācalāṁ śraddhāṁ tām eva vidadhāmy aham
Bg 7.22
sa tayā śraddhayā yuktas tasyārādhanam īhate
labhate ca tataḥ kāmān mayaiva vihitān hi tān
Bg 7.23
antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ tad bhavaty alpa-medhasām
devān deva-yajo yānti mad-bhaktā yānti mām api
Translation
20. Those whose wisdom has been looted away by this or that desire, go to other gods, following this or that rite, led by their own nature.
21. Whatsoever form any devotee desires to worship with faith --- that (same) faith of his I make (firm and) unflinching.
22. Endued with that faith, he engages in the worship of that 'DEVATA' and from it he obtains his desire-fulfilments; all these being ordained, indeed, by Me (alone) .
23. Verily the "fruit" that accrues to those men of little-intelligence is finite. The worshippers of the DEVAS go to the DEVAS but My devotees come to Me.
Commentary
Desire for the sense-objects of the world and the urge for sense-gratification are the great factors which cloud the discriminative potentialities in the human intellect. It is impossible that an individual is not made conscious of his own Self, in the light of a powerful and strong discrimination.
Earlier, we were told that the deity for whose propitiation we performed the Yajna was none other than "the productive potential in any given field of activity." Reading the stanza in the light of this interpretation we may say that the deity mentioned here denotes nothing other than the various joys contained in the different sensuous fields which are courted by us, when we get lashed by desires, in order that we may gain a complete and exhaustive satisfaction from them.
Desires are the springs from which thoughts continuously gurgle up to flood the mental zone, and disturb the glorious reflection of Truth in it. When the mind is thus disturbed, the discriminative capacity in the intellect is rendered dull, and naturally, that individual becomes incapable of distinguishing in his understanding, the Real from the unreal. When the brilliance of the human intellect has been clouded with the vapours of desire, the owls of negativity and delusory attachments start hooting in the jungles of that mind.
It is not the mere appearance of desires in the mind that causes the fall of man. No individual can resist the compelling charm of the desires rising in his bosom. But when he comes to identify himself with them, the thoughts rising in him are directly governed by his desires. When once a given desire has been identified with, the desirer himself, unconsciously, comes to lend an uncontrollable amount of dynamism to the upsurge of the flood of thoughts.
Thoughts themselves are inert matter, inasmuch as they are the by-product of food, being constituted of the subtlest aspect of the food consumed. These inert thought-waves gather a momentum and force by borrowing their strength and vigour from the Self, through the individual's enthusiastic identification with those desires. The urge of thoughts determines the action. The actor in the field, for the time-being, is rendered incapable of discriminating whether the action undertaken can, or cannot, ultimately bring to him a permanent and an enduring satisfaction. Drunk with the idea that he will be at least temporarily appeased, the individual struggles hard and strives intensively to invoke and propitiate THE PRODUCTIVE POTENTIAL OF ANY GIVEN FIELD OF HIS ACTIVITY (DEVATA).
In thus invoking the Devata of a given field, the individual has to strive in a proper and fitting fashion. The methods of assembling the required instruments, the techniques of their application, the time intervals necessary for maturing the results, and the type of gains accrued from the different kinds of application... all these differ from field to field in the world. Therefore, each one will have to "FOLLOW THIS OR THAT RITE," according to the type of his desires.
The reason why different persons thus struggle hard so differently, leaving aside all sincere struggles to realise the Self, as "VASUDEVA IS ALL THIS," is explained here in the second line. Each individual helplessly functions in the different fields of his temporary fascinations, according to the mental impressions, gathered in his earlier moments of activity and thought. To conceive that "the Creator is putting ideas into each one of us because of which one is good and another vile," is a philosophy of the defeatist, of the impotent, of the sluggard. True men of action, with the daring of a well-developed intellect, can very easily see through men and their behaviours and come to this bold conclusion that each man acts as per the schedule, maintained and ordered by himself, during his own past actions.
In short, a deluded person strives hard, running after the mirage of sensuality, vainly hoping to gain therein a satisfaction that is at once infinite and immortal, while another is found to have the subtle discrimination to discover for himself the hollowness and futility of sense-pursuit. This latter type withdraws from all these ultimately unprofitable fields, and with avidity seeks the path to the Real.
WHAT THEN IS THE FUNCTION OF THE ATMAN, THE GUARDIAN ANGEL IN EACH ONE OF US?
In the very opening of this chapter (VII-7), discriminating the Self from the not-Self, it was shown how Krishna is the Spiritual Principle, the Common Truth that holds together the multiple universe of names and forms. It was also said (VII-14) that the three-fold mental temperaments (gunas), that work up the "divine illusion," hoodwink the individual from right cognition of the Divine Self within him. But for the Conscious Principle thrilling the inert matter walls that seemingly encircle the spirit, neither our physical, nor mental, nor intellectual personalities can ever come to function, as they do now. It is very well-known that all men do not worship at the same altar. Each one approaches the same Truth by worshipping the idol of his own heart. Krishna here declares the sacred truth that in all Churches, Mosques, and Temples, in public places, or in private institutions, in the open, or on the sly, in the quiet huts, and in the silent caves --- wherever and in whatsoever form, any devotee seeks to worship with Shraddha, "HIS FAITH DO I MAKE UNWAVERING." A faithful follower of the Geeta can never be contaminated by sectarianism or intolerance. At the foot of every altar, it is Krishna, the Self, that constantly supplies more and more faith to water the expanding fields of devotion in the sincere devotees.
Applying this general statement to the subjective worship in the human bosom, we can very easily understand the greater import of this stanza.
In the world outside, it is very well-known that the greater the consistency with which an idea or an attachment is maintained by an individual, the greater does he become fixed in that temperament or relationship. The more often a particular type of thought is entertained in the mind, the deeper becomes that thought channel, strengthening that very mental impression. These deep-cut patterns of thought, ploughed along the valleys of the mind, indicate the pattern of desires which the individual had entertained. In the law that governs this psychological rule, we can spy and detect the Spiritual Reality and Its infinite and glorious might.
In short, the Lord says that "as we think so we become," and the more we become, the more we think in the same given pattern. Applying this principle of psychology, it becomes clear, beyond all doubts, why everyone of us is bound by our own habits, and how we get chained by our own peculiar type of thinking. The sensuous are not to be condemned, and equally so, the divine need not be congratulated! Both of them are the exact products of their individual types of thinking. Thought belongs to the realm of nature (Prakriti); thoughts create the world and the all-pervading Self is the Essential Substratum (Purusha) that provides the world-drama with its stage and scenario.
WITH THIS EVER-GROWING FAITH, HOW DOES THE MAN-OF-THE-WORLD GAIN HIS PARTICULAR DESIRE?
Imbued with this faith he invokes the Devata of his choice and gains the fulfilment of his desires. And, Lord Krishna adds that in all cases these desires are "BEING VERILY DISPENSED BY ME ALONE." The Self is the source of all activities, gains, fulfilments and despairs. The sense of joy or sorrow, of success or failure, is but a mental thought-wave; but for the Conscious principle illumining it, we would not have any such experience.
Faithful activity in any given field of action, brings about complete success, but the very existence of the field, the capacity to act, the fervour of faith that supplies consistency to all efforts --- all these are possible only in the medium of the Changeless, the Actionless, the Attributeless, Eternal Self. And Krishna, identifying Himself with this Spiritual Centre of the Universe, rightly declares here, that He alone is the one that supplies an ever-growing faith in all activities, and ultimately, when the laws of action are fulfilled to the last bit, both in their intensity and application, it is He alone who dispenses the exact result of each action.
When a well-adjusted radio is plugged onto the current, the Electric Current says that it alone is the 'dispenser' of the programme available at the Station for the listeners!
SINCE THE DELUDED ONES DESIRE THE FINITE SENSE OBJECTS, THEY DO NOT COME TO THE ALL-SATISFYING PEACE; AND HENCE, IT IS SAID:
The fruits accruing to "THESE MEN OF LITTLE UNDERSTANDING ARE LIMITED." Fleeting desires for finite objects, even when fulfilled through the impermanent activities, must surely prove to be ephemeral. Out of gold whatever ornament is made, it also must be gold alone; when chocolate is made out of sweet things, the resultant stuff cannot be bitter. The effects entirely depends, for their nature and quality, upon those of the causes.
Finite actions undertaken in finite fields, employing finite instruments, cannot but produce --- whether joy or sorrow --- finite "fruits." Joy arrested or ended is sorrow; and therefore, in each instance of a sensuous desire satisfied, though there is a joy and a fulfilment, the sense-of-satisfaction soon putrefies to provide the sourness of dissatisfaction, or more often, the bitterness of sorrow.
This statement of the Lord is supported by the following general rule that, "THE WORSHIPPERS OF THE DEVAS REACH THE DEVAS." Those who are invoking a desired 'profit potential,' in any given field of activity, can, even when completely successful, gain only THAT profit.
The above statement is declared as a contrast to a pure philosophical truth, when the Lord, says: "THOSE WHO DEVOTE THEMSELVES TO ME, COME TO ME." Seekers of happiness in the world of sense-objects, as a result of their strife and struggle, can gain their insignificant success in the field of sense-enjoyments. If the same effort is applied by them in the right life of constructive living, they can come to discover their identity with the Eternal Absolute, the Self. Due to the extrovertedness of the deluded ego, it comes to identify itself with its finite matter-envolopments, and revels in a world of its endless number of objects, called in Sanskrit as the Jagat.
Discriminative and careful seekers, understanding the utter uselessness of the pursuit of finite pleasures, detach themselves from their false ego-centric lives, and through the process of meditation upon the Self, as advised in the previous chapter, come to rediscover their own Real Nature in the sunny fields of Bliss that lie unrolled beyond the thorny by-lanes of all physical, psychological and intellectual quests.
In the language of the Geeta, the first person singular stands always, at all places, for the Infinite Reality which is the Substratum for the individual as well as for the whole. Therefore, "MY DEVOTEES COME TO ME," is not the assertion of a limited historical figures as the son of Devaki, but the Singer of the Geeta, in His divine inspiration, entirely identifies Himself with the Principle of Consciousness that is the core of the pluralistic dream of the mind-intellect equipment. Thus, to understand the above statement, without its seeming limitations, is to understand the Geeta, the Scripture of Man, as declaring that the seekers of the Self discover themselves and become the Self.
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
kāmais tais tair hṛta-jñānāḥ prapadyante ’nya-devatāḥ
taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya prakṛtyā niyatāḥ svayā
Bg 7.21
yo yo yāṁ yāṁ tanuṁ bhaktaḥ śraddhayārcitum icchati
tasya tasyācalāṁ śraddhāṁ tām eva vidadhāmy aham
Bg 7.22
sa tayā śraddhayā yuktas tasyārādhanam īhate
labhate ca tataḥ kāmān mayaiva vihitān hi tān
Bg 7.23
antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ tad bhavaty alpa-medhasām
devān deva-yajo yānti mad-bhaktā yānti mām api
Translation
20. Those whose wisdom has been looted away by this or that desire, go to other gods, following this or that rite, led by their own nature.
21. Whatsoever form any devotee desires to worship with faith --- that (same) faith of his I make (firm and) unflinching.
22. Endued with that faith, he engages in the worship of that 'DEVATA' and from it he obtains his desire-fulfilments; all these being ordained, indeed, by Me (alone) .
23. Verily the "fruit" that accrues to those men of little-intelligence is finite. The worshippers of the DEVAS go to the DEVAS but My devotees come to Me.
Commentary
Desire for the sense-objects of the world and the urge for sense-gratification are the great factors which cloud the discriminative potentialities in the human intellect. It is impossible that an individual is not made conscious of his own Self, in the light of a powerful and strong discrimination.
Earlier, we were told that the deity for whose propitiation we performed the Yajna was none other than "the productive potential in any given field of activity." Reading the stanza in the light of this interpretation we may say that the deity mentioned here denotes nothing other than the various joys contained in the different sensuous fields which are courted by us, when we get lashed by desires, in order that we may gain a complete and exhaustive satisfaction from them.
Desires are the springs from which thoughts continuously gurgle up to flood the mental zone, and disturb the glorious reflection of Truth in it. When the mind is thus disturbed, the discriminative capacity in the intellect is rendered dull, and naturally, that individual becomes incapable of distinguishing in his understanding, the Real from the unreal. When the brilliance of the human intellect has been clouded with the vapours of desire, the owls of negativity and delusory attachments start hooting in the jungles of that mind.
It is not the mere appearance of desires in the mind that causes the fall of man. No individual can resist the compelling charm of the desires rising in his bosom. But when he comes to identify himself with them, the thoughts rising in him are directly governed by his desires. When once a given desire has been identified with, the desirer himself, unconsciously, comes to lend an uncontrollable amount of dynamism to the upsurge of the flood of thoughts.
Thoughts themselves are inert matter, inasmuch as they are the by-product of food, being constituted of the subtlest aspect of the food consumed. These inert thought-waves gather a momentum and force by borrowing their strength and vigour from the Self, through the individual's enthusiastic identification with those desires. The urge of thoughts determines the action. The actor in the field, for the time-being, is rendered incapable of discriminating whether the action undertaken can, or cannot, ultimately bring to him a permanent and an enduring satisfaction. Drunk with the idea that he will be at least temporarily appeased, the individual struggles hard and strives intensively to invoke and propitiate THE PRODUCTIVE POTENTIAL OF ANY GIVEN FIELD OF HIS ACTIVITY (DEVATA).
In thus invoking the Devata of a given field, the individual has to strive in a proper and fitting fashion. The methods of assembling the required instruments, the techniques of their application, the time intervals necessary for maturing the results, and the type of gains accrued from the different kinds of application... all these differ from field to field in the world. Therefore, each one will have to "FOLLOW THIS OR THAT RITE," according to the type of his desires.
The reason why different persons thus struggle hard so differently, leaving aside all sincere struggles to realise the Self, as "VASUDEVA IS ALL THIS," is explained here in the second line. Each individual helplessly functions in the different fields of his temporary fascinations, according to the mental impressions, gathered in his earlier moments of activity and thought. To conceive that "the Creator is putting ideas into each one of us because of which one is good and another vile," is a philosophy of the defeatist, of the impotent, of the sluggard. True men of action, with the daring of a well-developed intellect, can very easily see through men and their behaviours and come to this bold conclusion that each man acts as per the schedule, maintained and ordered by himself, during his own past actions.
In short, a deluded person strives hard, running after the mirage of sensuality, vainly hoping to gain therein a satisfaction that is at once infinite and immortal, while another is found to have the subtle discrimination to discover for himself the hollowness and futility of sense-pursuit. This latter type withdraws from all these ultimately unprofitable fields, and with avidity seeks the path to the Real.
WHAT THEN IS THE FUNCTION OF THE ATMAN, THE GUARDIAN ANGEL IN EACH ONE OF US?
In the very opening of this chapter (VII-7), discriminating the Self from the not-Self, it was shown how Krishna is the Spiritual Principle, the Common Truth that holds together the multiple universe of names and forms. It was also said (VII-14) that the three-fold mental temperaments (gunas), that work up the "divine illusion," hoodwink the individual from right cognition of the Divine Self within him. But for the Conscious Principle thrilling the inert matter walls that seemingly encircle the spirit, neither our physical, nor mental, nor intellectual personalities can ever come to function, as they do now. It is very well-known that all men do not worship at the same altar. Each one approaches the same Truth by worshipping the idol of his own heart. Krishna here declares the sacred truth that in all Churches, Mosques, and Temples, in public places, or in private institutions, in the open, or on the sly, in the quiet huts, and in the silent caves --- wherever and in whatsoever form, any devotee seeks to worship with Shraddha, "HIS FAITH DO I MAKE UNWAVERING." A faithful follower of the Geeta can never be contaminated by sectarianism or intolerance. At the foot of every altar, it is Krishna, the Self, that constantly supplies more and more faith to water the expanding fields of devotion in the sincere devotees.
Applying this general statement to the subjective worship in the human bosom, we can very easily understand the greater import of this stanza.
In the world outside, it is very well-known that the greater the consistency with which an idea or an attachment is maintained by an individual, the greater does he become fixed in that temperament or relationship. The more often a particular type of thought is entertained in the mind, the deeper becomes that thought channel, strengthening that very mental impression. These deep-cut patterns of thought, ploughed along the valleys of the mind, indicate the pattern of desires which the individual had entertained. In the law that governs this psychological rule, we can spy and detect the Spiritual Reality and Its infinite and glorious might.
In short, the Lord says that "as we think so we become," and the more we become, the more we think in the same given pattern. Applying this principle of psychology, it becomes clear, beyond all doubts, why everyone of us is bound by our own habits, and how we get chained by our own peculiar type of thinking. The sensuous are not to be condemned, and equally so, the divine need not be congratulated! Both of them are the exact products of their individual types of thinking. Thought belongs to the realm of nature (Prakriti); thoughts create the world and the all-pervading Self is the Essential Substratum (Purusha) that provides the world-drama with its stage and scenario.
WITH THIS EVER-GROWING FAITH, HOW DOES THE MAN-OF-THE-WORLD GAIN HIS PARTICULAR DESIRE?
Imbued with this faith he invokes the Devata of his choice and gains the fulfilment of his desires. And, Lord Krishna adds that in all cases these desires are "BEING VERILY DISPENSED BY ME ALONE." The Self is the source of all activities, gains, fulfilments and despairs. The sense of joy or sorrow, of success or failure, is but a mental thought-wave; but for the Conscious principle illumining it, we would not have any such experience.
Faithful activity in any given field of action, brings about complete success, but the very existence of the field, the capacity to act, the fervour of faith that supplies consistency to all efforts --- all these are possible only in the medium of the Changeless, the Actionless, the Attributeless, Eternal Self. And Krishna, identifying Himself with this Spiritual Centre of the Universe, rightly declares here, that He alone is the one that supplies an ever-growing faith in all activities, and ultimately, when the laws of action are fulfilled to the last bit, both in their intensity and application, it is He alone who dispenses the exact result of each action.
When a well-adjusted radio is plugged onto the current, the Electric Current says that it alone is the 'dispenser' of the programme available at the Station for the listeners!
SINCE THE DELUDED ONES DESIRE THE FINITE SENSE OBJECTS, THEY DO NOT COME TO THE ALL-SATISFYING PEACE; AND HENCE, IT IS SAID:
The fruits accruing to "THESE MEN OF LITTLE UNDERSTANDING ARE LIMITED." Fleeting desires for finite objects, even when fulfilled through the impermanent activities, must surely prove to be ephemeral. Out of gold whatever ornament is made, it also must be gold alone; when chocolate is made out of sweet things, the resultant stuff cannot be bitter. The effects entirely depends, for their nature and quality, upon those of the causes.
Finite actions undertaken in finite fields, employing finite instruments, cannot but produce --- whether joy or sorrow --- finite "fruits." Joy arrested or ended is sorrow; and therefore, in each instance of a sensuous desire satisfied, though there is a joy and a fulfilment, the sense-of-satisfaction soon putrefies to provide the sourness of dissatisfaction, or more often, the bitterness of sorrow.
This statement of the Lord is supported by the following general rule that, "THE WORSHIPPERS OF THE DEVAS REACH THE DEVAS." Those who are invoking a desired 'profit potential,' in any given field of activity, can, even when completely successful, gain only THAT profit.
The above statement is declared as a contrast to a pure philosophical truth, when the Lord, says: "THOSE WHO DEVOTE THEMSELVES TO ME, COME TO ME." Seekers of happiness in the world of sense-objects, as a result of their strife and struggle, can gain their insignificant success in the field of sense-enjoyments. If the same effort is applied by them in the right life of constructive living, they can come to discover their identity with the Eternal Absolute, the Self. Due to the extrovertedness of the deluded ego, it comes to identify itself with its finite matter-envolopments, and revels in a world of its endless number of objects, called in Sanskrit as the Jagat.
Discriminative and careful seekers, understanding the utter uselessness of the pursuit of finite pleasures, detach themselves from their false ego-centric lives, and through the process of meditation upon the Self, as advised in the previous chapter, come to rediscover their own Real Nature in the sunny fields of Bliss that lie unrolled beyond the thorny by-lanes of all physical, psychological and intellectual quests.
In the language of the Geeta, the first person singular stands always, at all places, for the Infinite Reality which is the Substratum for the individual as well as for the whole. Therefore, "MY DEVOTEES COME TO ME," is not the assertion of a limited historical figures as the son of Devaki, but the Singer of the Geeta, in His divine inspiration, entirely identifies Himself with the Principle of Consciousness that is the core of the pluralistic dream of the mind-intellect equipment. Thus, to understand the above statement, without its seeming limitations, is to understand the Geeta, the Scripture of Man, as declaring that the seekers of the Self discover themselves and become the Self.
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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