The ninth chapter is called the king-knowledge and the king-secret, for it gives the intimate truth that stands behind the whole synthesis. Krishna reveals himself as the Divine who contains the universe, supports it and sends it forth, and yet is not bound by it. All beings exist in him, and yet he exceeds them; Nature works under his presiding power, casting out again and again the moving and unmoving world. The Divine is immanent but not imprisoned, transcendent but never absent (9·4).
Sri Aurobindo finds here the Gita’s reply to both world-negating spirituality and ignorant worldliness. If the Divine were only the silent Immutable, action could have no ultimate spiritual value; if he were only the mutable world-process, there could be no liberation from Nature. But the Supreme is at once beyond and within, and therefore works can be offered, devotion can be intimate, and knowledge can be integral. The ignorant disregard the Divine clothed in a human form, seeing only the outward body; but the great souls know him as the imperishable source of all and worship with a mind turned wholly to him.
Krishna then universalises sacrifice and worship in himself. He is the rite and the offering, the fire and the oblation, the mantra, the father and mother and sustainer of the worlds, the witness, the refuge, the friend, the origin and the dissolution. Those who worship other godheads worship in truth him also, though not with full knowledge, and their fruit is measured by their aim, for the worshippers of the gods go to the gods, but those who give themselves to the Supreme come to the Supreme. The issue is never sectarian exclusion but the difference between a partial and an integral knowledge.
The chapter grows especially intimate in its teaching of the offering. A leaf, a flower, a fruit or even water, given with devotion from a pure heart, is accepted by the Divine (9·26); and whatever one does, eats, offers, gives or undertakes as austerity may be made an offering to him. This is the practical secret of the whole Yoga, that the entire life can be turned into a sacrifice when it is turned Godward. Krishna’s perfect equality is affirmed alongside this intimacy: he is impartial to all beings, with none hated and none preferred, and yet those who love him dwell in him and he in them (9·29). Even the greatest sinner who turns with an undivided will to the Divine is to be counted among the righteous, because the one decisive thing, the change of the soul’s whole direction, has already taken place (9·30).
Thus the ninth chapter joins universality and intimacy in a single truth. The Divine is cosmic and personal, impartial and responsive, beyond all things and yet available in the simplest act of love. The way is no longer merely equality or sacrifice in the abstract; it is the whole of life laid before the Lord with knowledge and with devotion.
