THE HOLY GITA, CHAPTER 09, VERSE 17, RAJAVIDYA RAJAGUHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF 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 17

Text in Transliteration:

pitaa ‘ham asya jagato maataadhaataapitaamahah

vedyam pavitram anikaara rk saama yajur eva cha

Text in English:

I am the Father of this world, the Mother, the Dispenser and the Grandfather; I am the knowable, the Purifier, the syllable Om and also the Rik, the Saman and the Yajus.

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:

God being the source of the universe and the beings in it, He is held as the Father, the Mother and the Grandfather. Each individual is rewarded the Lord according to his efforts and therefore He is the Dispenser. Knowing Iswara, everything comes to be known in its perspective; the Lord is therefore the knowable.

The elements earth, water, fire and air have the power to purify the things brought in contact with them. Man gets purified as he contacts God; God is therefore the most efficacious Purifier.

The Rik, the Saman and the Yajus deal with the origin, sustenance and end of the Prakriti. No mention is made here of the Atharva, the fourth Veda, as it does not come up to the level of the other three in orthodoxy.

Languages are all based on the science of sound. In this respect the Vedas may be said to have reached perfection. They are the sacred books which proclaim that sound is the seed from which the universe has come into being. Sound is God, Nada Brahman. He persists eternally as the syllable Om, which is a blending of a+u+m. Sound originates as a, sustains as u and terminates as m. By the Creator uttering Om once, the universe is projected, maintained and withheld. The sadhaka or practitioner who gets fixed in the chanting of Om evolves in Godhood.

SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:

Bhagavan, Bhavatam and the Bhaktas—these three are identical. (God, His Life Story and the devotees—these three are identical).

COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:

Dhata: Supporter or sustainer by dispensing the fruits of actions.

Ishvara or the Saguna Brahman is the father. Mula-Prakriti or the primordial Nature is the mother. The pure Satchidananda Para Brahman (Existence-knowledge-Bliss Absolute) is the grandfather.

Vedayam: The one thing to be known. This is the Supreme Being.

Pavitram: Purifier. I am of the form of a bath in the holy river Ganga and the Gayatri Japa which purify the aspirants externally and internally.

Cha: and. This includes the Atharvana-Veda also. (Cf. XIV. 3)

Comments by the blogger:

We may compare this verse with verses 4, 5, 6 and 10.

Swami Chidbhavananda calls this as Arundadhi Nyaya; that is coming from the known to the unknown and arrive at a conclusion.

First the Lord said to Arjuna who does not carp and cavil that all this universe is pervaded by Him in His unmanifested form. And more importantly, the Lord said that all beings exist in Him, but He does not abide in them. That is verse 4. In verse 5 the Lord declares, “Nor do the beings dwell in Me, behold My divine yoga! Bringing forth and supporting the beings, My Self does not dwell in them.” Then the Lord is much more magnanimous and asserts in verse 6 that as the mighty wind moving everywhere rested in the Akasa, so did all beings rested in Him. In this verse Lord’s compassion for our poor selves is palpable. But in verse 10 he becomes much clearer by stating the inexorable fact that because of HIS PROXIMITY, Prakriti produces all this, the moving and the unmoving. Here the Lord is a witness. This fact is the ultimate truth. He is the witness and His Samskara, the minute unit of measurement factors in even the passing thoughts and ruminations in us, beside our open and covert actions. All these are measured and a continuous and panoramic balance sheet is ever being kept updated every microsecond. Thus we write our own fate for the next rebirth and the choice is ours. The driving gunas have a deciding factor in our act of making choices. Everyone makes his or her choices in life according to his or her preponderating guna.

Now, in the stanza 17, the Lord is more open and allegorical in His statement, that He is the Father of this world, the mother, the Dispenser and the Grandfather.

Here the Lord says openly that the mother Nature or Prakriti is the Dispenser. Because the Lord Master created the world or the Prakriti and infused His Spirit and Intelligence as the Cosmic Soul. It is the Nature which presides and schools us in the worldly life. In the beginning, she charms us with her various guiles and attractions for the consumption of our five senses. But when we make a choice not to be craving for this world’s attractions, after some more pulls exerted on us, the Lord’s Prakriti makes our spiritual path rosy. She helps us in every way and pushes us forward toward Self Realisation. Ultimately she frees us completely from her pulls and thus we shed rebirths and comingle with the Lord. Thus it is God’s Prakrity that does everything, with God in the form of the Universal Soul, remaining the inexorable and inexplicable WITNESS.