परं भूयः प्रवक्ष्यामि ज्ञानानां ज्ञानमुत्तमम् ।यज्ज्ञात्वा मुनयः सर्वे परां सिद्धिमितो गताः ॥
paraṁ bhūyaḥ pravakṣyāmi jñānānāṁ jñānamuttamamyajjñātvā munayaḥ sarve parāṁ siddhimito gatāḥ
The Blessed Lord said: I will again declare the supreme Knowledge, the highest of all knowings, which having known, all the sages have gone hence to the highest perfection.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
And this great thing, to rise from the human into the divine nature, we can only do by an effort of Godward knowledge, will and adoration. For the soul sent forth by the Supreme as his eternal portion, his immortal representative into the workings of universal Nature is yet obliged by the character of those workings, avaśaṁ prakṛter vaśāt, to identify itself in its external9·8 consciousness with her limiting conditions, to identify itself with a life, mind and body that are oblivious of their inner spiritual reality and of the innate Godhead. To get back to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of the real as distinct from the apparent relations of the soul with Nature, to know God and ourselves and the world with a spiritual and no longer with a physical or externalised experience, through the deepest truth of the inner soul-consciousness and not through the misleading phenomenal significances of the sense-mind and the outward understanding, is an indispensable means of this perfection. Perfection cannot come without self-knowledge and God-knowledge and a spiritual attitude towards our natural existence, and that is why the ancient wisdom laid so much stress on salvation by knowledge,—not an intellectual cognizance of things, but a growing of man the mental being into a greater spiritual consciousness. The soul’s salvation cannot come without the soul’s perfection, without its growing into the divine nature; the impartial Godhead will not effect it for us by an act of caprice or an arbitrary sanad of his favour. Divine works are effective for salvation because they lead us towards this perfection and to a knowledge of self and nature and God by a growing unity with the inner Master of our existence. Divine love is effective because by it we grow into the likeness of the sole and supreme object of our adoration and call down the answering love of the Highest to flood us with the light of his knowledge and the uplifting power and purity of his eternal spirit. Therefore, says the Gita, this is the supreme knowledge and the highest of all knowings because it leads to the highest perfection and spiritual status, parāṁ siddhim, and brings the soul to likeness with the Divine, sādharmya. It is the eternal wisdom, the great spiritual experience by which all the sages attained to that highest perfection, grew into one law of being with the Supreme and live for ever in his eternity, not born in the creation, not troubled by the anguish of the universal dissolution. This perfection, then, this sādharmya is the way of immortality and the indispensable condition without which the soul cannot consciously live in the Eternal.
