33. kim punar brahmanah
punya bhakta rajarsayas tatha
anityam asukham lokam
imam prapya bhajasva mam
(33) How much more then, holy Brahmins and devoted royal saints; having entered this impermanent sorrowful world, do thou worship Me. In other words, even those who, on account of their past births, suffer from many disabilities, and are given to worldly pursuits can overcome their weakness and attain the highest. The path is easier for those Brahmins and royal sages who are spiritually disposed. anityam asukham " lokam: impermanent sorrowful world. To the Orphic life in this world is pain and weariness. We are bound to a wheel which turns through endless cycles of births and deaths. Only by purification and renunciation can we escape from the wheel and attain to the joy of union with God. John Burnet refers to the striking similarity between the Orphic beliefs and those prevalent in India at about the same time. Early Greek foreigners as barbarians. The Roman general, Quntilian Varus said of the inhabitants of Germania: "It is true, they are men, but except the voice and limbs of the body they have nothing of human beings in them." The French philosopher, Montesquieu, (1689-1755), said of the Negroes. "One cannot well imagine that God who is so wise should have put a soul, moreover an immortal soul, into an entirely black body. It is impossible to think that these people are human beings." Philosophy (1930), p. 82. The teaching of the Buddha has for its starting point these features of the universe, its impermanence and pain.[1] There is a Persian saying attributed to Jesus. "The world is a bridge, pass over it but do not build upon it." Not merely the world but every phase of the cosmic process, every aspect of human history, every stage of man's life--the freshness of infancy, the crudeness of boyhood, the idealism of youth, the hot passions of adolescence and the ambitions of manhood are all bridges, meant for transit and not permanent habitation Modem science demonstrates how miserably conditioned human life is. Jean-Paul Sartre's theory of existentialism assumes that human existence is subject to certain permanent conditions Each of us is born, is implicated in a reality which is not dependent on him, acts on other people and is exposed to action on their part. He cannot escape from death. These conditions taken together make of human existence a tragic reality Each of us, in this desperate condition, has to work out his salvation by the effort of his will. For the existentialist, man is left to his own resources. He has no faith in the saving grace of God. The teacher of the Gita shows us a way out of the transitoriness of things, the curse of age and death, jaramaranamoksaya.[2] He asks us to take refuge in the Divine.
34. manmana bhava inadbhakto
madyaji mark namaskuru
maya evai 'syasi yuktvai 'vam
atmanam mattarayanah
(34) On Me fix thy mind ; to Me be devoted ; worship Me ; revere Me; thus having disciplined thyself, with Me as thy goal, to Me shalt thou come It is not the personal Krsna to whom we have to give ourselves up utterly but the Unborn, Beginningless, Eternal who speaks through Krsna. The way to rise out of our ego-centred consciousness to the divine plane is through the focusing of all our energies, intellectual, emotional and volitional on God. Then our whole being is transformed and lifted up into the unity and universality of spirit. Knowledge, love and power get fused in a supreme unification. Joy and peace are the result of self-oblivion, of utter abandonment, of absolute acceptance.
iti . . . rajavidyãrãjaguhyciyogo nama navamo 'dhydyah
This is the ninth chapter entitled The Yoga of Sovereign Knowledge and Sovereign Mystery
