If you have not developed the ability to keep your mind fixed on God at all times you should do so by regularly practicing meditation. If you do not have the discipline to meditate regularly, you should practice dedicating all your actions to others. And if you can’t even do that consistently, practice giving up your attachment to any selfish gain from the fruits of your actions. Thus, you will be giving up your ego and surrendering to the will of God, taking refuge in Him. This is what the Bhagavad Gita calls performing your actions “like a mastered self.”

Ch 12: Union with God through Devotion

Ultimately it does not matter if you worship God as a particular embodied deity or as the divine Spirit behind all the manifested forms as long as you do so with supreme devotion and dedicate yourself to the good of all beings. It is harder for most people to feel like they have a personal relationship with God if they worship a formless concept like the Holy Spirit, but both ways eventually lead to the realization of the truth. The important thing is that you renounce your attachment to the fruits of your actions, desire to do good above all else and meditate. If you do that consistently you will soon see that this is the way to remove yourself from the pain and suffering of the world and that there is no doubt that you and God are united forever.

Even though studying the scriptures, practicing self-discipline, giving gifts of charity and performing formal religious rituals will provide you with good merit, these alone will not bring about union with God. Only through steady devotion to offering all of your actions to others, thus shedding any selfish attachment to personal gain or feelings of ill will toward anyone will you have the same knowledge of God that Krishna gave to Arjuna in the story of the Bhagavad Gita.

Arjuna, still awestruck and trembling from the overwhelming experience of seeing God in all His forms, begins to praise Krishna now that he knows who he really is. Arjuna humbly explains that because he didn’t know Krishna was God, he must have treated Him disrespectfully at time and implores the Lord to forgive him like a father forgives his child, like a friend forgives a friend and like a lover forgives his beloved. So, in the metaphor of the Gita, the spiritual seeker, upon realizing God’s true nature, still aglow from the experience immediately becomes remorseful at the realization that he or she should have known this all along and asks God’s forgiveness. God is nearer and more real than a friend, a  lover or even one’s own child.

The metaphor contained in the Gita gets explained

Then, Arjuna began to see God’s fearsome side. He saw all those who are slaves to their senses, tied to their satisfaction by habits and full of ego, pride and vanity being swept up and carried into the jaws and teeth of a monstrous God who chewed them until their skulls were crushed to powder. Arjuna begged to know who this monster-God was and the Lord spoke saying, “I am insatiable Time, destroyer of worlds, and I have come to consume all in my burning maw.” It was then that the Lord explained to Arjuna (the spiritual seeker on the battlefield of life) that he really isn’t losing out on anything by fighting a battle that seems like it will kill some of the people he knew as friends and teachers (i.e. forgoing the sensual pleasures that lead to harm or putting his selfish ego aside in favor of helping others) because they were doomed to die anyway. In the metaphor contained in the Bhagavad Gita, the spiritual seeker, having realized God, awakens to the “big picture” of life and sees the uselessness of clinging to the illusion of the world and forever understands that God is the only permanent Reality.

Ch 11: Arjuna's vision of God in His infinite form

In the eleventh chapter of the Gita, Arjuna (who represents all sincere spiritual seekers) is granted divine sight to behold all of the created aspects of God in His multitude of forms. He saw God in heaven, bejeweled with robes and garlands and ornaments of all kinds, shining in every direction and seeing everything with countless eyes facing everywhere simultaneously. In His presence was a fragrance that contained every lovely essence. Then, Arjuna saw the entire universe with all its diverse manifestations residing within God’s infinite being. A thousand suns shining simultaneously appeared dim in God’s splendor. Seeing that God is the supreme unperishable reality, Arjuna’s hair stood on end and, awe-struck, he bowed in adoration before the God of gods. Upon seeing God’s infinite strength contained in a never-ending array of eyes, arms, legs and bodies that reach everywhere without start or end, each with a mouth uttering sounds that when combined speak the cosmic name of God, AUM, Arjuna became overwhelmed and fearful. He begged God to be merciful.

All of Ch 10 in one paragraph

The tenth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita poetically describes the infinite manifestations of God as the source of everything. No one will ever be able to understand the origin of God’s unmanifested nature, but we can see Him in all the things He manifests. Knowledge of this truth is liberating and brings one wisdom, the ability to discriminate between reality and the illusion that the world projects, freedom from delusion, forgiveness, truth, self-control, equanimity, fearlessness, non-injury, tranquility, contentment, the ability to bear discomfort with an even mind, generosity and honor. But God also generates the opposite; pain, death, fear, ignorance, hate, suffering and dishonor. All these different qualities come solely from God because He is the source of everything. The wise simply understand that God is the unchanging and everlasting Holy Spirit that sustains and permeates the entire cosmos with only a fragment of His being.