वेदाहं समतीतानि वर्तमानानि चार्जुन ।भविष्याणि च भूतानि मां तु वेद न कश्चन ॥
vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjunabhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṁ tu veda na kaścana
I know all past and all present and future existences, O Arjuna, but Me none yet knows.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Essays on the Gita
Still the supreme Godhead does not at all reject these devotees because of their imperfect vision. For the Divine in his supreme transcendent being, unborn, imminuable and superior to all these partial manifestations, cannot be easily known to any living creature. He is self-enveloped in this immense cloak of Maya, that Maya of his Yoga, by which he is one with the world and yet beyond it, immanent but hidden, seated in all hearts but not revealed to any and every being. Man in Nature thinks that these manifestations in Nature are all the Divine, when they are only his works and his powers and his veils. He knows all7·27 past and all present and future existences, but him none yet knoweth. If then after thus bewildering them with his workings in Nature, he were not to meet them in these at all, there would be no divine hope for man or for any soul in Maya. Therefore according to their nature, as they approach him, he accepts their bhakti and answers to it with the reply of divine love and compassion. These forms are after all a certain kind of manifestation through which the imperfect human intelligence can touch him, these desires are first means by which our souls turn towards him: nor is any devotion worthless or ineffective, whatever its limitations. It has the one grand necessity, faith.7·21–22 “Whatever form of me any devotee with faith desires to worship, I make that faith of his firm and undeviating.” By the force of that faith in his cult and worship he gets his desire and the spiritual realisation for which he is at the moment fitted. By seeking all his good from the Divine, he shall come in the end to seek in the Divine all his good. By depending for his joys on the Divine, he shall learn to fix in the Divine all his joy. By knowing the Divine in his forms and qualities, he shall come to know him as the All and the Transcendent who is the source of all things.*
The Arya — text not in the CWSA
Gita VII. 1–28
