उदाराः सर्व एवैते ज्ञानी त्वात्मैव मे मतम् ।आस्थितः स हि युक्तात्मा मामेवानुत्तमां गतिम् ॥
udārāḥ sarva evaite jñānī tvātmaiva me matamāsthitaḥ sa hi yuktātmā māmevānuttamāṁ gatim
Noble are all these without exception, but the knower is verily my self; for as his highest goal he accepts Me, the Purushottama, with whom he is in union.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
For note that it is bhakti with knowledge which the Gita demands from the disciple and it regards all other forms of devotion as good in themselves but still inferior; they may do well by the way, but they are not the thing at which it aims in the soul’s culmination. Among those who have put away the sin of the rajasic egoism and are moving towards the Divine, the Gita distinguishes between four kinds of bhaktas. There are those who turn to him as a refuge from sorrow and suffering in the world, ārta. There are those who seek him as the giver of7·16–18 good in the world, arthārthī. There are those who come to him in the desire for knowledge, jijñāsu. And lastly there are those who adore him with knowledge, jñānī. All are approved by the Gita, but only on the last does it lay the seal of its complete sanction. All these movements without exception are high and good, udārāḥ sarva evaite, but the bhakti with knowledge excels them all, viśiṣyate. We may say that these forms are successively the bhakti of the vital-emotional and affective nature,* that of the practical and dynamic nature, that of the reasoning intellectual nature, and that of the highest intuitive being which takes up all the rest of the nature into unity with the Divine. Practically, however, the others may be regarded as preparatory movements. For the Gita itself here says that it is only at the end of7·19 many existences that one can, after possession of the integral knowledge and after working that out in oneself through many lives, attain at the long last to the Transcendent. For the knowledge of the Divine as all things that are is difficult to attain and rare on earth is the great soul, mahātmā, who is capable of fully so seeing him and of entering into him with his whole being, in15·19 every way of his nature, by the wide power of this all-embracing knowledge, sarvavit sarvabhāvena.
Thus by spiritual development devotion becomes one with knowledge. The Jiva comes to delight in the one Godhead,—in the Divine known as all being and consciousness and delight and as all things and beings and happenings, known in Nature, known in the self, known for that which exceeds self and Nature. He is ever in constant union with him, nityayukta; his whole life and being are an eternal Yoga with the Transcendent than whom there is nothing higher, with the Universal besides whom there is none else and nothing else. On him is concentred all his7·17 bhakti, ekabhaktiḥ, not on any partial godhead, rule or cult. This single devotion is his whole law of living and he has gone beyond all creeds of religious belief, rules of conduct, personal aims of life. He has no griefs to be healed, for he is in possession of the All-blissful. He has no desires to hunger after, for he possesses the highest and the All and is close to the All-Power that brings all fulfilment. He has no doubts or baffled seekings left, for all knowledge streams upon him from the Light in which he lives. He loves perfectly the Divine and is his beloved; for as he takes joy in the Divine, so too the Divine takes joy in him. This is the God-lover who has the knowledge,7·18 jñānī bhakta. And this knower, says the Godhead in the Gita, is my self; the others seize only motives and aspects in Nature, but he the very self-being and all-being of the Purushottama with which he is in union. His is the divine birth in the supreme Nature, integral in being, completed in will, absolute in love, perfected in knowledge. In him the Jiva’s cosmic existence is justified because it has exceeded itself and so found its own whole and highest truth of being.
The Arya — text not in the CWSA
Gita VII. 1–28
