The Song of God Almighty

By

SRI SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

A DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY PUBLICATION

First Edition: 1995
Second Edition: 1997
(3,000 copies)
World Wide Web (WWW) Edition : 1998

WWW site: https://www.dlshq.org/

This WWW reprint is for free distribution

(c) The Divine Life Trust Society

Published By
THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY
P.O. Shivanandanagar–249 192
Distt. Tehri-Garhwal, Uttar Pradesh,
Himalayas, India.

CONTENTS

• Preface
• The Supreme Brahman
• The Universal Religion
• The Lesser Religions Of The Lower Gods
• Cosmology–The Creation Of The Universe
• The Nature Of The Self
• Eschatology
• The Imperative Of Duty
• The Practice Of Yoga

PREFACE

The Bhagavadgita is in seven hundred Sanskrit verses and consists of eighteen chapters.The colophon of each chapter towards its end gives a brief idea of the content of thechapter. This classification would make one feel that the Bhagavadgita deals with eighteensubjects. But actually each chapter has something to say about certain other things alsoapart from the main intention of the chapter as indicated in the colophon. Further, on areading of the entire Gita, even several times, it is likely that one may miss the trueimport of the teaching inasmuch as it is not easy to stratify in a serial or consecutiveorder the developmental process of thought in the Gita. All this is because the Gita is aScripture and not a textbook for classrooms.

Keeping in mind a necessity to arrange the teaching subjectwise, an attempt is madehere to
portray the Gita’s essential Teaching in a versified form so that the reading willnot only be felt pleasant and entertaining but also act as a vade mecum on theexact core of the gospel.

It is hoped that this interesting presentation will be a good guide to all students andseekers for daily recitation and meditation.

THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY
Shivanandanagar,
7th March, 1997

THE SONG OF GOD ALMIGHTY

I. THE SUPREME BRAHMAN

XIII. 12-17    
The Supreme Object to be known,
Knowing which there is naught to know,
Is That which is the Being-All,
As also what is Non-Being.

The Absolute is Brahman Great,
With no beginning or an end,
Know what it is in fullness now,
The Glory surpassing reason.

With hands and feet spread everywhere,
With eyes and heads and mouths and ears,
As infinite encompassing,
All worlds at once it envelops.

Looking like all the senses’ science
It stands above all sensations;
It’s Unattached, though holding all,
And Undefined, yet beauty grand.

It’s out and in amidst all things,
Unchanging, still in greatest speed,
Subtlest is it as Subjectness
Of all that seems as objective.

Farthest is it, and nearest still,
Divided looks though impartite,
As men, women and all species,
As all the things it does behave.

It absorbs all, Samvarga known,
Yet repels what is ‘external’;
The Greatest Light of lights is it,
Beyond the sleep of ignorance.

All knowledge of which world does boast
Is ray of darkness in its eves,
For sense and mason of this world
Are distortions as upside-down.

XIII. 30
When one beholds all variety
As rooted in the Absolute,
Then and there does one realise
The widespread bliss eternity’s.

XV. 6
No sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor fire
Do shine before that Glorious Light,
On reaching which the blessed souls
Return never to mortal life.

II. 29
Wonder, indeed, is Might of mights,
All-might it is, Almighty called;
One sees as wonder, wonder hears,
As wonder speaks who knows it well.

As wonder does one hear its name,
Even hearing, one knows it not,
For none can know it as ‘another’,
It knows Itself as “I-Am-I.”

VII. 3
Some lonely one among thousands
Does seek it in one’s deepest heart,
And among those who so aspire,
May one somewhere that Goal attain.

VII. 19
Passing through births in thousands, say,
Some blessed one loves it as Self,
To know that God is All-in-All,
Lo, such a soul is rare in world

X. 2
Not all the gods can know That God,
For gods were born through creation;
Nor sages, saints, nor scholars wise,
Can hope to know it as the All.

Beyond all worlds, above all things,
That Grandeur reigns as marvel’s height;
So none but That-Which-Is can know
The That-Which-Is, which is the All.

XVIII. 61, 62
That Lord of lords abides hidden
In hearts of all, revolving all;
As if on machine mounted they
Rotate in cycle helplessly.

Resort to That, the Being all,
With all thy feeling and thy heart,
Abundant Grace from It receive
And deathless peace thou shalt attain.

X. 41,42
Where puissance rises all at once
Beyond the ken of human mind,
In Nature’s deeds or living forms,
That should be known as God in work.

A minute fraction, as it were,
Of that stupendous sea of force,
Does sustain all this creation,
Transcendent is its Majesty.

IX. 16, 19
The sacrifice and offering,
The Mantras of all variety,
The holy pouring on fire,
And fire itself are God’s workings.

God is the Father all-caring,
He is Mother, Grandfather, Friend, Supporter,
Sacred OM, the One
That need be known in every way.

He is the Rik, Yajus, Saman,–
The holy lore of wisdom deep,–
All knowledge, known and knower, too,
In one eternal timeless grasp.

The God supreme is He of all,
Protector, Lord, the Witness sole,
Abode, Refuge, Comrade and Guide,
Origin, middle, end of things.

The Source, Treasure and Abundance,
The Seed ev’rlasting, Wealth of worlds,
Eternal Tapas, Selfless Self,
Self-restraint and Self-fulfilment.

He heats as sun and rains as cloud,
He withholds Nature’s actions, too;
And releases the same at will;
He’s Death and Immortality.

What is and is not all is He,
Who can with mind and reason gauge
His work that is so marvellous
Which defies all sagacity.

IX. 4-6
He’s immanent and transcendent,
Within, without and in-between,
As Whole absorbing all the pans,
The parts residing not in Whole.

How strange it is that Its own parts
Are not the Whole though Whole contains
In Itself all as Its own Self,
As integrated cosmic sweep.

Yet, nothing is in Self’s domain,
In All-Self, God, nothing abides,
For lone is It, with none as friend,
Though friend of all is Almighty.

Wonder, Greatness, is name of God,
‘The That’ is His definition,
‘Suchness,’ ‘Whichness,’ so they do call
The One that is which breathless breathes.

As elements five have entered all
All things as world’s constituents,
And yet they enter naught in fact,
So God abides in this creation.

VII. 7
Second to Him there none does live,
No one does breathe save through His nose,
As ornaments are gold alone,
So God is all this creation.

But God is above creation,
As snake in rope is not the rope,
The rope is transcendent to snake,
Though immanent in form of snake.

VI. 29-52
Here do we have the promise made,
By that solacing Parent Great,
The Constitution, world’s one law,
That needs never amendations.

IX. 22
“Who beholds Me as beings’ Soul,
And beholds all rooted in Me.
By eye of Yoga, third vision,
And sees Me everywhere in all.”

And sees all things as Mine own form,
Him I desert not, nor ever
Is he without Me, this is truth
That surpasses all laws and creeds.

With sole vision who sees me Whole,
As all beings and all the things,
May deport as he lists in world;
He still abides in Me, the Lord.

As one’s own self who sees all things,
And harms not any as one’s dear self,
With equal love and same concern,
In pleasure, pain, he excels high.”

“Who know Me as the All-in-All,
And think Me undividedly,
To them I grant security
And fill them with their wants and needs.”

XVIII. 68
“Abandon all the laws that bind,
And take resort to Law of Mine;
I promise thee with all My Heart,
I free thee from thy sins galore.”

XI.
“Behold this Form in all its ways,
Which interlinks all creation,
Holds up in one all variety,
The Soul and Self of everything.

Here is the Truth of every truth,
The Life of every being’s life,
Existence of existences,
The Absolute Inclusiveness.

Look, Time and Space are rolled up here,
Which enter Eternity’s Heart,
And all the things in all conditions
Do behold with deathless eyes.

Herein are all the gods and men,
All realms of being, all the worlds;
The past, present and future’s role
In single flash are here revealed.

Behold the sun, the moon and stars,
And every wonder one conceives;
All beauty, love, terror and war
Are laid here bare as single play.

Here are perceptions everywhere,
One Whole performing all the deeds,
Knower, Knowledge and Known are one
In this abundance, wealth of souls.

In every speck of space are eyes,
All souls do dance in All-Soul’s Self,
And everything is everywhere
In all the states of life galore.

What is and is not, good and bad,
The known and unknown mysteries,
Whatever one would think and see,
Are all at once in vision’s grasp.

Distance between is set at naught,
Nothing is far, all’s here and now,
One Being knows Itself as All,
None else can know or see this ever.

Study and chant and sacrifice,
Philanthropy or charity,
Austerity or service done
Can have no hope to reach this God.

Hard, hard is it by means in Time
To know the Timeless Being’s truth;
By Timeless melting of the soul
Can soul behold this Soul of all.

Objective forms, whatever they,
Do not the Subject’s fringe contact;
Contactless Contact is the way,
Asparsa Yoga it is called.

The Pure Subject is Infinite,
How can the object touch its core,
Since objectness is shadow cast
By Total Self in Time and Space.

The Archetype of archetypes
By which are sustained selfs and worlds;
In this miracle, Dread of dreads;
The Death of death is this All-Life.”

IV. 7,8
When law integral, wholesome rule,
Declines and centrifugal urge
Gains upper hand, then winds of God
Begin to blow as healing force;

When anti-God powers on earth
Universality oppose,
Then God uplifts His mighty rod
And descends as Incarnation.

To quell all dark and evil trends,
And plant the soul in history,
The Soul Supreme comes down to men
To fix forces of righteousness.

To save the good and uproot bad,
To establish here virtue’s norms,
To Godly Kingdom bring to world,
The Absolute reveals itself.

At every juncture of conflict
Between the do’s and don’ts of life,
Within in man or out in world,
The wholesome Law does incarnate.

Thus, and more, are the great grand deeds,
Operations and wondrous ways
Of that Being, the Absolute,
We call it God of universe.

II. THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION

XVIII. 61-62
The Lord indwelling hearts of all,
Controls creation as His law,
And subjects all to Heaven’s rule
As master techniques machines wield.

To Him resort with all thy heart,
With all thy soul and all thy mind,
With Grace descending from that One,
Thou, sure, shalt reach beatitude.

X. 8-11
Religious souls do worship Him
As Creator and Preserver,
As Source of all this universe,
From hatred free to anyone.

They think Him lone, their vitals He,
They discourse on His glorious deeds,
And rejoice in an ecstasy
By dwelling on His Great Grandeur.

Compassionate, the kindest Lord,
Bestows on them the radiant light
That dispels all their ignorance
In lamp of wisdom rare to find.

This wisdom is the path-leader
To glorious aim of every life.
Attaining which, the noblest gift,
One returns not to sorrow’s realm.

IX. 13-15
Souls uplifted and truly great,
Abiding in conduct divine,
Resort and pray to God alone
Knowing the One is seen as all.

Singing His Name and fixed in Him,
Prostrating themselves joyfully,
In dance and music do revel
To hold the banner God’s aloft.

Through wisdom do they sacrifice
To God eternal in their selves,
As one or twain or threefold viewed
They glory in Him multiformed.

IX. 22
As indivisible who think
And undivided who worship
The One alone as Being-All,
They gain their needs and protection.

IX. 26, 27
God requires no ritual’s pomp,
No temple, shrine, or bells and gongs,
He receives even leaf and flower
Or water-drops as best of gifts.

A fruit from plant or sylvan leaf
Or folded palms as suppliant
Do please the greatest God of gods,
Who wants nothing but one’s own soul.

Whatever is done, or spoken, thought,
Let that be offered lovingly
As offering to all creation
Encompassed by the Soul Supreme.

IX. 29, 34
He has no near or dear or friend,
No one is foe or alien born;
Who love Him as their very self,
To them He runs, for He is they.

They are He Himself, blessed they,
For God needs them, what wonder this;
He seeks them, caresses them well,
And feeds them, guards, regards and loves.

The worst of beings He does raise
To heights of greatness and power
When they repentant seek His Grace
And sink themselves in Him alone.

Even the worst can saint become
When heart does dwell in Majesty
Of God who turns to gold the dust
And dirt of earth by Him rescued.

A past there is to every saint,
A future is to sinners too;
Hate not evil, cling not to good,
Know what things are in eyes of God.

Devotee God’s perishes not,
God deserts not His devotee,
Even unasked in kind mercy
He procures all His lover needs.

There is no good or bad for God;
That is the good which gravitates
To universal system’s norms
In daily life’s patterns and ways.

Lo, transient is the world of pain;
Attach thyself to nothing here;
For fleeting shadows are these forms
Which look like beauties and treasures.

With mind and soul in rooted pose,
In concentrated communion,
Who rests ever on lap of God,
Such soul attains to God alone.

IV. 36
Knowledge destroys the worst of sins,
For sin is externality
Asserting ‘gainst universal
And concentrating on object.

Sin is the sensuous impulsion
Towards what is outside oneself,
Which denies God’s omnipresence
And sets up ego’s rule on earth.

XIII. 27, 28
He sees who sees the One Essence,
The Lord, pervading all beings,
Immortal ‘midst what’s mortal life;
The Light ablaze in world that sleeps.

To know not oneself is suicide,
To kill oneself is love for things
That stand outside as non-self’s forms;
To live, indeed, is life in God.

XII. 13-19
Who hates no creature, friend of all,
Compassionate to men and things,
Egoless, mine-less, mind composed,
Forbearing, content, steadfast, poised;

Self-controlled, firm in conviction,
With mind and reason fixed on God,
From whom the world shrinks not in hate
Who shrinks not from the world around;

Free ever from both joy and grief,
Depending not on things mundane,
Ev’r pure and prompt and unconcerned,
Untroubled in his being’s core;

By casting off initiative,
Whom joys and sorrows afflict not,
Desiring nothing, self-reposed,
Risen above concepts opposed;

Who views the One in friend and foe,
Dishonour, honour, heat and cold,
In pleasure, pain, censure and praise,
Silent and content with what comes;

Homeless, and rooted in one’s aim,
That blessed one hails excellent,
On earth as also in heaven,
Is loved by God as best of men.

XIII. 7-11
Humble and unpretentious,
With no intent to hurt or harm,
Forbearing, upright, self-restrained,
With distaste for the things of sense;

Brooding on facts of earthly life,
Evils of birth, death and old age,
Of sickness, pain and threat of death
Which’s at the elbow as they say,

To son, wife, daughter unattached,
Detached from house and land and wealth,
With reason apprehending life
As filled with transient’s promise vain;

Undivided in love of God,
To sequestration resorting,
Away from crowd and mob and noise,
Absorbed in pursuit glorious aim’s;

He hails as greatest knower known,
Of him there is no peer in world,
All faiths, all cults and religions
Do merge in this the boundless sea.

XIV. 22-26
This is vision universal,
Wherein established no one clings
To statis, dynamis or poise,
Knowing things, yet indifferent.

For world is movement, wave of flux,
Unsubstantial as plantain’s stem,
Forces of matter dash and soar
On themselves, such is mundane science.

Silver or gold or clod of clay,
In essence they are single force
Of matter’s stuff in motion’s dance;
All variety is sleep’s vision.

The properties to properties
Of matter’s stuff do gravitate,
The thing there’s not which one does see
With eyes of flesh, deluded means.

Deluded they, they see things not
As truly fixed in ocean’s heart,
The ocean of the omnifaced,
Transcendent Truth whose forms are things.

Knowing thus well, the wisdom’s peak,
Shakes not from true devotion’s height,
Rests ever in that all-knowing
Plenum of great felicity.

III. THE LESSER RELIGIONS OF THE LOWER GODS

VII. 20-23
Many a god do people adore
With vision closed in blinkered eyes,
Desiring the joys mundane;
Here laws of God are narrow streams.

As conduit pipe’s waters do flow
In restricted and channelled course,
The Absolute provides the means
To grant wishes through lesser gods.

Whatever one worships and craves
That certainly does one attain
In this the world of sweat and deed
Or other world beyond this life.

Since wholly is God everywhere,
In lesser wholes also He acts,
But worships outward sans the self
Do not procure the desired end.

The out-turned gaze to even gods
Cannot the gods in truth attain;
There is a semblance of the joy
Of what one seeks, but has an end.

Since outward form is not the self
The gods above cannot bestow
What self does seek in its own heart,
For not-self is not experience.

IX. 23-25
When wrongly placed things one desires,
The right thing is then wrongly seen
Put out of contact, wrenched from source,
As corpse bereft of soul-essence.

To senses God looks like the world,
His fingers seem as objects, things,
As placed in space and time outside,
So man does run away from self.

Knowing not God who’s everywhere,
One rushes fast to outer gods,
Whose grasp does flee as horizon;
Thus sensate self deludes itself.

When desires pull it’s God that pulls,
Which’s wrongly seen as senses’ pull,
Eternity parades as time,
The Infinite as sky’s expanse.

By such worship do people reach
The angels, manes, demons or ghosts,
Or even trees and stones by thought
That’s lodged in them as worship’s aim.

XVII. 4-6
The Sattva-filled attain to gods,
The Rajas-filled to spirits go,
The Tamas-filled goblins do reach,
Such is the law of Karma’s norms.

Contrawise to scripture’s lore
Who Tapas do with ego’s pride
For selfish gain or harm’s intent,
With torture’s pain, demoniacal.

They ruin themselves and others,
Ending in rebirth’s pangs and groans;
Where ignorance is darkness’ bliss,
Wisdom is folly and a waste.

It does not mean to love one god
Implies a hate to other’s god,
For such a god is no one’s god,
Who conflict breeds or war begets.

IV. COSMOLOGY–THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

XIV. 3, 4
The objective in creation
Is matrix of the world of things,
The Subject-All alienates
Itself as all this universe.

How does the One become the two,
The subjective and objective?
When All-in-All has no objects,
How come this ‘other’ than the All?

This itself is a proof that worlds
Which are created, as if were,
Are sheer ‘externality’,
With no substance in them at all.

This also shows that God is All
In spite of vast creation’s sight;
Creation has no legs to stand
Except as God’s Self-beholding.

What’s ‘external’ to Consciousness
Is Prakriti, that’s matter’s core;
On this Consciousness broods and sees
Itself reflected mirror-wise.

In early dawn of creation
The One enjoys itself as all;
But later comes the division
Of One alone as threefold strand.

Thus come the seer of the seen
And in between their link unseen,
Adhyatma, Adhibhuta called
And Adhidaiva transcendent.

Hardly one knows this mystery,
How perception deceives us all
And forces all to see ‘there out’
What is within the All-in-All.

The world persists as binding chain
When perceiver perceived becomes,
And charges on the perceiver
In vicious circle’s grasping clutch.

The seed of every being here
Is sown by That immortal seed,
The seed that has no source beyond,
The causeless cause, Brahman supreme.

VII. 4-6
Earth, water, tire, air and ether,
Mind, intellect and ego-sense,
Are eightfold forces God creates
As lower realms His Majesty’s.

Lower are these since lone they work
As strata of creation’s depths;
But higher still are vital springs
Of God’s existence in them all.

Heaven and earth and all beings
Are forms of these substantials;
Lo, God is all these, He appears
As all these quintessentials.

The coming, going of these realms
Is play of God’s abundant joy,
Which spills itself on mortal tastes
As summons from their real source.

XIII. 5, 6
Elements, Ego, Intellect,
The Causal Sea and Senses Ten,
The Mind and fivefold objects sensed,
Desire, hatred, joy and pain.

The body-complex, matter’s form,
The Will that binds the structure’s shape,
Do all these in their compactness
Present the field of experience.

As dream-world’s pageant real looks
By mind’s revolt in fantasy,
So all this world and creation
Is held cohesive by the Will.

The Will of God ties fast in grips
The universe as one whole mass,
While will of individual
Does hold together body’s frame.

VII. 27
When creation emerges forth
Beings get drowned in love and hate;
Deluded, thus, in world they live
From birth to death in all cycles.

By delusion engendered strong
Through longing, dislike and ego,
All beings sunk in dual’s net
Get drowned in swoon when being born.

The blow of death and stroke of birth
Confuses mind-and-reason’s role.
And thrown to region love-hate-filled.
Maddened then roam beings on earth.

Freedom from this predicament
Is solely in the way one lives;
In rapt attention bestowed well
On birthless, deathless, Being Whole.

VIII. 17-22
A thousand cycles rolling on
Of four ages in Time’s regime
Do constitute one Brahma’s day
And so long also is His night.

A hundred years of such long days
Do make the span of Brahma’s life;
Such, again, is the cosmic night,
Of such a length, when worlds dissolve.

When Brahma wakes, beings are born,
And universes roll and act;
When night of Brahma supervenes,
Creation melts in darkness deep.

During His day creatures are born
In systematic stepping down
From highest integrated Self
To lowest forms in scattered fields.

On fall of night of Brahma’s day
Beings return as cattle home
To ocean vast of causal deep,
Which’s Brahma’s sleep, the cosmic dark.

Helplessly beings come and leave
By force of finitude’s clingings;
But above all creation’s play
Is what passeth understanding.

Transcending wheel of creation,
Above all space and time and cause,
Majestic reigns God Almighty,
The Absolute, Eternal Light.

Reaching this glorious Transcendence
No one returns to sorrow’s vale
Which all this world of struggle is,
Woven with dreams of dislike’s love.

This Supreme Person, Power and Bliss,
Is reached with love that wants none else,
The ardour surging from the soul,
Tearing the veils of involvement.

Through whole-souled love and devotion
Can one attain this blessedness,
By utter sinking of the self
In All-Self, greatest Almighty.

X. 7
Whoever knows this mystery
Of creation and absorption
As God’s transcendent sports revealed
Is established in God-union.

This glory God’s and majesty
Who knows in deepest communion,
As God is Himself in Himself.
That blessed one is one with God.

We creates when and how it is,
Whence is this wondrous creation,
Why is this play of mystery,
Who knows is indeed one with God;

For God alone can know Himself,
How He has wrought the source of Time,
Whether at all He brought forth things,
Or whether He is still alone.

XIII. 19-33
All things as known are matter’s stuff,
Prakriti called, involved in which
Purusha dreams the varieties
Ingrained in it as solar hues.

Subject and Object, parallels,
Do exist as eternal friends;
When one is there the other is
As inseparate twain in one.

The changes in the world of forms
Are engendered by these in work
As balance tilts by weight it holds
On one side or the other side.

Prakriti is the object-world,
Purusha is the consciousness
Which clutches objects as delights,
When objects doubly grab its heart.

Graha and Atigraha called
Are subject’s object’s relations,
Catching and re-catching by force
The one for other’s grief.

Space, Time and Cause are objective,
Their Consciousness is subjective;
Thus, experience is fabric, knit
With subject-object sharing’s stuff.

The joys of life are illusions,
So also are the pains of life,
As both are just reactions caused
By changing phases things deport.

XIV. 5-8, 11, 15
Sattva, Rajas and Tamas known
Are properties of Prakriti,
Which bind everyone diversely,
Making one pleased, displeased or dull.

Happy and joyful is the soul
That shines through Sattva brilliantly,
Is knowledge-filled with glowing eyes,
Resplendent is that blessed life.

Desire, passion rule Rajas,
Attachment, greed are forms it takes;
To work devoted, distracted,
Is such a soul, restless, busy.

Darkness and sloth and ignorance,
Delusion, infatuation,
Heedlessness, sleep and floundering
Are shapes assumed by deep Tamas.

Shining in limbs is Sattva-filled;
Endless engagement Rajas springs;
Knowing the wrong as righteous mode
Is rampant property–Tamas.

Leaving this world from Sattva’s realm
One reaches light-filled heaven’s bliss;
Dying in Rajas birth in works,
In Tamas birth of dull-wits, sure.

XV. 1-5
This creation and all its ways
Like Tree inverted range in Time;
Its Root above is Eternal,
The Branches spread below as deeds.

None knows its source, middle or end,
Ravaging work and tumult’s roar
Are how it grows in Time and Space
As wild dances of properties.

This Tree of bondage, cosmic rout:
Should broken fall, felled and severed
Through detachment from mundane forms,
And ardent search of Great Beyond.

“I seek that Being, Source of all,
I need nothing but this One God,
In whom is all this universe,
Wherein I find whatever is.”

Thus is the prayer of the self,
From self redeemed through Yoga’s way,
Sunk in the want of All-in-All,
Beseeching All’s revealing grace.

From self-respect and attachment,
Clinging to loves and delusions,
Free always, fixed in Divine Self,
Such souls awakened reach the Goal.

XV. 16-20
Mankind and God, seer and seen,
Mind and its objectivity,
Consciousness and its contents vast,
Are called Akshara and Kshara.

But beyond this duality,
Above the realms of perception,
Transcendent Truth indwelling all
Is Supreme Person, Purusha, Great.

Knowing this one knows everything,
Doing this one has done all things,
Attaining this one does attain
That undying felicity.

V. THE NATURE OF THE SELF

XIII. 1,2
This body is the field of work,
Within it is the lord of deeds;
This master ensouling all fields
Is also Universal Soul.

II. 11-25
This soul dies not, it always is,
No one eternally is damned;
In past, present and future lives
This soul without a tinge of taint.

The soul discards redundant forms,
As one abandons worn-out clothes,
For improved conditions ahead
In search of freedom bodiless.

What is cannot become a naught,
What is not never can exist;
Knowers of reality’s core
Behold the quintessence of things.

All-pervading is deathless soul,
None can destroy or hurt the self
Which defies destruction and change;
It’s above Time and Space and Cause.

The forms perish as processes
Duration-gripped and localised;
But soul that enshrines forms and shapes
Is unrelated, processless.

No soul is born, no soul does die;
Embodiments get remodelled,
Since evolution is the name
Of advance towards True Selfhood.

Eternal, unborn is the Self
Which’s called the soul when it abides
In finite centres, bodies, forms;
In truth it is the Self of all.

Earth, water, fire and air do not
Affect the soul or self ever;
The soul involved in body’s aches
Imagines that it, too, is grieved.

Uncleaved, unwetted and unburnt,
Unwithered is the Source of all,
Glory immortal, Omniself,
Omnipresent and Omniscient.

VI. ESCHATOLOGY

VIII. 3, 4
One’s own position in the world
Decides one’s duties incumbent,
As also pros and cons of life
Leading to onward progression.

This position is omnilinked,
As Brahman first, then Cosmic Will,
The creation of realms around,
The multi-souls that behold worlds;

The Divine Presence transcending
And immanent in relations
Of subject-object experience;
Then lastly propeller of deeds.

This sixfold network is the place
And location of all beings
Who struggle ever helplessly
Oblivious of such regime.

Obliteration of the fact
Of involvement in cosmic webs
Locks up all souls in body’s tomb
Wherein they build their own heavens.

Even the stink of hell does taste
Ambrosial when this confinement
In that abyss becomes the norm;
Look, how habituation reigns.

VII. 28-30
Those who are awake to the truth
Of universal monarchy,
Where king is kingdom, kingdom king
The One-in-all in six levels.

And degrees of Divine Presence
As Internal Organism
Live always in all worlds above
And below, too, as citizens.

VIII. 5-10
When passing from tabernacles
Of earth-stuff as these body shrouds,
If one concentrates on this Whole,
Reaches the freedom eternal.

Whatever thought one entertains
When departing from body’s inn,
That acts as framework for the life
Which one enters subsequently.

The last of thought is not alone
As isolated from others;
The last is but the quintessence
Of how one lived throughout one’s life.

Hence, caution, how one behaves here
In every day’s and moment’s march;
The only duty thus devolves
As constant indwelling in God.

By practice incessant and firm,
Allowing not the mind to roam,
In divine love’s saturation,
The Supreme Person is attained.

The All-Knowing, the Ancient One,
The Ruler, subtle, Lord of all,
Unthinkable, the Sun of light,
Who make their own, they merge in All.

VIII. 12, 13, 15, 16
In death as well as life’s tenure
Who sink their mind and soul in Him,
Commune with that Eternity
Which embraces Infinity.

Withdrawing externality,
The projection of mind and sense,
Dwelling whole-souled in thought of Whole,
One reaches what is everywhere.

To chant of OM and soul absorbed
In radiance of Sun of suns,
Who departs hence with restrained self
Is united with Deathless Life.

Having attained that great Abode
One returns not to transiency,
The world of grief and pain and tears;
For Timeless Being is release.

II. 40
To put forth effort is duty
No honest search can be a loss
In this adventure of spirit
To Spirit reach, however slow.

Here every step is onward trend
Leading to final Achievement;
It’s all a gain and never waste,
Even a little good shall save.

VI. 40-45
In case one dies before the time
Of reaching goal of perfection,
The Yogi reborn blessedly
Does continue what went before.

No one who does a little good
Shall perish as if helplessly;
By prior exercise of soul
That soul is ushered ‘gain onward.

In homes of sages one is born,
Or royal comforts facilitate
That earnest seeker striving hard
To glory reach resplendently.

But such a birth is difficult,
Rare are the ones who integrate
Their entire being for That One
Beyond conception’s farthest end.

Marching through several chains of lives,
By ceaseless practice ardently,
Some lone pilgrim to Truth of truths
Attains it at the end of time.

VII. THE IMPERATIVE OF DUTY

V. 2, 4 -7, 10
Renunciation of action
And performance of all action
Are two of ways available,
But better is Yoga of work.

Since inborn nature body-bound
Propels the self to ceaseless deeds,
Embodied ones should seek relief
Through deeds alone and not by poise.

The Samkhya composure is not
The soundless calm of work’s abuse,
But transcendent inclusiveness
Of worker, work and goal of work.

Such tranquillity’s timelessness
Is hard to reach by bodied souls,
Though Samkhya’s aim and Yoga’s reach
Do point to common achievement.

By one or other one can soar
To perfection universal;
In one expertness is the same
As expertness in other, too.

But Samkhya bereft of Yoga
Is not attainable at all;
For Yoga is self-restraining
And without it no Samkhya smiles.

Restraining self, self-conquered one,
Made pure by Yoga’s unity,
Whose self has entered self of all,
Such one’s doings are no doing.

Sin does not accrue to that soul
Who reposes on Brahman-All
All works, all thoughts and all feelings
In meditation’s absorption.

II. 47-51
To do one’s duty has one right
But not to hanker for its fruit,
Neither result nor cessation
Of action is the Yoga way.

Equanimity in the midst
Of dual’s role in human life,
Indeed, is Yoga well defined;
Is also adroitness in works.

By dint of understanding’s strength
Who relinquish the fruits of deeds,
They freed from birth’s and death’s bondage
Attain the stainless, blissful state.

III. 5-16
None can remain without action
Of some variety any time,
Since everyone is woven fast
To universal fabric’s core.

This creation is God’s action
Which cyclic, carries everything
With force of will of its impulse
Towards its purpose which is God.

Movement is deed even in thought;
Body and mind do all evolve
In perpetual restlessness
To reach the great repose in God.

To think objects while senses cease
Is no cessation of action;
The thought is deed, whether or not
The sense-organs move outwardly.

If mind is still while senses act,
It is no action of the self;
For consciousness of doing deeds
Is truly deeds, remember well.

Who can on earth survive and breathe
If all action ceases at once;
The psycho-physic’s role in life
Will fall defeated when work fails.

Action does indeed bind the self
Except when done as sacrifice;
So work one must consecrated
Offered to Deity high above.

When beings came from Creator
He ordained all to sacrifice;
By sacrifice are worlds sustained
And by it everyone does live.

To share one’s joy with another,
With transcendent divinity,
The Adhidaiva principle,
Is heart of all sacrifices.

Things exist through all other things,
All things are knit with all others,
So that the being of a thing
Is contribution by others.

Independent no one exists
As all are also all others,
Thus existence of anything
Is sacrifice by other things.

All is, then, sacrifice alone,
As Yajna known, the holy deed
By which one wholly does belong
To everyone and everything.

Selfishness, thus, is rooted out
From realm of justice and the law,
Rita and Satya, rule of Truth
Empirical and absolute.

When gods are worshipped, they bestow
Abundance and prosperity,
Since Adhidaiva rules ever
The subject as well as objects.

Endless are gods though God is One,
For Adhidaivas range beyond
One over other endlessly
Till all merge in the Absolute.

To grab and enjoy objects here
Independent of Deity’s role
Is theft and offence done to Truth,
Since none owns things as property.

Cooperation is the law,
Dependence mutual is the rule;
The universe is as a Whole
A single family and house.

III. 24-30
If God as All-Intelligence,
As soul in body operates,
Does not remain integrally
Creation would collapse and die.

Doing nothing, God does all things;
Thus is the regimentation
For all beings to march ahead
In progression through deedless deed.

The wise with knowledge is active
As unwise one’s in ignorance
Do toil for creature comfort’s sake;
The one is free, the other bound.

The wise does not disturb the faith
Of unknowing commonalty,
But leads the low to higher states
By education and kindness.

The lower is the lesser truth
And not untruth to be condemned;
Hence wise ones lead the lower ones
From lesser truths to higher truths.

The properties on properties
Impinge and cause all perception;
Knowing this one remains detached,
The foolish is involved in them.

Works melt in Universal Work,
This is the way to rise from work
To workless work by firm resort
In God-Vision that liberates.

VIII. THE PRACTICE OF YOGA

II. 55-72
Centred in Self and satisfied
In Self alone with no desires,
Renouncing joys, sorrows alike,
That one is steady in Understanding.

What is the night of ignorance
To sage of wisdom poised in Self,
That is the joy of indulgence
To eyes that see not light of Self.

As rivers rush to ocean’s deep,
So desires melt in sea of Self;
Thus longings reach their dear abode
In sage who lives as Cosmic Self.

This is the state of Brahman Great
On reaching which no one does grieve;
Even such thought at death’s hour
Shall raise the soul to Brahman-Bliss.

VI. 5, 6, 10-17
By Self should one uplift the self;
No one should deprecate the Self;
The Self is truly friend of self,
The Self can also be a foe.

The self that turns against the Self
In betrayal and self-seeking;
Friend is the Self of conscious self
Which unites itself with the Self.

Alone and lonely let the self
Be seated firm in Yoga’s pose,
United well with Cosmic Self
Protractedly for days and nights.

But excess should be avoided
In exercise as well as rest,
In eating, drinking, diversion,
In work and prayer or in sleep.

No Yoga comes to glutton’s slave,
Nor Yoga comes who fasts too much,
No Yoga to the sleeping one
Nor for the one who wakes ever.

To one who is ev’r moderate
In eating, play, and duty’s work,
In sleep and waking day’s effort,
This Yoga comes which rends sorrow.

VI. 18, 19, 20, 26
When self shakes not from root of Self
That state they say is Yoga’s aim,
Unflickering as flame of lamp
Placed in a calm and windless place.

The Yogi rejoices in Self by Self.
Plays and then jokes with Self alone,
Befriends the Self as dear comrade,
Merges in Self as nectar’s sea.

Beholds the Self in all the things,
In earth and water, fire and air,
In men, women and children’s pranks,
Who swims in Self’s eternity.

When self moves out away from Self
Let self be brought by restraint’s force,
To Self alone with vigilant care,
So that the Self may reign supreme.

VI. 29-32
Who does behold the Self-in all,
And all beings in Self alone
He sees indeed by Yoga’s force
All things spread out everywhere.

Who sees the One in variety,
And all variety in the One,
To him the Self is never lost
And he too is not lost to Self.

Who adores ever the One alone
And is himself the vastest Self;
Let him behave in any way,–
He still abides in Deathless Self.

Who sees all is identical
With himself in his Cosmic Deeps
Has all the worlds on his own palm.–
Nay, he himself is all the worlds.

V. 28
Whose senses, mind and intellect
Are held together in firmness’ grip
Whose intellect is melted down
In Cosmic Understanding’s Light,

III. 43
Who with the Cosmic Being’s Pow’r
Restrains all externality
With self controlled in Self’s Puissance,
Discards the vale of sorrow’s winds.

IV. 25-30
Some worship gods in sacrifice
Some pour Brahman in Brahman’s fire;
Some offer senses in the fire
Of self-control well disciplined;

Others do offer all objects
In fire of senses which are trained
To see themselves in world’s objects
As made of same stuff either way.

By what one falls, by that alone
Does one rise high with clearer sight,
Since objects are the roads along which
Body rises to the Soul.

All experience through sense or mind
When administered in a dose
Which ceases craving through craving
Is secret Yoga’s missed by all.

Many are they who offer all
The senses, Prana and the mind
In fire of total self-control
Where cognitions melt in being.

There are the Yajnas material,
Or Yajnas of austerity,
And Yoga’s Yoga undiscerned,
Or study’s Yoga, and Wisdom’s.

Prana is sunk in Apana,
Or Apana to Prana drawn,
By this Pranayama’s Yoga,
They hold the vital breath’s movements.

Some well restrained senses’ masters
Merge all the senses in senses;
All these are indeed wondrous ways
Of Yogas realm, magnificent.

XII. 3-11
To embodied ’tis difficult
To rise to Infinite’s reaches,
By gradual, slow, by degrees’ moves
Should one attempt at Yoga’s core.

By Jnana, Yoga, devotion,
And useful works conducted well
‘Tis possible to reach the Goal
By graduated steps and rungs.

To love of God as friend of all
In all the three periods of time
Is wondrous panacea called
For easy reach of God’s Abode.

Where Krishna is, The Absolute,
Where Arjuna, individual
Charging forth in unison,
There all is well in earth and heav’n.