All religions in the world are great, but indeed, none of them is so perfect as the religion of Vedanta, if by religion we mean the “Science of Self-perfection”. In this stanza, the author of the Geeta says, in unequivocal terms, that the perfect man of Self-knowledge or God-realisation is not merely one who has realised his own divinity, but is also one who has equally understood and has come to live in an intimate knowledge and experience of the divinity inherent in all creatures, without any distinction whatsoever. The Awareness in us is the Awareness everywhere in all names and forms and this Divine Awareness is the very essence in the entire world of perceptions and experience. To contact the Infinite in us, is to contact the Eternal everywhere.
To a true man of realisation, in Hinduism, there is no more a world to be addressed, even be it in divine compassion, by the disgusting phrase: “O! Ye Children of Sin!” Rama Tirtha, a Hindu Saint of Perfection, could not but address the entire living kingdom as “O! Children of Light!” This idea of the consummate revelation of “God-I am” gained by the meditator is the Peak of Perfection endorsed and aimed at by the Hindu Seers. This idea has been most effectively brought out in this stanza.
That this pluralistic phenomenon is a manifestation of and a projection upon the Immortal Truth is very well brought out in almost all the Geeta chapters. The essence in all names and forms, thus, is the same transcendental Self. Just as the mud in all mud-pots, the gold in all gold ornaments, the ocean in all waves, the electricity in all bulbs, the Self is the Essence in and the Substratum for the entire world of objects.
From the physical body we perceive the physical world, and from our emotional level we perceive the emotions in others. So too, from our intellectual level alone, can we intelligently contact the ideas in other intellects. As asserted in the previous chapter, when an individual transcends his intellect, he rediscovers his own Divine Nature, and from that Spiritual Centre, when he looks out, he finds the Self pervading everywhere. The meditator, on transcending his intellect, becomes the Self; and to the Self there is nothing but the Self everywhere. To the mud, there are no pots; to the gold, there are no ornaments separate from itself.
With this understanding in our mind, the stanza becomes quite clear when it says: “HE BEHOLDS THE SELF IN ALL BEINGS AND EQUALLY BEHOLDS ALL BEINGS IN THE SELF.” Such a Perfect One, who has realised the Unity in the world of diversity, alone can afford to entertain the equality of vision in all circumstances and conditions — “on a noble Brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a Pariah” (V-18).
NOW WILL BE DESCRIBED THE EFFECT OF THIS PERCEPTION OF UNITY OF THE SELF:
