Gita Satsangh - Some observations from Chapter 7: Verses 21 to 24

[Guest guest]

Namaste:

 

First, it is nice to see the revival of Gita Satsangh and we can

certainly get back to normal with this correct medicine at the right

time!

 

These verses describe the various types of devotees with diverse

interests and motives. The deities they worship are also numerous and

varying according to the desire and temperament of those devotees.

The Lord uses the word Sraddhaya to emphasize that devotion requires

unmitigated faith from the devotees with strong belief in the

existence of divine intelligence, its glory and virtues. Endowed with

such faith the worshiper installs with due ceremony an image made of

metal or wood, clay or stone according to the pattern laid down in the

scriptures, or a painting, or as an alternative forms a mental

picture, and offers worship with prescribed articles according to

rules, repeating the Mantra sacred to that particular deity as many

times as is laid down in the scriptures. The devotees should also

perform sacrifice offering oblations to the sacred fire in the name of

the deity, meditate and adore the Sun, Moon, Fire and other gods whose

physical forms are directly perceptible to the eyes, and offer them

obeisance etc.

 

In verse 22, the Lord shows that the devotee worships the deity of

his/her choice equipped with the faith stabilized by Him according to

the rules laid down in the scriptures, and as a reward for such

worship obtains from the deity only such of his coveted enjoyments as

have been preordained by the Lord. The celestials have not been

authorized to give either more or less than what is ordained by the

Lord. The Lord explains that devotee should learn to accept the

outcome without hesitation because they are preordained.

 

In Verse 23, the Lord refers the worshipers of gods by choosing

different forms of their choice as "men of small understanding." The

Lord wants to point out that worships under prompting of desires and

for obtaining objects of enjoyment are inferior. But even those

worshipers of gods referred to in verse 23 are far superior to the

vile men who while abstaining from the worship of God are engaged in

sinful acts. The boon of devotion once obtained, through whatever

cause it may be, does not leave the devotee, even after many births,

till it has brought him/her face to face with God. And once the

devotee has realized God, the question of remission of devotion does

not arise at all. In that state the devotee, the spirit of devotion

and the deity become indistinguishably one.

 

The word Abuddhayah in verse 24 refers to the ignorant people who have

no faith in the virtues, glory, reality and sports etc, of the Lord,

and whose intellect is not clouded with infatuation and bewildered by

thoughts of the world but is also wholly enmeshed in the web of

sophistry. It is something beyond their comprehension and can never

manifest the entire creation is but an amplification of the twofold

Nature of God, and that "unmanifest," i.e., formless and twofold

nature, God alone is supreme, and there is none who surpasses Him. His

inconceivable and indescribable reality, character, glory and

incomparable virtues cannot be rightly grasped through mind or

described through speech. It is just in order to extend His helping

hand to the creatures beings, of this world and take them under

protection out of His infinite compassion and love for the suppliant

that the Lord manifests Himself in various forms with all His power,

maintaining His character as the unborn, imperishable, supreme Lord,

and plunges the entire creation in an unbounded and unruffled ocean of

supreme joy through His transcendent sports. This is what has been

referred to here as the eternal, unsurpassed and supreme nature of

God.