The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 12- 5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday,  August 26,  2021. 9:29. PM. 
Chapter -12. God and the Universe - 5.
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But the greatest devotee of God is he who asks for nothing from God—not even knowledge, not even enlightenment, not even freedom from suffering—and such devotees are rare to find. The mind is made in such a way that it has always a need of some kind or other. And to imagine a condition of the mind where it has no need whatsoever is difficult. The highest devotion asks for God alone, and not anything through God, or from God. 

The superiority of this sort of devotion should become obvious to any thinking mind, because to ask for anything from God, or to utilise God as an instrument in the acquisition of anything exterior to God, would be to reduce God to a category inferior to that which one is asking for through the devotion. If God is an instrument in the fulfilment of desires, He ceases to be the Supreme Being, or the Ultimate Reality. 

That would suggest that the thing we are asking for is better than God Himself! And one who knows that God is superior—the cause is superior to all its effects, and the one who gives is more than what is given—that God is the Absolute All-in-All, is the jnani. If our heart can accept this truth, that the Being of God is greater than anything that can emanate from God, then we shall absorb ourselves in a type of devotion which is identical with being itself. Knowledge becomes being. When knowledge is inseparable from being, we are supposed to be in a state of realisation, which is the highest type of spiritual experience.

“All these are wonderful devotees,” the Teacher says, “but I consider the jnani, the wisdom-devotee, as the supreme, for he has become My very Self.” One who is immensely delighted at the very thought of the Omnipresence of God, who is in ecstasies even at the idea of the Supreme Absoluteness of God’s Being, has attained everything in one moment, nay, instantaneously. He is flooded with the very being of God, and not with the objects that one considers as one’s accessories in life.

The cosmological approaches to the existence of God as the Creator of the universe, these explanations which are offered in the Seventh Chapter, somehow keep God at an awful distance from us, in spite of the proclamation that the supreme concept of God is that of the identity of all beings with the being of God. 

Curiously, we begin to feel that God is some tremendous, fearsome, cosmic force, and our love for God is simultaneously attended with the fear of God. We are wonderstruck. We feel it is impossible for us even to face the presence of such a Mighty Being. In love there is no fear, and the school of Bhakti, or devotion, has classified it into two categories: the one considering God as the Supreme Master, or Father, who demands an awe-striking superiority over everything, and the other regarding Him as the most Beloved.

To be continued ....


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