Anyone who is worshiping with true faith in their beliefs, no matter what they are doing, is really worshiping God, but not in the most optimal way. Those who worship saints or angels or lesser forms of God will see them in heaven. Those who worship their ancestors will see their ancestors in heaven. Those who are honoring the spirits in nature go to be with them. Whatever is offered to God with true devotion, even if it is only a leaf from a tree, a single flower, a piece of fruit or a sip of water, He accepts it because it was given with love.

Those who are still operating on the level of religious ritual and cleansing practices get their reward in heaven. There, sincere devotees enjoy the pleasures of that sacred kingdom. Such beings delight in the glory of that higher realm until their merit earned through good karma on earth runs out and they return to the world. Even though they have sincerely worshiped God, they have not realized the truth about reality and have not reached the ultimate goal. They remain caught in the web of personal desires and therefore must continue to travel the path between heaven and earth. However, for those who meditate on the image of God within themselves, without any thought of reward, and remain united by constantly thinking of Him, God will make up for any deficiencies in their worship and make all their progress towards realizing Him permanent even throughout the cycles of birth after birth.

God is everything

Those with discriminating wisdom see beyond the various religious rituals and know that God is the offering, the sacrifice and the ritual itself. He is that which is sacrificed in the fire and He is the fire as well. He is the potency in the medicinal herb and he is the sacred sound chanted with devotion. He is both the praise given to one’s ancestors and the one who receives it. God is that which is to be known. He is the father and mother of the whole universe as well as its grandfather, great-grandfather and most ancient ancestor. He is the omniscient, omnipresent vibrational energy of absolute existence. He is both the sacred scripture and the wisdom it holds. God sustains everything and established the rules over it. He is the foundation of all that is and is both the origin and the indestructible seed of creation. He is the shelter, the refuge and the one friend from beginning to end. He is the objective witness of all actions and the cosmic storehouse of the results of those actions. God is the heat from the sun and the one who give or withholds rain. He is both death and immortality. God is everything that exists and everything that does not exist.

In whatever way one worships God, he or she is offering it in a way that indicates their current level of understanding about the reality behind the illusion of the world. At first He is seen as being different and varied in name and form, but eventually all will see Him as the one absolute being who embodies the entire cosmos.

People who cannot see beyond the illusion cast by the created world are oblivious to God’s transcendental presence that pervades all things and therefore discount His existence. Deluded by their ego and lack of insight, such people find that their thoughts and desires are full of mistakes and all of their actions are ultimately in vain. But great souls recognize the reality behind the illusion and know that God is the imperishable source of everything and worship Him with one-pointed devotion. With firm resolve, they stick to their high aspirations and humbly bow to God, ever praising His glory.

A difficult paradox to understand: God is in everything, but everything is not contained in God's being

At the end of each cycle of creation, sustainment and dissolution everything created goes back to the unmanifested state that is God’s being. And, at the beginning of the next cycle, He brings forth all of creation once again. Over and over again, God produces the myriad of things that make up creation, all of which are subject to the finite laws of nature. But God is not affected by the actions of His creatures because He witnesses it all from an aloof position of detachment. Even though God pervades the entire universe, He does not abide in creation. Just as the wind exists in empty space but is not the space itself, all of creation has its existence in God, but the created things are not the unmanifested being that is God. Because of God, creation can revolve through these cycles of creation and dissolution.

There are two paths you can take in this life. One leads to absolute freedom and the other leads to eventual rebirth in the world. Those who seek God pursue a path that generates more internal life energy as they awaken to the reality that the light of their lives is God. They remain awake as if in perpetual daylight to their need to find God and thus move their life energy up through the various energy centers in the spine (chakras) toward the brow chakra.

            Those who remain deluded by the illusion created by the world follow a path that leads to mortal bondage. They are asleep to reality as if in perpetual night. Their life energy is constantly flowing outward as they pursue worldly pleasures and it remains bound in the lower chakras at the base of the spine. It lacks sufficient energy to move upward and out the brow chakra at the moment of death. No one who knows the truth about these two paths have gained an advantage beyond mere study of the scriptures or performance of religious rituals such as penance or tithing.

Cosmic day and cosmic night

Just as the day dawns and gives way to night, all of creation arises in its infinite variety out of the unmanifested state and naturally merges back into the oneness of the unmanifest. The cosmic day dawns with its creation and lasts for thousands of ages before the cosmic night sees everything dissolve into oneness for thousands of ages as well. This cycle repeats itself as the oneness remanifests as separate forms again at the dawn of another cosmic day. Beyond these manifested and unmanifested states of phenominal existence is the truly unmanifested reality which exists eternally and remains untouched by these cycles of creation and dissolution. Experiencing this unmanifested state of reality which is infinite and indestructible is the ultimate goal of life. Those who attain this highest state never return to normal life in the world.

Those great souls who successfully reach the ultimate goal of life, union with God, have so perfected themselves that they no longer need to return to the painful realm of mortality to learn more lessons. As difficult as the practice may seem, God-realization is easily and naturally achieved by anyone who whole-heartedly remembers Him daily with his or her mind intensely and continuously focused on nothing but God. Only those who do so transcend the cycle of birth and death.

What happens to your life energy at the time of death?

At the time of death, if someone who has practiced the spiritual techniques of uniting one’s consciousness with God’s consciousness can keep his or her mind fixed on the one Supreme Being whose form is unimaginable, who exists beyond darkness and is self-effulgent like the sun, who is subtler than the smallest particle and supports everything like a great ruler, eternal and omniscient, that person will experience union with God. This happen when, by closing off the nine gates of the body (2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, 2 organs of excretion and the mouth) and gathering the life energy in the heart, that life energy goes to the head and fully penetrates the brow chakra. Then by remembering God at the moment this happens one’s life energy merges with the all-pervasive omniscient vibrational energy that is God. This highest goal is reached by those who have led a life of self-discipline and have renounced their attachment to their egos and physical bodies and whose minds, stabilized by meditation are unwaveringly fixed on God.

It is said that a person’s fate after death is reflected in his or her thoughts at the moment of death. These thoughts are formed from our most frequently repeated thoughts during life because our minds become habituated in that direction. So, if you think of God constantly and struggle to do good and be good, our hearts and minds will be given to think of God at the moment of death and you will go directly to Him.

The Bhagavad Gita describes God as the uncreated imperishable absolute that gives rise to all of creation and exists in human beings as the individual soul, the true Self behind the ego and personality. Through the power of His divine will, He causes the birth, sustenance and dissolution of everything by altering the vibration of the very energy that makes up His undifferentiated existence in seemingly infinite ways. This is the single cosmic action which brings into existence all karma (worldly actions and their consequences). The result is that there are three levels of existence; the physical created universe, the spiritual realm and the one absolute state of being that is the origin of the other two.

So, as we seek to avoid the pain and suffering in life as well as strive to deny the reality of decay and death, we begin to take refuge in God. If one chooses to worship steadily and do good in the world, he or she will see beyond the illusion that everything has a dual nature of good and bad to realize that God is the all-pervading reality behind the elements of creation, that He is the object of any kind of worship and that knowing Him is the reason behind your self-sacrifice. Then you will be conscious of God’s presence continually, even at the time of death.

Don't blame those who don't believe in God, it's not their fault

People are born with the innate tendency to be attracted to pleasurable experiences and averse to things that are unpleasant or painful. This causes everyone to see the world in the same way, as being full of good and bad that we react emotionally towards. Being deluded by the way the world appears to someone incased in a mortal body, some people can’t see that that there is an uncreated, unchanging God behind that veil of illusion. God knows about all the creatures of the world that have ever existed or will exist in the future, but His creations cannot see Him as He really is.

If there's nothing but God, how can you worship anything else?

God can be worshiped by any name or form. You can worship Him as the eternal all-pervading Holy Spirit, an incarnation of God such as Jesus, a saint or true guru or any kind of deity. It is the one true God who gave rise to all the various names and forms. You can’t be worshiping anything else. When someone is intent on worshiping any embodiment of God, it is God who makes his or her devotion strong. Then, with that strong and steady devotion, the seeker begins to realize the benefits of a spiritual life. God fulfills his or her longing to know Him and they cease to see Him as a single embodied deity and realize His true nature which is unmanifested, unchanging and all-pervasive.

The four reasons people seek God

Good people seek God for one or more of four basic reasons. The most common is that they are afflicted somehow and seek God to relieve their suffering. Some people look to God for the answers to the big mysteries of life. They want their lives to have more meaning than mere existence so they look for knowledge. Others believe that God has the ability to grant His devotees wealth and power in this world and give them ever-lasting life in paradise in the next. The wisest of the seekers is also the rarest. He or she wants to give their love and devotion to God just because He is all there really is. Everything else is part of the illusion cast by His creation. All four kinds of spiritual seekers have been blessed with noble souls. Still, some sincere worshipers of God let their personal desires lead them astray and their good judgment becomes clouded. They continue to follow their lower nature and are led by their own inclinations rather than the truth.

They call it "maya"

Most people cannot see beyond the tangible aspect of creation because they have been fooled by the way things appear. It is difficult to see reality through the confusion that exists because of the infinite variation that the characteristics of nature present. We are deluded, hypnotized in a way, to believe that our baser instincts of lust, power, greed, etc. is all there is to reality and that seeking refuge in God and being devoted to Him is just a fantasy. Thus, evil is perpetuated in the world.

The relationship between God and nature

Those rare few who have reached the ultimate goal of God-realization while still in their mortal bodies have told us that apart from God there is nothing whatsoever. Everything originates from God’s very essence and from it He creates and dissolves the entire cosmos. He is the fluidity in water, the radiance in the sun and moon, the vibrational energy in all creation, the sound in the ether and the virility in men. God is the wholesome fragrance of the earth, the luminescence in fire, the life in all beings and the purifying force in austerity. Know that God is always present as the seed of all creatures, the understanding in intelligence and the splendor in all that is beautiful. He is the power behind the strength that comes from being free of personal desires and attachments and the power behind the actions of anyone who performs righteousness. These qualities of nature and nature itself come out of God, but they do not comprise all of Him. He is not contained by them, they are manifested from Him

Chapter 7 begins here

Out of many thousands of people, perhaps there is one who really strives for spiritual perfection. And among thousands of those true seekers of God perhaps only one will ever reach the state of complete union with God. But when they do ultimately understand the absolute truth, there is nothing else to know.

No effort to apply these practices is wasted

One should not have any doubts about the benefits of applying these principles. Even if one lapses in his or her practice, just having the theoretical knowledge of these things puts you ahead of someone who only goes to a worship service to practice the rituals of faith. Any effort to diligently follow this path will result in a lasting force that will eventually propel you onward toward the ultimate goal. With earnest effort over many years you will find yourself purged of your karma and free to realize your oneness with God. That purified soul rises above all the mere practitioners when he or she continues to worship constantly with sincere belief and finally achieves union with God.