THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 09
RAJAVIDYA RAJAGUHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF SOVEREIGN SCIENCE AND SOVEREIGN SECRET:
VERSE NUMBER 04
Text in Transliteration:
mayaa tatam idam sarvam jagad avyakata moortina
matsthaani sarva bhootaani na chaa ‘ham teshv avasthitah
Text in English:
All this universe is pervaded by Me in My unmanifested form; all beings exist in Me, I do not abide in them.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
As waves take their origin from the sea and sport on it, all beings from Brahma down to a blade of grass take their origin in Brahman and rest on Him. As the sea is not contained in the waves, the unmanifest Brahman is not contained in the manifest beings. He is infinite while these are all finite.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
See VII. 12.
This whole universe owes its being to the Transcendent Godhead and yet the forms of this universe do not contain or express Him adequately. His absolute reality is far above the appearance of things in space and time.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Avyatamoorti is Para Brahman or the Supreme Unmanifested Being invisible to the senses but cognisable through intuition. All beings from Brahma, the Creator, down to the blade of grass or an ant, dwell in the transcendental Para Brahman. They have no independent existence. They exist through the Self which is the support for everything, which underlies them all.
Nothing here contains It. As Brahman is the Self of all beings, one may imagine that It dwells in them. But it is not so. How could it be? How can the infinite be contained in a finite object? Brahman has no connection or contact with any material object, just as a chair or a table has contact with the ground or a man or a book. So it does not dwell in those beings. That which has no connection or contact with objects or beings cannot be contained anywhere as if in a vessel, trunk, room or receptacle. The Self is not rooted in all these forms. It is not contained by any of these forms just as the ether is not contained in any form though all forms are derived from the ether.
All beings appear to be living in Brahman, but this is an illusion. If this illusion vanishes, nothing remains anywhere except Brahman. When ignorance, the cause of this illusion disappears, the very idea of the existence of these beings also will vanish.
In verses 4 and 5 the Lord uses a paradox or an apparent contradiction: “All beings dwell in Me and yet do not dwell in Me; I do not dwell in them”. For a thinker there is no real contradiction at all. Just as space contains all beings and yet is not touched by them so also Para Brahman contains everything and yet is not touched by them. Even Mulaprakriti, the source or womb of this world, is supported by Brahman. Brahman has no support or root. It rests in Its own pristine glory.
Comments by the blogger:
This universe is pervaded by the Lord in his transcendental form. This universe means both sentient and insentient, both beings like man and beast, and the objects like earth and articles man makes from earth. This is reason enough to love all the beings, human beings, and the beasts. When our love for our family extends to our neighbours and we pray for them, there is some insouciant beauty in it. But if we consider the whole village, town or city we live in and love all of the human beings and pray for them, our heart and understanding of life and things expand. But only when we transcend borders and love the whole of the humanity of the world, our heart and understanding of things expand exponentially.
Love for all the beasts is not the same as love for the vegetarian food only. For vegetables also have life and the plants they are plucked from have life, and when the vegetables are plucked from the plants they suffer pain. So vegetarianism is not applauded and recommended for yoga practitioners because the beasts have life and vegetables have no life; since what we eat predominantly determines our guna or tendency and also have a say in our temperament, it is so good to be a vegetarian. Digestion is easy and longevity of life also is assured. Health reasons also recommend the vegetarian food.
We should make our love envelope all the world or universe. We would be pleasantly shocked when our heart expands to involve the whole universe. We can love our family alone and be small and puny little men and women or love the whole universe and be the lover of God who pervades the whole universe.
The second part of the verse, “All beings exist in Me, but I do not abide in them” may appear difficult to understand. The Lord is the efficient cause of the Universe. The whole cosmos is scintillating with His intelligence. From this cosmic intelligence, we may borrow, whether we are the believer in God or not. We need not adore the Lord to borrow from the cosmic intelligence. Some scientists are believers in God while some are non-believers. Some poets are believers, while some poets take pride in denying the very existence of God. But all the scientists are able to borrow from this cosmic intelligence. All poets are able to borrow from the same intelligence and write good poetry. Like the practitioner of yoga need not necessarily be a Hindu, a scientist, a scholar, a poet, etc, need not necessarily be a believer. Everyone can borrow from the cosmic intelligence. For some people like geologists and scientists, the answer to a geological or scientific question has come in their dreams. Even we have answers, sometimes if not always, for our problems in dreams. All this is possible because of the cosmic intelligence. The law of coincidence also has its roots in this theory. When we think hard about a problem or a conundrum in life, whether it is big or small, and are not able to solve the problem, if we train our mind on some other matter or if we take rest and sleep for a while, the answer would flash in our mind. Or the answer would come through what we read in the papers or what our friends say and thus the answer would come to us coincidentally. All this is because of the Cosmic Intelligence. This is proof enough that the Lord pervades this universe, and He is the efficient cause of the Cosmos and that the cosmic intelligence is for all, believers and non-believers, to help out of a bottleneck in one’s exertion.
The law of evolution should involve the borrowing from this cosmic intelligence.
“But I do not abide in them” is easy to understand. We and the universe are finite. The infinite cannot be held within the finite. But when one man realizes Self he becomes one with the Brahman even while living here. In such persons, for example, Sri Ramakrishna and his disciple Vivekananda, God would abide even though they live like any other ordinary man or woman.
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