Verse 55
By devotion he knows Me
in truth, what and who I am; and knowing Me in truth, he forthwith enters into
the Supreme.
The Lord says, “A
true devotee knows what kind of person I am, what kind of Reality I am”. This
means knowing what God is, what is the characteristic of God, and what one
actually attains after reaching God. All these things will become clear when
the devotion intensifies. Then, one enters into the Absolute.
In the path of Jnana, the student is taught about God (Brahman) and the teacher takes the
student through Upanishads
and teaches that the God is:-
* All pervading pure
consciousness, non-dual, unborn, decay-less, causeless, self-luminous,
indivisible, unchanging, destitute of all the differences caused by the
limiting adjuncts,
* support, source, womb, basis,
and substratum of everything,
* The ruler of all beings; he
knows that I am the Supreme Purusha, the controller of Maya, and that this
world is a mere appearance.
A conceptual
appreciation of God’s existence is different from an appreciation of His
Existence as He is in Himself.
This is possible
only if one totally annihilates one’s egoistic individuality,
does not conceive God as if He is something outside him, and does
not go on insisting on his own individual existence.
And, in pure
devotion, para bhakti, the bhakta may not be aware of all the above
but the devotion ultimately culminates into that state where, all the
above is actually experienced by the devotee turned seer and the experience is
not of God outside him but it is all within.
How this happens?
When God takes
possession of all things, Bhakta’s existence ceases to be and he is no
more there, and then it is that he has entered into the Absolute.
The entering into
the very substance of God is the final aim of life, which is possible only when
one ceases to be, by a total abolition of one’s encrustations (hard
coating) of physical and psychical personality. Then one’s soul merges in
God.
The act of
knowing and the act of entering are not two distinct acts. Knowing is becoming.
Knowing is attaining Self-Knowledge. To know That is to become That. Entering
is knowing or becoming That. Entering is the attainment of Self-Knowledge or
Self Realization. Knowing and entering are synonymous terms.
It is very
difficult to understand or comprehend transcendental spiritual matters. The
teachers use various terms or expressions, analogies, similes, parables,
stories, etc. to make the aspirant grasp the matter clearly and lucidly. Words
are imperfect and languages are defective. They cannot fully express the inner
spiritual experiences. The teacher somehow or other expresses to the students
or aspirants, these spiritual ideas.
The aspirant
himself will have to realize the Self. That is beyond the reach of words of
expressions or analogies of similes. How can there be similes for that non-dual
Brahman. These words are a sort of help or prop for the aspirants to lean upon
in the beginning to understand spiritual matters. When he realizes the Self,
these words are of no value to him. He himself becomes an embodiment of
knowledge.
Mundaka Upanishad says,
Whoever
knows this Brahman in which the universe in all its vastness is fixed, and
which shines more radiantly than the Sun, and those people who are devoted to
such a person without any kind of earthly desire, go beyond the chances of
coming back to this world by rebirth.
Taittriya
Upanishad says,
Love.
