THE HOLY GITA
CHAPTER NUMBER 09
RAJAVIDYA RAJAGUHYA YOGA OR THE YOGA OF SOVEREIGN SCIENCE AND SOVEREIGN SECRET:
VERSE NUMBER 22
Text in Transliteration:
ananyaas chintayanto maam ye janaah paryupaasat
teshaam nityabhiyuk taanaam yogakshemam vahaamy aham
Text in English:
To those men who worship Me alone, thinking of no other, who are ever devout, I provide gain and security.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
This is a sublime statement revealing the law of life at the spiritual level. In the economy of nature the distribution of labour is benignly meted out. It is all right for the body-bound man to toil for food and clothing. But he who has completely attuned himself to the Divine loses in calibre when he brings his mind down to the mundane level. The grace of the Lord works in such a way that this downfall does not take place. In every respect, the spirituality of the spiritual man is promoted.
It is ananyabhakti when the love of the Jivatman for the Paramatman takes away all distinctions between the two.
Yoga in the context of this stanza means the provision of the means required for the devotees’ bodily maintenance; and kshema means the protection of what has been provided.
The baby in the womb gets its nourishment from the mother because of the state of non-separation between the two. The boon of ananyabhakti is even greater and more consequential than this. While the mother and the baby will be separated by time, this Jivatman or human being and Paramatman or God will become united for eternity. The grace of the Lord unfailingly facilitates this union. While the seekers of heaven chase the phantom, the genuine devotee of the Lord gains Him, the Incomparable.
SRI RAMAKRISHNA AS QUOTED BY SWAMI CHIDBHAVANANDA:
When the devotee takes one stride towards the Lord, He takes ten strides towards that devotee. Such is His grace.
COMMENTARY BY DR.S.RADHAKRISHNAN:
The teacher urges that the Vedic path is a snare to be avoided by the aspirants after the highest.
God takes up all the burdens and the cares of His devotees.
To become conscious of divine love, all other love must be abandoned. If we cast ourselves entirely on the mercy of God, He bears all our cares and sorrows. We can depend on His saving care and energizing grace.
COMMENTARY BY SWAMI SIVANANDA:
Ananyah; Non-seperate. This is another interpretation. Persons who meditating on Me as non-separate, worship Me in all beings—to them who are ever devout, I secure gain and safety. They consider themselves as non-separate, i.e., they look upon the Supreme Being as non-separate from their own Self; they look upon the Supreme Being as their own Self.
Those devotees who behold nothing as separate from themselves have no selfish interests of their own. They have no desire for life or death. They have taken sole refuge in that Lord. They have nothing to lose, because there is nothing they call their own. Their very bodies become God’s. They have no desire for acquisition because all their desires are gratified by their communion with the Lord. They have eternal satisfaction as they possess all the divine Aishvarya, the supreme wealth of the Lord.
They entertain no other thoughts than those of the Lord. Consequently the Lord Himself looks after their bodily wants, such as food and clothing (this is known as Yoga), and preserves what they already possess (this is known as kshema). He does these two acts. Just as the father and mother attend to the bodily needs of their children, so also the Lord attends to the needs of His devotees.
They direct their whole mind with full faith towards the Lord. They make the Lord alone the sole object of their thought. For them nothing is dearer in this world than the Lord. They live for the Lord alone. They think of Him only with singleness of the purpose and one-pointed devotion. They behold nothing but the Lord. They love Him in all creatures. When they lead such a life, the Lord takes the whole burden of securing gain (Yoga) and safety (kshema) for them upon Himself.
Nityayuktah: those who constantly meditate on the Lord with intense devotion and one-pointed mind. (Cf. VIII. 14; Xviii.66)
Comments by the blogger:
Those are the people who have evolved over a number of births and deaths into ananya bhktas or Exclusive Devotees. They do not care even about their daily food and clothing. For the Lord Himself takes care of them. The gaining of the basic necessities like food and clothing (yoga) and safety for them in this rudimental wise (kshama) are the lookout of the Great Lord Himself. The devotee has no time for his daily food and clothing, because he worships Him alone, thinking of no other, who is ever devout.
This might come as a call for sanyasihood. No, Sri Krishna does not want all the people of the world to be turned at once into such hermits or ascetics. It is a process in the individual life of a person on the spiritual plane. The Lord Himself has said elsewhere that out of a thousand who desire to attain Him only a few really strive and out of a thousand of such striving devotees only a few stay the course and realize Him. This does not mean that the thousand people who had rightly resolved to attain the Lord lost out in the ultimate analysis. For their incomplete resolve will get strengthened in the next birth and they will rightly resolve this time to attain Him alone as a goal in life, but might lose out in staying the course on the spiritual level. And those persons would come back to the earth after their death, fully resolved to stay the course. So it is a matter of evolution of the devotees. And at one time or another, such evolving devotees will give up everything for the sake of the Lord, with the Lord looking out for his minimum needs of food and clothing and safety and security. Then it would be just a matter of application on the part of such evolving devotees to stay the course and become fully attuned to God. This process might take hundreds of rebirths for all we know.
But it is important to rightly resolve now and try to minimise our needs on the material plane and pray to the Lord on a daily basis and chant His inexorable Name. This plus the constant and continued worship of the Lord’s words in the Gita by making a regular study of the same will turn us into an evolving devotee above-mentioned.
Sri Ramana Maharshi one day ruminated: even as a teenager he could think that one day he would die. And that everyone around him would one day die. The teenager could not bear the mundane life and took four or five rupees and got on a train to Thiruvannamalai. There the teenager would sit in meditation and all thoughts would come tumbling to him in a tumultuous parade. He would sit, clad in a loincloth, unconcerned. At last, he found out a meditation technique for himself. He constantly asked himself in meditation “Who Am I?” This simple and humble question repeated for hours over the years got Him answer from the Universal Soul and one day He attained nirvana or emancipation. All these years, one lady used to bring food for the boy. Thus His ananya bhakti or Exclusive Devotion to Lord alone fetched him the basic necessities like food and minimum clothing. And the devotee was enabled to meditate on the Lord without any hindrance.
This is how an exclusive devotee evolves in the process of so many births and deaths.
All persons at once can’t become such devotees. For Ramana Maharishi stood in need of that old woman to bring him food daily. So the householders are necessary. Always householders are the majority. They are in the varying stages of devotion to the Lord.
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