BHAGAVAD-GITA 9:15

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BHAGAVAD-GITA 9:15

 

jnana-yajnena capy an ye

yajanto mam upasate

ekatvena prthaktvena

bahudha visvato-mukham

 

WORD FOR WORD

 

jnana-yajnena--by cultivation of knowledge; ca--also; api--certainly;

anye--others; yajantah--sacrificing; mam--Me; upasate--worship;

ekatvena--in oneness; prthaktvena--in duality; bahudha--in diversity;

visvatah-mukham--and in the universal form.

 

TRANSLATION

 

Others, who engage in sacrifice by the cultivation of knowledge,

worship the Supreme Lord as the one without a second, as diverse in

many, and in the universal form.

 

PURPORT

 

This verse is the summary of the previous verses. The Lord tells

Arjuna that those who are purely in Krsna consciousness and do not

know anything other than Krsna are called mahatma; yet there are other

persons who are not exactly in the position of mahatma but who worship

Krsna also, in different ways. Some of them have already been

described as the distressed, the financially destitute, the

inquisitive, and those who are engaged in the cultivation of

knowledge. But there are others who are still lower, and these are

divided into three: (1) he who worships himself as one with the

Supreme Lord, (2) he who concocts some form of the Supreme Lord and

worships that, and (3) he who accepts the universal form, the

visvarupa of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and worships that.

Out of the above three, the lowest, those who worship themselves as

the Supreme Lord, thinking themselves to be monists, are most

predominant. Such people think themselves to be the Supreme Lord, and

in this mentality they worship themselves. This is also a type of God

worship, for they can understand that they are not the material body

but are actually spiritual soul; at least, such a sense is prominent.

Generally the impersonalists worship the Supreme Lord in this way. The

second class includes the worshipers of the demigods, those who by

imagination consider any form to be the form of the Supreme Lord. And

the third class includes those who cannot conceive of anything beyond

the manifestation of this material universe. They consider the

universe to be the supreme organism or entity and worship that. The

universe is also a form of the Lord.

 

Copyright 1983 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International. Used with

permission.