41. Even Yama, who destroys the whole world with a slight but energetic and threatening movement of his brows, considers devotees who have taken shelter at Thy feet as beyond his sway.
42. I consider not the attainment of heaven, or even of liberation, not to speak of worldly attainments, as comparable with the blessing of contacting a real devotee of the Lord even for a moment.
The highest devotion to God transcends the three qualities – tamasic, rajasic and sattvic. It is a spontaneous and uninterrupted inclination of the soul towards God. Such devotion springs up spontaneously in the heart of a true devotee, as soon as he hears the mention of God or His attributes. A devotee possessing love of God of this nature desires nothing even if he is offered the happiness of Heaven in whatever way it is conceived. The devotee’s desire is only to love God under all conditions – in pleasure and pain, honour and dishonour, prosperity and privation.
43. Therefore, may we have the company of holy men who have attained to purification of their minds and bodies by Thy holy communion – of the mind by hearing about the sin–destroying accounts of Thy excellences and of the body by bathing in the holy Ganga, which is the ablution of Thy feet. Such holy men are full of love, benevolence and straightforwardness, and there is no place in their heart for any low passion.
44. By the practice of devotion of Thee, the sages attain to a state where the mind is neither drawn to, nor agitated by, external objects; nor is it overcome by dullness and sleep but stays in itself perfectly still and awake. In such a state of mind, the sage intuits the Truth.
The fictitious moment of energy in consciousness is known as mind. The expressions of the mind are thoughts and ideas. Consciousness minus conceptualization is the eternal Brahman. Consciousness plus conceptualization is thought.
The mind is free of delusion when it becomes devoid of all attachment, when the pairs of opposites do not sway it, when it is not attracted to objects and when it is totally independent of all supports.
The transcendence of the mind where even the form vanishes pertains to the disembodied sage. In the case of such a mind, no trace is left. In it there are neither qualities nor their absence, neither virtues nor their absence, neither light nor darkness, neither existence nor non-existence, neither conditioning nor notions, etc. It is a state of supreme quiescence and equilibrium. This is the state of nirvana, the state of supreme peace where the sage intuits the Truth.
45. Thou are that Light of lights, expansive and all-pervading like the sky, the Brahman whose consciousness is the revealer and sustainer of the universe, and whose glory everything in it proclaims.
In the Infinite Consciousness, there is an inherent non-recognition of its infinite nature that appears to manifest as ‘I’ and the ‘world’. Just as there is an image in a marble slab even if it has not been carved, the notions of ‘I’ and the ‘world’ exist in the Infinite Consciousness. This is its creation. The word ‘creation’ has no other connotation. No creation takes place in the Supreme Being or the Infinite Consciousness. The Infinite Consciousness is not involved in the creation. They do not stand in a divided relationship to each other.
It may be said that the world appearance is real so far as it is the manifestation of consciousness and because of direct experience. It may be said that it is unreal when it is grasped by the intellect. This is similar to wind being perceived real in its motion while non-existent when there is no motion. The mirage-like appearance of the cosmos exists as not different from the Absolute Brahman.
46. Thou, Oh Lord, are the free and unaffected Being, although Thy power Maya, giving rise to myriad forms (the multiplicity), creates, preserves and destroys this universe, and leads one to wrongly feel that this multiplicity has an existence apart from Thee.
The verbal root of Maya is ma, meaning to measure. The etymological root of the word Maya makes it clear that it is something that makes the object we experience determinate through spatial, temporal and causal laws.
The Svetasvatara Upanisad gives an idea that Maya is a kind of net thrown on Being, making it look like the world fixed by some laws, constituting the structure of the net. This idea makes it clear that Maya is not mere illusion. The object of any illusion, like that of dream, disappears later, whatever fright it may have created in the person experiencing it. The idea of the Brahman creating the world, which does not exist on its own, through His will, involves something like the idea of illusion. Salvation as the ultimate goal is freedom from determinateness whether it is the life of pain or pleasure, happiness or sorrow, good or bad, knowledge or ignorance. It is the same as freedom from Maya.
P. Sriramachandrudu explains succinctly that Maya is indescribable. It is neither existent, nor non-existent, nor both. It is not existent, for the Brahman alone is the existent (sat). It is not non-existent, for it is responsible for the appearance of the world. It cannot be both existent and non-existent as such a statement is self-contradictory. It is thus neither real, nor unreal; it is Mithya. But it is not a non-entity or a figment of imagination like the son of a barren woman. In the example of a rope mistaken for a snake, the rope is the ground on which the illusion of snake is super-imposed. When right knowledge dawns, the illusion disappears. The relation between the rope and the snake is neither that of identity nor of difference, nor of both. It is unique and known as non-difference (tadatmya). Similarly, the Brahman is the ground, the substratum on which the world appears through Its potency – Maya. When right knowledge dawns, the real nature of the world is realized as Maya disappears.
47. With various rituals and kindred supports, the yogis worship Thee in several forms of spiritual glory, with faith in the rituals and hope in their success. Only those who understand all these forms to be Thyself can be considered knower of the Veda and other scriptures.
