They are in God, and God is in them

‘Whosoever shall offer Me in faith and love

A leaf, a flower, a fruit, water poured forth,

That offer I accept, lovingly made ...’

- Ganguli (IX.26)

The God-within is happy with the most humble of offerings given in the consciousness of love. A simple leaf or a little water are available to anyone. The Creator does not need elaborate offerings of gold and gems. You do not have to be rich to feels God’s love, only rich in Spirit. Nor does God require any to pay money for this feeling of closeness, friendship, and Union with that which is always waiting patiently in the Heart of every man, woman, and child.

Krishna tells Arjuna that whatever he does should be offered and dedicated to the God-within (IX.27). The food that we eat is offered to its Creator in the awareness that God is the food - God is All. Everything we do can be seen as an offering to God. When we give in a charitable sense to those less fortunate, we understand that we are giving to the veiled Selves of the Creator. We see God in every Eye, and therefore dedicate everything we do to the Imperishable (akshara) One who is the Source of All that is.

Offering everything to God frees you from Attachment

This practice of first offering everything to the Supreme Self (Paramatman) reveals the sacredness of the entire world and allows you to remain in a constant awareness of the One ‘beneath the curtain of each atom’ (M.Shabistari).

However the offerings must be made in the consciousness of Love devoted to the Supreme Self. If the practice decays into stale repetitious rituals, only memorized and repeated in a distracted state as merely some task to be quickly done with, then the frequency produced will not be beneficial. This is why Bhakti Yoga is so practical - we are inspired to spontaneity when we treat God as our Beloved.

Offering all our actions (karma) to the God-within is also highly practical for it liberates (moksha) you from all attachment to these acts (IX.28). When you act in the frequency of consciousness of Knowing that the Creator is simultaneously the act itself, the thing acted upon, and the one performing the act - you are free from the bonds of such acts (karma-bandhanaih). You are free from the self-created snares of Maya’s delightful webs.

Renouncing the world

This is the true meaning of the practice of renunciation. The etymology of the word renunciation is to send back a message. In this context, the message is made up of the signals transmitted to the brain through the sense organs. The sense organs were created by the God-within, who is the actual owner and recipient of all such transmissions.

Therefore when you ‘renounce’ this world, you are simply sending back to God as an offering what always belonged to God as the Source of the All - even though you were under the delusion that the objects of the senses belonged to you. Attachment to the temporal is foolishness. This process of renunciation will clarify your own comprehension of your true identity, meaning who you really are beyond the fleeting ego-self. Renunciation will strengthen your Union with God within your Heart.

As you remove the five senses from their objects and return their transmissions to their Creator, you give up what was never yours anyway and return to that which you truly always are. You awaken from this enchanted Labyrinth that is spellbound by the deluding power of ‘I and mine’.

Non-attachment in the Golden Era

The discipline of renunciation allows us to live in the world and not become ensnared by guna-maya and the five senses. The one who is master of the gunas possesses a consciousness that ‘does not have to be afraid of their senses’ (Krishna Chaitanya/KK Nair). You can take joy in life as the reflection of the Supreme Self.

This state of non-attachment was our primordial relationship with the universe in the golden Satya Yuga. We were in it, but not of it; meaning we are not attached to what we created here in the temporal illusory hologram. In this spirit of non-attachment and joie da vie, we can work for the well-being of the world (lokasamgraha). In this consciousness, we can be anywhere and remain always Home.

The Supreme Self (Paramatman) is the same (samas) in all (sarva) beings (bhuta). The God-within every one of us is equally present whether we are aware of this truth or not. God as the soul never leaves or abandons us. It is we who turn our attention elsewhere, enticed by the glittering illusion in the external.

They are in God, and God is in them

Because the Creator is the same (samas) in all of us, there is no one who is liked or disliked more than another (IX.29). We are all the One Self. However Krishna says that those who ‘worship Me with Love, I love; they are in Me, and I in them’ (Ganguli). When you read this text remember that Krishna, as God Realized in man, is speaking for the Supreme Self (Paramatman).

The ones who worship with love lift the frequency of their consciousness to the pulsating vibration that is the Love that emits this entire universe. They become the Love frequency! God is Love. Through the power of a focused devotion, those who worship with Love acquire similitude (sadharmya) with the Creator as the primordial principle behind everything. They are in God (mayi te tesu), and God is also in them (capy aham).

समोऽहं सर्वभूतेषु न मे द्वेष्योऽस्ति न प्रियः .
ये भजन्ति तु मां भक्त्या मयि ते तेषु चाप्यहम् .. ९- २९..

samohaṃ sarvabhūteṣu na me dveṣyosti na priyaḥ
ye bhajanti tu māṃ bhaktyā mayi te teṣu cāpy aham 9.29

Even those who have lived an exceedingly evil life may become good (sadhus) if they worship the Creator with one-pointed devotion (ananyabhak). The wicked will be made righteous by the firm decision to settle into a consciousness of pure devotion to the God-within (IX.30).

The Sin of Forgetting

Krishna clearly affirms that the one who was lost in the sin of forgetting and who returns to the Real, to Knowledge of their true identity, soon (ksipram) becomes virtuous of mind (IX.31). Thus redeemed we enter into a state of perpetual (sasvat) peace (santim). This Peace is not the ordinary ‘peace and quiet’ we think of in our day to day life. The Santim-Peace Krishna is speaking of here is something solid, an immutable imperishable state of being, and the same peace that ‘surpasses all understanding’ spoken of in the New Testament of the Bible (Philippians 4.7). This is the Peace that is beyond words to describe and must be experienced personally to be Known.

Krishna makes the promise that no one is ever lost who is sincerely devoted to the Supreme Self (Paramatman): na me bhaktah pranasyati (IX.31). It does not matter what level of society you have been born into (IX.32). Even if you have been brought into this world by parents who are of an evil consciousness, you will attain the highest goal (param gatim). ‘Though they be born in the very womb of sin’ (Ganguli).

Enlightened Women!

This also applies to women! The purposeful inclusion of women here always amused me. Thank God most women are now beyond believing that they must be born as men to achieve enlightenment and liberation (moksha). Thank God for India’s Mirabai and her sublime songs, the Sufi saint Rabi`a al-Qaysiyya, St. Teresa of Avila in Spain, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and all the other countless women - most who will probably remain unknown to written history - who defied dogma and found their way Home.

However in the context of the religious beliefs of the time, this statement made by the poet Vyasa through the words of Krishna might have been considered to be dangerously radical. Western theology is guilty of similar attitudes beginning with poor Eve in the Garden of Eden who was wrongly portrayed as the origin of all sin. No merciful God would exclude women or people of any social class from Knowledge of the Truth - and I am not interested in any god who is without mercy and Love. God dwells in the Heart of every man, woman, and child.

This truth about this world

Krishna speaks the plain truth to his friend Arjuna and says that for one who has come to this miserable, unhappy, impermanent, mortal world there is only one solution. The only choice that works and brings liberation from the temporal illusory holographic matrix is devotion to the God-within (IX.33).

‘Ah! ye who into this ill world are come -

Fleeting and false - set your faith fast on Me!’

- Ganguli (IX.33)

Alas, this world is not as the clever minds who create advertisements to sell us products would have us believe. Things will not make us happy. The fleeting joy of new possessions quickly turns to the familiar and the boring. A sexy new car, a watch encircled with diamonds, spectacular cleavage and hair color that shines from the glow of a hundred electric spotlights, or even a glittering mansion in the south of France cannot keep you from the heartbreak, loneliness and despair that is sure to follow when the party is over.

Lifestyle drugs

Depression always precedes the realization that old age, with all its infirmities, and death are inevitable. The culture that sells drugs that keep us from confronting the fact of our own mortality is destined to fail. We all die and each of us must face death alone. The mood altering ‘lifestyle’ drugs these pharmaceutical corporations manufacture, and their seductive pop-a-pill for anything ads that inundate the airwaves, are in my view the heart of evil. Side effects include ... ultimately, a life without hope.

These man made molecules rob individuals not only of their money, but of the God-given opportunity to search for meaning with clarity of mind. In seeking meaning and a relationship with this universe, we have the chance to find our true identity and come Home.

As Krishna says, merge your heart and mind in the Supreme Self (IX.34). The God within you is the Door to eternity beyond Time. Within your Heart is all the Love you ever dreamed of. Your final liberation (moksha) from the self-created bonds of this temporal illusory hologram waits patiently within the finest interior states of your own consciousness. Home is in the Heart. Come Home!

Book X

Krishna affectionately calls his friend Arjuna mahabaho, the Mighty Armed One (X.1). When reading the wonderful descriptions of the warriors in the Mahabharata, one often gets the enticing feeling of men who are not only quite muscular, well built, and strong in body - but men who are as intelligent as they are handsome.

In our times it so often seems that a man is either great in physical strength or in mental, but rarely both. The contemptuous isolating influence of modern compartmentalization has limited our range of expression, and made us all rather dull, a bit boring and one dimensional in the Kali Yuga.

The poet Vyasa loves to paint pictures of palatial rooms filled with splendidly good looking, strong men dressed in silks and gold, who are having brilliant conversations on the meaning of life, history, the science of politics, and metaphysical wisdom. Now that was a time to be born in!

Only those with faith-enlightened eyes See

Addressing Arjuna as the Mighty Armed One, Krishna says that he is revealing these truths for Arjuna’s best welfare (hita-kamyaya) and because Krishna knows that his friend loves God. Krishna reveals that the Creator is only Known by the sinless and the wise.

‘Not the great company of gods nor the kingly Rishis know

My Nature, Who have made the gods and Rishis long ago;

He only knoweth - only he is free of sin, and wise,

Who seeth Me, Lord of the Worlds, with faith-enlightened eyes,

unborn, undying, unbegun. Whatever Natures be

To mortal men distributed, those natures spring from Me!’

- Ganguli (X.2-3)

The Supreme Self (Paramatman) as the very essence of mystery. Even the innumerable gods and the great sages (maharsayah) know not the the origin and beginning (adis) of their Creator. Only those who liberate their consciousness from the frequencies of delusion (asammudhah) and who Know the One as that which has no beginning (ajam) is pure and free of sin (X.3).

Sin is ignorance

My understanding is that ‘sin’ is a frequency waveform of delusion. This delusion is the Forgetting of Self and the loss of true memory that we are all the varied veiled expressions of the God-within. The ones who remember the Real and recognize that they are not the small personality identity ego-self of their current embodiment, but in truth are the Supreme Self (Paramatman) - they are purified of all sin by this wisdom consciousness of Knowledge. The only ‘evil’ is turning away from the God-within that you are!

Krishna now names a few of those qualities by which the Supreme Self can be described. These are intelligence (buddhih) as the power to reason and discover what is subtle, wisdom (jnanam) as the knowledge that reveals truth, and the state of non-delusion (asammohah) which is free from ignorance of the Real (X.4).

‘Lead me from the unreal to the real !’

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.3.28

The Lord of all Worlds is both happiness (sukham) and sorrow (duhkham), both being (bhavah) and non-being (abhavah), both fear (bhayam) and fearlessness (abhayam). The Supreme Self is all polarities and simultaneously beyond all polarities. All living beings (bhutanam) in their infinite variety of forms and natures, spring (bhavanti) from the Creator alone (X.5).

‘Maya, the divine power of the Lord, reflected by Him externally, appears ... The Lord, covering Himself with it, conceals His nature of absolute purity and divinity. Making a show of His involvement in it, He sees everything from the viewpoint of diversity and forgets the divinity of His I-consciousness.’

- The Paramarthasara of Abhinavagupta, Verse 15

or The Essence of the Exact Reality

Translated by Dr. B.N. Pandit

Munshiram Manharlal Publishers, 1991, New Delhi