Friday, June 6, 2014

IX: 15

Chapter 9, Verse 15

"Others, on the path of Gyan, the Yoga of knowledge,
Worship me by offering up the fruits of their knowledge.
Beholding me both as the One and the many,
Wherever they look, they see my face."

Father Bede Griffiths:

When you offer the fruits of your knowledge, you are offering your mind to God, and only then do you receive the illumination of wisdom.  Then you come to Source, the One, and you realize the many in the One.  That is the goal.

Is there disappearance in the One?

The answer is that you disappear as a separate being, but then are rediscovered as distinct and yet one.  The distinction remains.  Everything in Nature is distinct in God.

Krishna declares that the whole Universe is him.  The Old Testament tradition has little sense of God pervading the Universe.  The Jews were anxious to show God above the Universe.  He overturns the land to make hills, makes the dry lands water, the water dry, and so forth.  He is always overwhelming Nature.  The sense that he is in the water, in the fire, and in the world is lacking.  The transcendence of God needed to be grasped at that point in history in that part of the world, and they were not yet ready to attend to the immanent aspect, which was developed in India with the profound sense that God pervades everything.

This immanent aspect is a function of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is immanent in matter from the beginning of creation.  That same Holy Spirit that is latent in matter brings forth consciousness when matter is sufficiently organized.  It is part of the plan of God from the beginning that the Holy Spirit permeates matter and gradually transforms it.

The human soul becomes more and more penetrated by the Holy Spirit, until it becomes totally transfigured by it and then shares the life of God himself.  It is hidden in matter, coming forth in life, emerging further in consciousness, but it is only in divine consciousness, in the life of grace, that the Holy Spirit fully manifests in us.

What Krishna says is that he is in all.  What he means is that he is immanent in everything.  God is present in everything.  As St. Thomas Aquinus puts it...

God causes the existence of everything, sustains everything in existence at every moment, and causes each thing to act.

No tree can emerge from the Earth unless there is an actual activity of God working in it, making it rise up.  God is active in all things all of the time.

[The Indian view is that God causes the existence of everything, sustains everything in existence, and, too, is the cause of everything's destruction.  Thus, all is included, even what is often perceived as "negative," and there is no room for a devil outside of God.]

Sri Eknath Easwaran:

One day the saint, Narada, asked Krishna to tell him the deepest spiritual truth in life.  The Lord smiled mischievously and vanished, leaving Narada bewildered on a street corner.  He got hungry waiting for the mystery to be solved, so he took out his bowl and knocked on a nearby door to ask for a little food.  The woman who answered the door had Krishna's eyes.  She put food in the bowl.  Handing it back to Narada, she gave him a wink.

Narada then went to the next house where a family was sitting down to their meal.  A little boy with those same eyes ran over to greet him.  It was like that with every person in every house.  Then he got it.  For all of the differences in age and appearance, there was no one in the village but the Lord.

Sri Aurobindo:

Those who lay a predominant emphasis upon knowledge arrive at the same point by a comprehension filled with Bhakti [devotion].  This is not a pursuit of the Absolute as an abstract unity.  It is rather the heart-felt seeking of the Infinite in all that is finite, a vision that embraces the One in all of his innumerable forms here, there, and everywhere.  This knowledge brings an adoration, a vast self-offering, because it is the embrace of the Supreme, Eternal, and Universal Soul who lavishes on us when we approach him all the treasures of his endless delight of existence.

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