ये तु धर्म्यामृतमिदं यथोक्तं पर्युपासते ।श्रद्दधाना मत्परमा भक्तास्तेऽतीव मे प्रियाः ॥
ye tu dharmyāmṛtamidaṁ yathoktaṁ paryupāsateśraddadhānā matparamā bhaktāste’tīva me priyāḥ
But exceedingly dear to Me are those devotees who make Me (the Purushottama) their supreme aim and follow out with a perfect faith and exactitude the immortalising Dharma described in this teaching.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
This is the foundation, the condition, the means by which the supreme spiritual perfection is to be won, and those who have it in any way are all dear to me, says the Godhead,12·17 bhaktimān me priyaḥ. But exceedingly dear, atīva me priyāḥ, are those12·20 souls nearest to the Godhead whose love of me is completed by the still wider and greatest perfection of which I have just shown to you the way and the process. These are the bhaktas who make the Purushottama their one supreme aim and follow out with a perfect faith and exactitude the immortalising Dharma described in this teaching. Dharma in the language of the Gita means the innate law of the being and its works and an action proceeding from and determined by the inner nature,18·47 svabhāva-niyataṁ karma. In the lower ignorant consciousness of mind, life and body there are many dharmas, many rules, many standards and laws because there are many varying determinations and types of the mental, vital and physical nature. The immortal Dharma is one; it is that of the highest spiritual divine consciousness and its powers, parā prakṛtiḥ. It is beyond the three gunas, and to reach it all these lower dharmas have to be abandoned,18·66 sarva-dharmān parityajya. Alone in their place the one liberating unifying consciousness and power of the Eternal has to become the infinite source of our action, its mould, determinant and exemplar. To rise out of our lower personal egoism, to enter into the impersonal and equal calm of the immutable eternal all-pervading Akshara Purusha, to aspire from that calm by a perfect self-surrender of all one’s nature and existence to that which is other and higher than the Akshara, is the first necessity of this Yoga. In the strength of that aspiration one can rise to the immortal Dharma. There, made one in being, consciousness and divine bliss with the greatest Uttama Purusha, made one with his supreme dynamic nature-force, svā prakṛtiḥ, the liberated spirit can know infinitely, love illimitably, act unfalteringly in the authentic power of a highest immortality and a perfect freedom. The rest of the Gita is written to throw a fuller light on this immortal Dharma.
