Shrimad Bhagavad Gita,CHAPTER 7

1. ‘‘The Lord said, ‘Listen, O Parth, to how by taking refuge in me and practising yog with devotion, you shall know me beyond any doubt as the all-perfect Soul in all beings.’’’

The essential precondition of this complete awareness of God should be carefully noted. If Arjun wishes to have such knowledge, he has to practise yog with devotion and by casting himself at God’s mercy. But there are several other aspects of the problem which Krishn is going to dwell upon, and he tells Arjun to listen carefully to him so that all his doubts are resolved. The importance of perfect knowledge of the many glories of God is stressed again.

2. "1 shall fully teach you this knowledge as well as the all-pervasive action that results from realization of God (vigyan), after which there remains nothing better in the world to know.’’

Krishn offers to enlighten Arjun fully on the knowledge of God along with the knowledge that is here called "vigyan"1. Knowledge is the attainment, in the moment of accomplishment, of the substance of immortality (amrit-tattwa) that is generated by yagya. Direct perception of the essence of God is knowledge. But the other knowledge, called vigyan, is the attainment by a realized sage of the ability to act simultaneously everywhere. It is the knowledge of how God at the same time operates in all beings. It is the knowledge of how he makes us undertake action and of how he enables the Self to travel across the way to the identical Supreme Spirit. This way of God is vigyan. Krishn tells Arjun that he is going to explain this knowledge to him fully, after knowing which there will be nothing better in the world for him to know. True knowers are much too few.

3. "Hardly does one man among thousands strive to know me and hardly does one among the thousands who strive for this know my essence."

Only rarely does a man endeavour to realize God and, among those who strive to do so, there is scarcely a man who succeeds inknowing his reality by direct perception. Now, where is this total reality-the entire essence? Is it stationary at one place as a corporal body-a lump of matter, or is it all-pervading? Krishn now speaks of this.

4. "I am the creator of all nature with its eight divisions-earth, water, fire, wind, ether, mind, intellect, and ego."

From Krishn, God, has arisen nature with all its components. This nature with its eight parts is the lower nature.

5. "This nature, O the mighty-armed, is the lower, insensate nature, but against it there is my conscious, living nature which animates the whole world."

The nature with eight parts is God’s lower nature, dull and insensible. But, along with this, there is his conscious nature which impregnates and gives life to the whole world, But the individual Soul too is "nature" because it is associated with the other, lower nature.

6. "Know that all beings arise from these two natures and that I am both the creator and the end of the whole world."

All beings spring from these animate and inanimate natures. These are the two sources of all life. God (Krishn) is the root of the whole universe, both its creator and destroyer. It springs from him and is also dissolved in him. He is the spring of nature as long as it exists, but he is also the power that dissolves nature after a sage has overcome its limitations. But this is a matter of intuition.Men have always been intrigued by these universal questions of creation and destruction, which is sometimes calles ‘‘doom’’. Almost all holy books of the world have attempted to explain these phenomena in one way or another. Some of them insist that the end of the world is brought about by submersion under water, while according to others the earth is annihilated because the sun comes too close to it and burns it. Some call the event the Day of Final Judgement, the day on which God judges all beings, while others explain away the idea of doom as a recurrent feature or as dependent on a specific cause. According to Krishn, however, nature is without beginning and end. Changes there have been, but it has never been completely destroyed.According to Indian mythology, Manu experienced a doom in which eleven sages had sailed, by tying their boat to the fin of a fish, to a towering peak of the Himalayas and found shelter there. 2 In the sacred composition called the Shreemad Bhagwat 3,’ which is contemporaneous with Krishn-God came down to earth for his pleasure-and dealing with his life and precepts, the sage Mrikandu’s son Markandeya Ji has rendered an account of the doom he claims to have seen with his own "eyes." He lived on the north of the Himalayas, on the bank of the Pushpbhadr river.According to Chapters 8 and 9 of the twelfth section of Shreemad Bhagwat, the great sage Shaunak and some others told Sut Ji (a pupil of Vyas) that Markandeya Ji had had a vision of Balmukund (infant Vishnu) on a Banyan-leaf. But the difficulty was that he belonged to their lineage and was born only sometime before them; and it was a fact that the earth was never submerged and destroyed after his birth. With all this, how was it possible that he had beheld destruction of the earth? What kind of deluge was it?Sut Ji told them that, pleased with his prayers, God had manifested himself to Markandeya Ji, who had then expressed his wish to see God’s maya, driven by which the Soul has to wander through endless births. God had granted his wish and one day, when the sage was sitting absorbed in contemplation, he saw towering, furious waves of the sea hurtling on to him from all sides. Terrible fishes leapt from the waves. He scurried here and there to save himself. The sky, the sun, the moon, heaven itself, and all the constellations were drowned in the flood. In the meantime he saw a Banyan tree with an infant on one of its leaves. As the child breathed in, Markandeya Ji was drawn inside him by the inrushing air, and there he discovered his hermitage along with the solar system and the whole universe alive and intact. Soon after, he was cast out with an exhalation. When his eyes opened at last, Markandeya Ji found him self safe on his seat in his hermitage. So whatever he had seen was but a dream-a vision.

It is evident that the sage had this divine, transcendental vision-this intuitive experience - only after worship spread over years beyond reckoning. It was a perception by his Soul; everything outside was the same as before. So doom, too, is an event that is revealed by God within the heart of a yogi. When at the completion of the process of worship, worldly influences cease to be and only God remains in the yogi’s mind-that is doom. This dissolution is not an external phenomenon. Final doom is the inexpressible state of the total identity of Soul with God while the body yet is. This Is something that can be felt through action alone. Whether it is you or me, we are victims of delusion if we judge by the mind alone. This is what we are told now.

7. "There is, O Dhananjay, not even one object other than me, and the whole world is linked up with me like the pearls of a necklace."

There is absolutely nothing else except God and the whole world is tied up with him. But it is possible to know this only when, as it was said in the first verse of the chapter, one engages in yog with total resignation to God, and never before this. Participation in yog is an indispensable necessity.

8. "O Arjun, I am that which makes water liquescent, the radiance in the sun and the moon, the sacred syllable OM, 4 the word’s echo (Shabd)5 in the ether, and I am also the manliness in men."

God is all these and all knowledge; and the whole wisdom of the Ved has been breathed forth from him.6 He is also much more.

9. "I am the fragrance in the earth, the flame in fire, the Soul that animates all beings, and the penance of ascetics.’’

God pervades the whole universe, the earth, the fire, all creatures, and even the severe spiritual austerities that are practised by ascetics. He dwells in every atom.

10. "Since l am also the intellect in wise men and the magnificence of men of glory, know you, O Arjun, that I am the eternal fountainhead of all beings.

God is the seed from which all creatures are born. Moreover,-

11. "I am, O the best of Bharat, the selfless power of the strong and I, too, am the aspiration for realization in all beings that is never hostile to God."

God is the righteous aspiration of the mighty and also their strength which is free from all desire. Doesn’t everyone in the world wish to be strong? Some endeavour to achieve it through physical exercise and some through the amassing of nuclear weapons. But Krishn affirms that he is the strength that is beyond all desire and attachment. This is true strength. He is also in all beings the aspiration that is propitious for dharm. God alone is the real dharm. The immortal Soul that holds all within himself is dharm. And God is also that craving which is not inimical to dharm. Krishn had prompted Arjun earlier to aspire to the realization of God. All desires are forbidden, but yearning for the attainment of God is essential because we cannot be inclined to worship in its absence. This hunger for God is also a gift from Krishn.

12. "And know that although all the properties of nature (tamas, rajas and sattwa) have arisen from me, they neither dwell in me nor do I dwell in them."

All the properties of nature, ignorance, passion and virtue, are born from God. Yet, however, he is not in them and they are not in him; he is not absorbed in them and they cannot enter into him because he is unattached to and unsullied by them. He has to gain nothing from nature or its properties, and so they cannot taint him.Despite this, however, as the body’s hunger and thirst are caused by the Soul and yet the Soul is wholly unconcerned with food and water, even so although nature arises from God, he is untouched by its properties and activities.

13. "Since the whole world is deluded by feelings resulting from the operation of the three properties, it is unaware of my imperishable essence that is beyond them."

Blinded by feelings associated with the operation of tamas, rajas and sattwa, men fail to perceive the indestructible and the one reality that is God-quite beyond the properties of nature. So He cannot be known if there is even the slightest trace of these properties. So long as these properties envelop the worshipper’s mind, his journey is incomplete. He has still to go along; he is still on the way.

14. "This divine three-propertied yog-maya of mine is most difficult to overcome, but they who seek refuge in me get over the illusion and achieve salvation.

God’s celestial maya, the power from which the empirical universe is evolved, is most difficult to comprehend, but they who are always engaged in the worship of God navigate safely across it. This maya is called divine, but that does not mean that we should start burning incense sticks as a reverent offering to it. It should never be forgotten that it is something that we have to vanquish and get across.