Chapter 9
Raja Vidya Yoga
Yoga through the King of Sciences · 34 verses
This chapter is traditionally called Raja Vidya Yoga, the yoga of the king of sciences. Krishna first praises what he is about to teach: the most secret knowledge, realized firsthand in this very life.
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Faith is what lets it take hold; those without it stay in the round of birth and death. All beings rest in him, yet he does not rest in them; he holds and feeds everything while staying unattached, the way wind moves in open space. He sends beings forth and draws them back over each cosmic cycle, presiding while action does not bind him. The deluded slight him in his human form, but the great souls worship him as the source of all. Ritual aimed at heaven runs out and returns; devotion to him does not. He asks for little: a leaf, a flower, water, given with love, and any action offered to him stops binding. Even a person of bad conduct who turns to him with undivided devotion is set right, and birth bars no one. The chapter closes with one practice: fix the mind on him, love him, worship him, bow to him. The schools differ on what reaching him finally means. Advaita Vedanta reads it as becoming one with him; Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, and Shuddhadvaita keep the devotee close to a personal Lord.
- 1The deepest secret is given only where the heart has stopped hunting for faults.
- 2Before a word of the teaching is given, it is praised, and the praise is meant for you.
- 3The one thing that keeps this path shut is the trust you have not yet given it.
- 4Everything rests in him; he rests in none of it.
- 5He carries every being into existence, and none of them lodges in him.
- 6As the wind rests in space, all beings rest in me, and I remain untouched.
- 7Even the ending of a world returns you to his keeping, not to nothing.
- 8He holds his own nature, and from it sends every being forth again and again.
- 9The maker of an unequal world remains untouched by what he makes.
- 10The world turns because he presides; nature is the one who gives it birth.
- 11The Lord stands in front of them wearing an ordinary shape, and they see only the shape.
- 12Scorn the Lord, and hope, deed, and knowledge all run empty together.
- 13The great soul shelters in Krishna's own nature and worships him, knowing him, with an undivided mind.
- 14Worship shows itself in unbroken praise, effort, and bowing, whole person and without pause.
- 15Knowing the Lord is itself the offering, however that knowing is held.
- 16There is nothing in the whole act of offering that is not already the Lord.
- 17Every name that holds your life together, kin, consequence, and sacred word, is his alone.
- 18Every name you could reach for, goal, refuge, friend, seed, he has already claimed as himself.
- 19Heat and rain, life and death, the seen and the hidden: nothing stands apart from him.
- 20Their worship truly reaches him; their prayer only reaches heaven.
- 21Even a heaven you truly earn runs out, because you bought it with something that spends.
- 22For the devotee who holds nothing else in mind, Krishna himself carries the getting and the keeping.
- 23Every sincere offering reaches him; only the knowing decides where it leads.
- 24Every offering reaches Krishna; the fall is only in not knowing him.
- 25You reach exactly what you worship; only the object decides whether the reaching ends.
- 26A leaf, a flower, a fruit, water: offered with love, he takes it.
- 27Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you give: let all of it be handed to the Lord.
- 28Offer the deed, and even a golden chain of good results stops being a chain.
- 29He is the same toward every being; only your own turning brings the nearness.
- 30Even the worst conduct, met by one undivided turning, is answered with the verdict: good.
- 31The turn is swift, and the Lord stakes his own word that the one who has turned is never lost.
- 32Even those the world calls unqualified reach the highest goal, the moment they take refuge.
- 33If even the lowly reach the goal, how much more surely you, so worship now.
- 34Set your whole mind, love, worship, and bow on the one Lord, and the arrival is certain.