Chapter X: The perfection divine and universal
What is within us is perfection. What is without us is imperfection. The outer world can have perfection only when the inner world inspires, guides, moulds and shapes the outer world.Yesterday dreamt of today as perfection. Today dreams of tomorrow as perfection. Perfection already achieved pales into insignificant imperfection before the birth of the fast approaching future.
Perfection grows. It has been doing so since the beginning of the creation’s birth. Unlike us, God has one Dream: perfect Perfection. This perfect Perfection must shine in the aspiring hearts of individuality and universality so that the absolute Reality can be the total expression of the cosmic Vision.
Everybody is dear to God. But the sweetest and the most intimate relation exists only between a devotee and the Lord. A true devotee worships the Lord with no desire’s brood. The Lord blesses him not only unreservedly but also unconditionally. What a devotee needs is the determined strength of his heart. Once he has achieved it, his self-realisation will no longer remain a far cry.
To understand the truth is one thing. To believe in it is another. Not to understand the truth is no crime, far from it. But to disbelieve the truth is nothing short of an unpardonable sin. A child does not understand his father’s vast wisdom. Nevertheless, his faith in his father’s wisdom is spontaneous and genuine.
Sri Krishna is the Wisdom Absolute. He is the Glory Supreme. His Glory nobody understands. No, not even the gods. Arjuna may not understand Krishna, but his implicit faith in Krishna speaks for him: “O Krishna, Thou art the Lord of the Lords. Supreme art Thou. This I believe. Neither the gods nor the demons comprehend thy mysterious manifestations. The source of all beings art Thou. Thou art known by Thee alone.”
— St. Augustine
Krishna now makes it clear to Arjuna that His divine Glory can be elucidated and demonstrated but can never be exhausted. The universe in its entirety is but a tiny spark of His infinite Magnitude.
“Pandavanam Dhananjaya”, says Krishna. “Among the Pandavas I am Dhananjaya.” Dhananjaya is an epithet of Arjuna. Each person has one body, one mind, one heart and one soul. How can one standing in front of another say that he is verily the other person? Does it not sound absurd? It does so only when we live in the physical, not when we live in the oneness of the Spirit. When we declare that all human beings are one and the same, we just state a bare fact that we inwardly believe or try to believe. It is the sense of identification that makes us one. Krishna says: “I am this, I am that, I am everything.” Again He says that He is the best, highest and mightiest in everything. Does it mean that His Consciousness is tinged with preference? Does He discriminate? No, He has no preference, He has no discrimination. “Arjuna, I am the Self seated in the heart of all beings. I am the beginning and middle and also the end of all beings.” He wants to illumine Arjuna’s mind by saying that in the process of cosmic evolution He is unveiling and manifesting His own perfection. His divine manifestations are endless. He has mentioned only a few by way of example. From Him spring permanence, goodness and mightiness. He tells Arjuna that he has not to learn His divine manifestations in minute detail. It will simply confuse his mind. “I established the whole universe with a portion of Myself.” Knowing this the seeker in Arjuna can easily satisfy his hunger.
“I am the seed of all things, animate or inanimate.” Arjuna now realises that Krishna is not the mere body. He is the Self all-pervading. Arjuna wishes to know under what particular form the Self is to be worshipped. “Under all forms,” is Krishna’s immediate reply. Nothing there is without the Self. The Self is in all and all is in the Self. This is the wisdom that the seeker’s knowledge must possess.
The Gita teaches us the purest oneness. This oneness is the inner oneness. This inner oneness is at once spontaneous and unique. This oneness can never be truncated or dwarfed by the mind. The realm of oneness is far beyond the approach of the physical mind.
Self-knowledge is the knowledge of the universal oneness. Divine perfection can be founded only on the fertile soil of universal oneness. Serve humanity precisely because Divinity looms large in humanity. Know Divinity and you will in no time realise God’s Immortality in you and your Immortality in God. God in man and man in God can only announce the truest embodiments of perfect Perfection.
