That such pure Men-of-Wisdom are necessarily few in the history of the world, is the declaration here, which, in decadent Hinduism, we have learnt to consider as an extremely pessimistic assertion (VI-45). A little thought should clearly make the fallacy of this wild conclusion quite evident to us. The entire human kingdom is, indeed, a very negligible and small proportion of the total sentient creatures in the world. In the community of man, not all have a fully developed instrument of rational thinking and divine emotion.

Even among those who have fully developed mental and intellectual capacities, it is a rare few that seriously take up the study of the scriptures. All those who STUDY scriptures do not LIVE the scriptures, but they come to feel fulfilled in a mere understanding of its contents. Therefore, it becomes evident that only a rare few can ever reach the goal of evolution and come to discover their true Divine Nature of Perfection.

Like Darwin in our own days, the ancient Rishis also had observed in their times, that this development can take place only when, in the flood of time, the different circumstances have rubbed down and polished the imperfect into the shape and beauty of the perfect. It takes trillions of years for an organism to evolve from one given form of existence into a higher form of life. Naturally, it becomes quite clear that for rational being of subtlest potentialities, it should take an indefinitely large number of lives in different manifestations to scrape off all his ignorance, and thereby, ultimately reach the Perfect Realm of all Knowledge.

This DOES NOT MEAN that none among us, now striving so hard, has any chance of reaching the goal of life in this very birth. It is not in any pessimistic hopelessness and total despair, that this statement is made by the Lord in the Geeta. On the other hand, it is solely for bringing into the recognition of the student the urgency of his faithful pursuit of the higher life. The very fact that a seeker has come to feel a disappointment with his present state of existence, and the fact that he has discovered enough intellectual capacity to appreciate and comprehend the subtle thoughts of the Upanishadic lore, clearly shows that he has reached the very archway to the temple of the Self. A little more sincere and steady self-application can take him to the highest state of his evolution.

NOW IT WILL BE SHOWN WHY THE PEOPLE ARE NOT GENERALLY AWARE THAT THE SELF, OR VASUDEVA, ALONE IS THE ALL:

Ante, at the end, after the completion; bahunam, of many; janmanam, births, which becme the repository for accumulating [Ast. omits this word.-Tr.] the tendencies leading to Knowledge; jnanavan, the man of Knowledge, who has got hiis Knowledge matured; directly prapadyate, attains; mam, Me, Vasudeva, who am the inmost Self; (realizing)-in what way?-iti, that; Vasudeva is sarvam, all. Sah, such a one, who realizes Me [Here Ast. adds the word Narayana.-Tr.] thus as the Self of all; is mahatma, a high-souled one. There is none else who can equal or excel him. Therefore he is su-durlabhah, very rare among thousands of men, as it has been said (in verse 3). The reason why one does not realize that all this is verily Vasudeva, the Self, is being stated: