Invisible, enveloped in the Power of Illusion

The Bhagavad Gita is the very essence of all the wisdom in all the Sanskrit texts in 700 brilliant verses. The writer of the Bhagavad Gita was a man of limitless wisdom and literary skill without equal. I never tire of reading from the Gita and I always learn something new. I will read it until the day I die – delighting in every fresh new understanding, each deeper layer of truth revealed, every gem that lights the way Home to freedom.

The many paths by which we seek God reflect our individual proclivities and inclinations, our accumulated impressions (samskaras) from 1000s of lifetimes. These days many worship the material things that wealth can bring them, in the ephemeral and fading delusion that money and power will grant immortality. Deities come in endless forms, while God remains invisible – unmanifest, yet permeating all.

Bhagavad Gita VII.24: The unenlightened unintelligent ones imagine Me, the unmanifest and invisible, as being manifest. Not being aware, they do not know My higher being, which is imperishable and unsurpassed.

God’s real nature has no concrete form, but takes on any form in response to the desires of those who worship (BhG IV.11). These forms of the creator are merely appearances, temporal holograms. The Oneness has no name. It is nameless and formless, as It weaves Itself through time and space.

BhG VII.25: Concealed and enveloped by My yogamaya, I am not visible, shining to all. This deluded and confused world does not recognize Me, the unborn, the eternal and imperishable (avyayam).

We will only ‘see’ the God-within us when we have purity of mind (BhG XV.11). Those who reach for this purity, who strive to become innocent again, to look at the world with the heart of a child, to “see the world in a grain of sand” – they alone will perceive the Self abiding in them, in the Heart.

There are no words to describe this invisible, imperishable, eternal Oneness that permeates the entire universe. The Sanskrit texts are merely attempts at leading us there. Each Seer has his or her own Realizations and writes them down for others. The texts are clues in the great mystery, trails to follow to the ultimate Wisdom.

As Abhinavagupta says:

“All such theories are merely some dialectical speculations useful in discussion and debates. None among such entities has any real existence, as all these are mere suppositions and imaginary concepts of thinkers.” (Essence of the Exact Reality or Paramarthasara of Abhinavagupta)

You will experience the Oneness permeating everything around you when you come into the sacred Silence. It is always all around you, in you, beside you, in your every breath, waiting in your Heart ready to whisper the Truth to you.

Withdraw your attention from the Unreal, from the external world, which is a form of death itself. Understand that the five senses are merely tools to explore the world, unreliable tools that delude you, tools you must learn to move beyond when you are ready to come Home.

All forms are temporal illusory holograms – real only to the five senses. Withdraw your attention from the five senses. The eternal Oneness is all forms and has no form, no name. You are That!

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Abhinavagupta’s Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita

GITARTHA SAMGRAHA

Translated from Sanskrit with Introduction & Notes by Boris Marjanovic

Indica Books; 2004, Varanasi India

The Bhagavad Gita

Translated by Winthrop Sargeant

State University of New York Press, 1994

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"To see a World in a Grain of Sand." William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence