Unmanifested Is Presence – In Gita Verse 9.4 By Me, in My unmanifested form, this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are in Me, but I am not in them.
Krishna is saying that in his formless everything is included. But as a part we cannot hold him. He is not saying that we cannot include him, he says that as a part we cannot hold him. He is there in everything as a presence. It is like this air can touch us but we cannot touch the air. Formless is presence in everything but form cannot be presence into formless.
If we understand this verse from our experience of love it will be easy for us. All of us have experienced that love is tread, joining all of us. We cannot hold love but we can express love.
Love is not dependent on the object, but is a radiation of your subjectivity – a radiation of your soul. And the vaster the radiation, the greater is your soul. The wider spread are the wings of your love, the bigger is the sky of your being.
Love, truth, bliss – there is an intrinsic core in them: they need to be shared; they are not sufficient unto themselves. Sharing is part, but they are not possessive. The reason is totally different. The reason is that love basically gives freedom: it gives freedom to oneself, it gives freedom to others. A love that becomes a bondage is not love; it is lust, it is an animal, it is not human. Love gives freedom, then it becomes human, but it is still a kind of relatedness.
There is one more dimension to love. In the first, love is a biological need; in the second it is a psychological sharing; in the third you are love. In the first it is a relationship, a possessiveness; in the second it is a relatedness, a friendship, a friendliness; in the third you are love itself. Your very being is love, you radiate love. Only then has love come to its crescendo – it has achieved the ultimate, the last – you can call it godliness.
When through your action and expression love starts flowing through you, you will understand what Krishna is saying that I am unmanifested present in everything – All beings are in Me, but I am not in them. No one can hold him but he can flow through everything.
Zen never mentions love. My own understanding is that the man of Zen simply loves as he breathes. It is not something special, there is no need to mention it.
Zen does not say it, that is a great indication that it understands. Love should not be said, but shown in every gesture – through your eyes, through your hands, through your silence. It should radiate around you. It is the same with compassion. It is not mentioned either.
Real love has no words to express itself. Real love is a presence, you can feel it. It surrounds you like wind, it rains over you like rain. A rose flower does not say, “How beautiful I am.”
Zen is love, and Zen is compassion, but there is no need to make a manifesto, a declaration of it. In utter silence – the transmission of the lamp.
Life is nothing but an opportunity for love to blossom. If you are alive, the opportunity is there – even to the last breath. You may have missed your whole life: just the last breath, the last moment on the earth. If you can be in love, you have not missed anything – because a single moment of love is equal to the whole eternity of love.
If you really want to experience the unmanifested Krishna in you then the first thing you need to do is love yourself.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 4.41, blog I wrote unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don’t know what love is if you have not loved yourself.
What is a basic problem with you? You have not even entered into your own temple. You don’t know at all who you are and you are asking about love. First be thyself; first know thyself – and love will come as a reward. It is a reward from the beyond. It showers on you like flowers, fills your being. And it goes on showering on you, and it brings with it a tremendous longing to share. That sharing can only be indicated in human language as ‘love’ . It does not say much, but it indicates the right direction. Love is a shadow of alertness, of consciousness.
Krishna clearly says that I am in everything as formless, unmanifested. What is really required by us is entering into our own temple and experiencing love, life which is there inside us. In that silence you will understand what Krishna means by saying – All beings are in Me, but I am not in them. We will understand that we are part of the whole, not whole is part of us.
Tags: Unmanifested Is Presence
