THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 09, VERSE 11, RAJAVIDYA RAJAGUHYA YOG OR THE YOGA OF THE SOVEREIGN SCIENCE AND SOVEREIGN SECRET

THE HOLY GITA

CHAPTER NUMBER 09

RAJAVIDYA RAJAGUHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF THE SOVEREIGN SCIENCE AND SOVEREIGN SECRET:

VERSE NUMBER 11

Text in Transliteration:

avajaananti maam moodhaa maanusheem tanum aasritam

param bhaavam ajaananto mama bhoota maheshvaram

Text in English:

Fools disregard Me as one cad in human form, not knowing My higher nature as the Great Lord of beings.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:

The Lord who is not bound by karma is not bound by the human form also. Akasa is not limited by the forms taken by the other four elements. While containing all of them in itself it expands undivided into infinity. The same is the case with the cid-aakaasa as well. It is eternally pure, wakeful and free. Though this Parmatman is the common background to the entire creation, He assumes occasionally a perfect human form and seems to be enshrined in it, solely with the object of teaching humanity that it is possible for them also not to be bound by the body while residing in it. Not knowing this divine play of the Lord, they treat the Incarnation also as an earth-bound one and slight Him.

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:

The elephant has the visible tusks and the invisible set of teeth. Similarly the Incarnations like Sri Krishna have the human and the Divine combined in them. While appearing as the human, they are the transcendental Divine, unaffected by karma and things mundane.

COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:

We see only the outward human body and not the Divine in it. We see the outer appearance, not the inner reality. To recognize God in His earthly disguise means effort. Unless we turn our entire existence toward the Eternal, transcending the limits of phenomenal nature and recover the greater consciousness by which we can live in the Divine, we will be a prey to finite fascinations.

Image worship is to be used as a means to the Divine; otherwise it is faulty. In the Bhaagavata the Lord is represented as saying “I am present in all beings as their soul but ignoring My presence, the mortal makes a display of image worship.”

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

Fools only find fault with My pure nature, just as a man with jaundiced eyes finds all objects to be yellow. The man who is suffering from fever finds even milk as bitter as the essence of neem. Those who wish to behold Me by means of the physical eyes cannot know Me. If anyone takes the mirage for the Ganga, can he find any water there?

Fools who do not have discrimination and right understanding despise Me, dwelling in the human form. I have taken this body to bless My devotees. These fools have no knowledge of My higher Being. They do not know that I am the Lord, the Supreme Self, the luminous, omniscient, pure, ever free, immortal, wise, the Self of all. These fools take Me for an ordinary mortal and despise Me always. The wise know both My transcendental nature and the glory of My manifestation.

I pervade, permeate and interpenetrate the universe. I am the support of this world, body, mind, life-force and the senses and yet there are some miserable fools, who say that I do not exist. There is thus not a place anywhere where I am not, and yet these people are not able to see Me. Look at the misfortune of these people. Pitiable is their lot! (Cf. IV. 6; VII. 24)

Comments by the blogger:

The context is the period of Mahabharata. There is no record of incarnation since then. But there has been any number of dubious persons claiming to be the incarnated Lord. Even some years ago a young and virile swami was captured by the invisible camera while he was having a dalliance with one of his women ‘devotees’. The dubious person ran away to Kasi and stayed there for months and then revealed his place of escape to the New Indian Express. He even gave an interview to the newspaper, in which he claimed he was like a child when he had been having the dalliance with the woman ‘devotee’, an erstwhile cine actress. Thus there has been any number of dubious incarnations since the Avatar of Sri Krishna. But there have been quintessential Ascetics as well like Swami Chidbhavananda,  Swami Sivananda, Sri Chandrasekarendra Sarasvati fondly called ‘the Periyavar’ and others who have been extraordinary Souls and Ascetics. But none of them claimed to be incarnations of the Lord. So the devotees’ burden and responsibility are increased in finding out the true Incarnated Being.

Even in Sri Krishna’s period the kauravas and the eldest among them, Dhuryodhana did not recognize the Lord in Sri Krishna. Otherwise, he would not have chosen Sri Krishan’s Army while Arjuna had chosen Sri Krishna himself. Some might argue that since the first choice went to Arjuna and he having chosen Sri Krishna Himself, there was no other chance for Dhuryodhana than choosing the Lord’s Army. But fact remains that he chose the Lord’s Army happily. And he considered Arjuna as unwise for having chosen a single man against the whole Army.

So he was a fool. And those who considered along with him Sri Krishna just as a man and human being were fools.