सर्वमेतदृतं मन्ये यन्मां वदसि केशव ।न हि ते भगवन्व्यक्तिं विदुर्देवा न दानवाः ॥
sarvametadṛtaṁ manye yanmāṁ vadasi keśavana hi te bhagavanvyaktiṁ vidurdevā na dānavāḥ
All this that Thou sayest, my mind holds for the truth, O Keshava. Neither the Gods nor the Titans, O Blessed Lord, know Thy manifestation.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
The idea of the Divine on which the Gita insists as the secret of the whole mystery of existence, the knowledge that leads to liberation, is one that bridges the opposition between the cosmic procession in Time and a supracosmic eternity without denying either of them or taking anything from the reality of either. It harmonises the pantheistic, the theistic and the highest transcendental terms of our spiritual conception and spiritual experience. The Divine is the unborn Eternal who has no origin; there is and can be nothing before him from which he proceeds, because he is one and timeless and absolute. “Neither the gods nor the great Rishis know any birth of me…. He who knows me as the unborn without origin…” are the opening utterances of this supreme word. And it gives the high promise that this knowledge, not limiting, not intellectual, but pure and spiritual,—for the form and nature, if we can use such language, of this transcendental Being, his svarūpa, are necessarily unthinkable by the mind, acintyarūpa,—liberates mortal man from all confusion of ignorance and from all bondage of sin, suffering and evil, yo vetti asammūḍhaḥ sa martyeṣu sarva-pāpaiḥ pramucyate. The human soul that can dwell in the light of this supreme spiritual knowledge is lifted by it beyond the ideative or sensible formulations of the universe. It rises into the ineffable power of an all-exceeding, yet all-fulfilling identity, the same beyond and here. This spiritual experience of the transcendental Infinite breaks down the limitations of the pantheistic conception of existence. The infinite of a cosmic monism which makes God and the universe one, tries to imprison the Divine in his world manifestation and leaves us that as our sole possible means of knowing him; but this experience liberates us into the timeless and spaceless Eternal. “Neither the Gods nor the Titans know thy manifestation” cries Arjuna in his reply: the whole universe or even numberless universes cannot manifest him, cannot contain his ineffable light and infinite greatness. All other lesser God-knowledge has its truth only by dependence on the ever unmanifested and ineffable reality of the transcendent Godhead.
Arjuna accepts the entire knowledge that has thus been given to him by the divine Teacher. His mind is already delivered from its doubts and seekings; his heart, turned now from the outward aspect of the world, from its baffling appearance to its supreme sense and origin and its inner realities, is already released from sorrow and affliction and touched with the ineffable gladness of a divine revelation. The language which he is made to use in voicing his acceptance is such as to emphasise and insist once again on the profound integrality of this knowledge and its all-embracing finality and fullness. He accepts first the Avatar, the Godhead in man who is speaking to him as the supreme Brahman, as the supracosmic All and Absolute of existence in which the soul can dwell when it rises out of this manifestation and this partial becoming to its source, paraṁ brahma, paraṁ dhāma. He accepts him as the supreme purity of the ever free Existence to which one arrives through the effacement of ego in the self’s immutable impersonality calm and still for ever, pavitraṁ paramam. He accepts him next as the one Permanent, the eternal Soul, the divine Purusha, puruṣaṁ śāśvataṁ divyam. He acclaims in him the original Godhead, adores the Unborn who is the pervading, indwelling, self-extending master of all existence, ādi-devam ajaṁ vibhum. He accepts him therefore not only as that Wonderful who is beyond expression of any kind, for nothing is sufficient to manifest him,—“neither the Gods nor the Titans, O blessed Lord, know thy manifestation,” na hi te bhagavan vyaktiṁ vidur devā na dānavāḥ,—but as the lord of all existences and the one divine efficient cause of all their becoming, God of the gods from whom all godheads have sprung, master of the universe who manifests and governs it from above by the power of his supreme and his universal Nature, bhūta-bhāvana bhūteśa deva-deva jagat-pate. And lastly he accepts him as that Vasudeva in and around us who is all things here by virtue of the world-pervading, all-inhabiting, all-constituting master powers of his becoming, vibhūtayaḥ, “the sovereign powers of thy becoming by which thou standest pervading these worlds,” yābhir vibhūtibhir lokān imāṁs tvaṁ vyāpya tiṣṭhasi.*
He has accepted the truth with the adoration of his heart, the submission of his will and the understanding of his intelligence. He is already prepared to act as the divine instrument in this knowledge and with this self-surrender. But a desire for a deeper constant spiritual realisation has been awakened in his heart and will. This is a truth which is evident only to the supreme Soul in its own self-knowledge,—for, cries Arjuna, “thou alone, O Purushottama, knowest thyself by thyself,” ātmanā ātmānaṁ vettha. This is a knowledge that comes by spiritual identity and the unaided heart, will, intelligence of the natural man cannot arrive at it by their own motion and can only get at imperfect mental reflections that reveal less than they conceal and disfigure. This is a secret wisdom which one must hear from the seers who have seen the face of this Truth, have heard its word and have become one with it in self and spirit. “All the Rishis say this of thee and the divine seer Narada, Asita, Devala, Vyasa.” Or else one must receive it from within by revelation and inspiration from the inner Godhead who lifts in us the blazing lamp of knowledge. Svayañcaiva bravīṣi me, “and thou thyself sayest it to me.” Once revealed, it has to be accepted by the assent of the mind, the consent of the will and the heart’s delight and submission, the three elements of the complete mental faith, śraddhā. It is so that Arjuna has accepted it; “all this that thou sayest, my mind holds for the truth.” But still there will remain the need of that deeper possession in the very self of our being out from its most intimate psychic centre, the soul’s demand for that inexpressible permanent spiritual realisation of which the mental is only a preliminary or a shadow and without which there cannot be a complete union with the Eternal.
