तेषां सततयुक्तानां भजतां प्रीतिपूर्वकम् ।ददामि बुद्धियोगं तं येन मामुपयान्ति ते ॥
teṣāṁ satatayuktānāṁ bhajatāṁ prītipūrvakamdadāmi buddhiyogaṁ taṁ yena māmupayānti te
To these who are thus in a constant union with Me, and adore Me with an intense delight of love, I give the Yoga of understanding by which they come to Me.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Essays on the Gita
To make it perfectly and indisputably clear that this is the supreme and entire truth of his teaching, this the integral knowledge which he had promised to reveal, the divine Avatar declares, in a brief reiteration of the upshot of all that he has been saying, that this and no other is his supreme word, paramaṁ vacaḥ10·1. “Again hearken to my supreme word,” bhūya eva śṛṇu me paramaṁ vacaḥ. This supreme word of the Gita is, we find, first the explicit and unmistakable declaration that the highest worship and highest knowledge of the Eternal are the knowledge and the adoration of him as the supreme and divine Origin of all that is in existence and the mighty Lord of the world and its peoples of whose being all things are the becomings. It is, secondly, the declaration of a unified knowledge and bhakti as the supreme Yoga; that is the destined and the natural way given to man to arrive at union with the eternal Godhead. And to make more significant this definition of the way, to give an illuminating point to this highest importance of bhakti founded upon and opening to knowledge and made the basis and motive-power for divinely appointed works, the acceptance of it by the heart and mind of the disciple is put as a condition for the farther development by which the final command to action comes at last to be given to the human instrument, Arjuna. “I will speak this supreme word to thee” says the Godhead “from my will for thy soul’s good, now that thy heart is taking delight in me,” te prīyamāṇāya vakṣyāmi. For this delight of the heart in God is the whole constituent and essence of true bhakti, bhajanti prītipūrvakam. As soon as the supreme word is given, Arjuna is made to utter his acceptance of it and to ask for a practical way of seeing God in all things in Nature, and from that question immediately and naturally there develops the vision of the Divine as the Spirit of the universe and there arises the tremendous command to the world-action.*
- Gita, X. 1–18.
This character of the knowledge is emphasised in three separate verses of promise. “Whosoever knows me,” says the Godhead, “as the unborn who is without origin, mighty lord of the worlds and peoples, lives unbewildered among mortals10·7–11 and is delivered from all sin and evil…. Whosoever knows in its right principles this my pervading lordship and this my Yoga (the divine Yoga, aiśvara yoga, by which the Transcendent is one with all existences, even while more than them all, and dwells in them and contains them as becomings of his own Nature), unites himself to me by an untrembling Yoga…. The wise hold me for the birth of each and all, hold each and all as developing from me its action and movement, and so holding they love and adore me… and I give them the Yoga of the understanding by which they come to me and I destroy for them the darkness which is born of the ignorance.” These results must arise inevitably from the very nature of the knowledge and from the very nature of the Yoga which converts that knowledge into spiritual growth and spiritual experience. For all the perplexity of man’s mind and action, all the stumbling, insecurity and affliction of his mind, his will, his ethical turn, his emotional, sensational and vital urgings can be traced back to the groping and bewildered cognition and volition natural to his sense-obscured mortal mind in the body, sammoha. But when he sees the divine Origin of all things, when he looks steadily from the cosmic appearance to its transcendent Reality and back from that Reality to the appearance, he is then delivered from this bewilderment of the mind, will, heart and senses, he walks enlightened and free, asammūḍhaḥ martyeṣu10·3. Assigning to everything its supernal and real and not any longer only its present and apparent value, he finds the hidden links and connections; he consciously directs all life and act to their high and true object and governs them by the light and power which comes to him from the Godhead within him. Thus he escapes from the wrong cognition, the wrong mental and volitional reaction, the wrong sensational reception and impulse which here originate sin and error and suffering, sarva-pāpaiḥ pramucyate. For living thus in the transcendent and universal he sees his own and every other individuality in their greater values and is released from the falsehood and ignorance of his separative and egoistic will and knowledge. That is always the essence of the spiritual liberation.
This knowledge translated into the affective, emotional, temperamental plane becomes a calm love and intense adoration of the original and transcendental Godhead above us, the ever-present Master of all things here, God in man, God in Nature. It is at first a wisdom of the intelligence, the buddhi; but that is accompanied by a moved spiritualised state of the affective nature,* bhāva. This change of the heart and mind is the beginning of a total change of all the nature. A new inner birth and becoming prepares us for oneness with the supreme object of our love and adoration, madbhāvāya. There is an intense delight of love in the greatness and beauty and perfection of this divine Being now seen everywhere in the world and above it, prīti. That deeper ecstasy assumes the place of the scattered and external pleasure of the mind in existence or rather it draws all other delight into it and transforms by a marvellous alchemy the mind’s and the heart’s feelings and all sense movements. The whole consciousness becomes full of the Godhead and replete with his answering consciousness; the whole life flows into one sea of bliss-experience. All the speech10·9–11 and thought of such God-lovers becomes a mutual utterance and understanding of the Divine. In that one joy is concentrated all the contentment of the being, all the play and pleasure of the nature. There is a continual union from moment to moment in the thought and memory, there is an unbroken continuity of the experience of oneness in the spirit. And from the moment that this inner state begins, even in the stage of imperfection, the Divine confirms it by the perfect Yoga of the will and intelligence. He uplifts the blazing lamp of knowledge within us, he destroys the ignorance of the separative mind and will, he stands revealed in the human spirit. By the Yoga of the will and intelligence founded on an illumined union of works and knowledge the transition was effected from our lower troubled mind-ranges to the immutable calm of the witnessing Soul above the active nature. But now by this greater yoga of the Buddhi founded on an illumined union of love and adoration with an all-comprehending knowledge the soul rises in a vast ecstasy to the whole transcendental truth of the absolute and all-originating Godhead. The Eternal is fulfilled in the individual spirit and individual nature; the individual spirit is exalted from birth in time to the infinitudes of the Eternal.
- budhā bhāva-samanvitāḥ.
Writings in Bengali
Teṣāṁ satatayuktānāṁ bhajatāṁ prītipūrvakam |
Dadāmi buddhiyōgaṁ taṁ yēna māmupayānti te ||
(To them, ever-steadfast and worshipping Me with love, I give the yoga of understanding by which they come unto Me.)
তেষাং সততযুক্তানাং ভজতাং প্রীতিপূর্ব্বকম্।
দদামি বুদ্ধিযোগং তং যেন মামুপযান্তিতে॥
