Sri Chinmayananda Saraswati

“All this world (universe) is pervaded by Me in My Unmanifest form (aspect); all beings exist in Me, but I do not dwell in them” ( Bhagwad Gita)

           (Bhagawad Gita)


 All this world (universe) is pervaded by Me in My Unmanifest form (aspect)

If thus, the Infinite pervades the finite what exactly is the relationship between them? Is it that the finite rose from the Infinite?

Or is it that the Infinite produced the finite? Has the Infinite Itself become the finite, as a modification of Itself or do they both keep a father-son, or master-servant relationship? 

Various religions of the world abound in such questions. The dualists can afford to indulge in such a fancied picture of some relation or other between the finite and the Infinite.

But the advaitin-s (Non-dualists) cannot accept this idea, since to them the Eternal Self alone is the one and only reality.

All beings exist in Me, but I do not dwell in them”

“The second line of this stanza is a classical description of this “relationless-relationship” between Real and unreal. To a hasty reader this would strike as an incomprehensible paradox expressed in a jumble of empty words.

But to one who has understood well the theory of super-imposition, this is very simple. The ghost-vision can come only the post.

And what exactly is the relationship between the ghost and the post from the standpoint of the post? The innocent post, in infinite love for the deluded fool, can only make a similar statement as the Lord has made here.

“The ghost,” the post would say “is no doubt in me, but I am not in the ghost; and therefore I have never frightened any deluded traveler at any time.” 

In the same fashion the Lord says here, “I in my unmanifest nature, am the substratum for all the manifested” chaos of names and forms, but neither in their joys nor in their sorrows, neither in their births nor in their deaths, ” am I sharing their destinies, because I do not dwell in them.”