A perfect devotee is one who has lifted himself from the world of his mind-intellect and has awakened to his inner Spiritual Nature. As such, the ordinary experiences of joy and sorrow, of pain and pleasure, which generally give the restlessness of life do not affect him.
HE WHO NEITHER REJOICES — ‘Rejoicing’ is the feeling of satisfaction and fulfilment that comes to us on attaining a desired object, which is extremely desirable, and extremely difficult to realise.
NOR HATES — The sense of revulsion that comes to us towards undesirable things and circumstances, when they crowd around us, is generally the sense of HATRED. In short, these two terms indicate that there are no objects which he would ardently like to acquire, nor is there any occasion to fret about on coming in contact with things or situations that are undesirable from his standpoint.
NEITHER GRIEVES, NOR DESIRES — Grief is generally experienced while parting with a beloved object, and desires are entertained when one yearns to have and to possess something unattained at present. A Man-of-Perfection is one whose beloved object, the Self, can never be apart from him. And he has no sense of attachment with any other object. Having attained the Self, the inhabitant of his heart, he has such a complete sense of fulfilment that he has no more any desire for attaining anything that he has not attained. The Self being the All, he has attained everything.
RENOUNCING GOOD AND EVIL — The happenings in the world around us can fall under these two categories, according to whether they arouse in us a feeling of joy or sorrow. To any person who is living away from the realm of the dualistic experiences, and who has learnt the art of drawing inspiration from something beyond, none of the happenings, here at the level of the mind and the intellect, can be of any serious consequences.
The above terms used in the stanza, for painting a perfect-man, have a secret import. If we consider only the literal meaning, we will think that such a perfect-man is a dead corpse; “NEITHER REJOICES, NOR HATES; NOR DESIRES; RENOUNCING GOOD AND EVIL” — he lies dead! This is a very striking example of how the literal meanings are not at all what is to be understood in scriptural declarations.
Similarly, when a true devotee, being awakened to the God-Consciousness, evaluates life from his new height of experience, he cannot rejoice or hate, grieve for or desire anything in this world and he comes to renounce totally the very concepts of good and evil. The Divine Charioteer (Krishna) declares: “HE WHO IS SUCH A DEVOTEE IS DEAR TO ME.”
The stanza represents the FOURTH SECTION in which again the Lord has enumerated six more qualities that make up a perfect devotee. So far we have been told of twenty-six subtle traits which are the ‘intrinsic qualities of a Perfect Yogi.’
IN A LAST WAVE OF ENTHUSIASM KRISHNA ENUMERATES:
