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.

God doesn't hate anybody

God is impartial toward all beings. Regardless of any of the social inequalities that societies or individuals place on people, God does not hate anyone, nor is He especially dear to anyone. No matter where or to whom you were born, whether you are male or female, rich or poor, if you take refuge in God and give him your love and devotion, He will respond and you will come to see that you are a part of Him and He is within you. Even the worst of sinners who worships God with sincere devotion and firm resolve will be counted as one of the good. He or she will quickly become virtuous and obtain unending peace until they realize absolute freedom and become united with God. A true devotee never comes to a harmful end. Saints and sinners alike find themselves living in this same transient world of suffering and unhappiness, needing to turn to God for their salvation. Therefore, resolve to bow with humble reverence before God, forgo your selfish desires and devote your life to offering all your actions to others, thinking of God constantly and you will be firmly on the path to realizing the ultimate goal of life, union with God.

The essence of Karma Yoga

Whatever you do, make it an offering to God by doing it for others, without thought of selfish reward. Whether it is eating to sustain yourself so you can do work for others, giving gifts or charity, or even disciplining yourself to be a better person so others will enjoy being around you, dedicate them all as if you were performing a spiritual ritual and they become offerings to God. When you perform your actions in that way, they will not bind you to a good or bad result through karma. Through this practice you become free of personal desires and are not bound to this world. Thus you can achieve total liberation and become one with God.

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.