Here Krishna, the Prophet of the Hindus, vividly chalks out the technique and the path by which “WHAT HAS BEEN CALLED THE UNMANIFEST, THE IMPERISHABLE — THAT SUPREME PURUSHA IS ATTAINABLE.” Single-pointed devotion is the way and the means. Devotion — total selfless identification — with the Supreme Purusha can be achieved only when the devotee has learnt to dissociate himself from all his preoccupations with his world of body, mind, and intellect. This detachment from the false is gained in a growing attachment with the Real, the Permanent. An act of inspired seeking, of identifying oneself totally with the experience of ‘SELF I AM’ is the “WHOLE-SOULED DEVOTION TO HIM ALONE,’ that is mentioned in this verse. The Self, thus identified by the seeker in his meditation as himself, should not be conceived of as merely the Divine Spark that presides over his own individual matter-envelopments. Though the seeking is subjective, in identifying with the Self, in the final experience, It is to be realised as the very Substratum of the entire universe. Implying this oneness of the Self with the Truth behind the entire world of phenomena, Bhagawan says, as an indication of the nature of the Purusha, “IN WHOM ALL BEINGS ABIDE AND BY WHOM ALL THIS IS PERVADED.”
All mud-pots exist in the mud, and the mud pervades all mud-pots irrespective of their shape, size, or colour. Whether it be a breaker, or a wave, or a wavelet, all are nothing but the ocean, and the ocean pervades all of them. Within and without, the substance of all pots is the substance with which they are made; the Essential Nature of all the waves, big, small, or tiny is nothing other than the ocean from which they are born.
Pure awareness is the Eternal Truth in which the unmanifest comes to be projected forth as the manifest. But for the cotton, the weaver’s unmanifested conception of beauty and proportion cannot be projected and spread out through his creative art of weaving a design on the cloth he is making. At all points in that design of cloth, the one factor without which the design cannot stand is the substance of the threads in the cloth — the cotton.
Pure Awareness, poured into the moulds of vasanas, when frozen with “ignorance,” becomes the multiple world of names and forms — recognised, craved for, and fought over to acquire and to possess — everywhere by everyone. Therefore, one who has identified oneself with the Self, in that vivid experience, comes to understand the very Essence out of which the confusing multiplicity has risen up into manifestation, to confound the stupid ego and to torment it with the delusory dream of its samsara!
After enumerating the two distinct ways of procedure to go back from the manifest to the unmanifest, in the following, Krishna devotes an entire section to explain the different routes taken by seekers to reach the two different destinations. Some reach a destination from where there is a return and others attain a level of experience from which there is no return.
WHAT ARE THE TWO PATHS?
