The Eight Forms

Learn now how to set your soul ever on Me by being:

• still in exercising Yoga
• still in making Me your Refuge

You will come most surely unto perfect hold of Me.

I will teach you that utmost lore, Whole and particular so that you will know everything that you need to know in this world.

Of many thousand mortals, one strives for Truth.

• Of those few who strive, one only knows Me as the very Truth.

My manifest form is made up of:

1. Earth
2. Water
3. Flame
4. Air
5. Aether
6. life
7. mind
8. Individuality

These are my lower Nature. Learn my higher Nature that produces this Universe by its principle of life.

I am that womb. I make and I unmake this Universe.

There is no other Master than Me.

All these hang on me as a row of pearls hangs on its string.

I am free from passion and desire.

• Yet am I right desire in all who yearn, chief of the Bharatas.

All those moods, soothfast, or passionate, or ignorant deduce from me.

But all are merged in me, not I in them.

The world is deceived by those 3 qualities of being.

Wotteth not Me Who am outside them all, Above them all, Eternal! Hard it is

To pierce that veil divine of various shows Which hideth Me; yet they who worship Me Pierce it and pass beyond. I am not known

To evil-doers, nor to foolish ones, nor to the base and churlish; nor to those Whose mind is cheated by the show of things, Nor those that take the way of Asuras.[FN#12]

Four kinds of mortals know me:

1. He who weeps
2. He who yearns to know
3. He who toils to help
4. He who sits certain of me, enlightened.

Of these four, the highest, nearest, best is the last kind.

It is the devout soul, wise, intent upon “The One.”

I am the dearest to him, and he is dearest to me.

All four are good, and seek me.

But mine own, the true of heart, the faithful–stayed on me, taking me as their utmost blessedness, They are not “mine,“but I–even I myself!

At end of many births to Me they come!

Yet hard the wise Mahatma is to find, That man who sayeth, “All is Vasudev!"[FN#13] There be those, too, whose knowledge, turned aside

By this desire or that, gives them to serve Some lower gods, with various rites, constrained By that which mouldeth them. Unto all such– Worship what shrine they will, what shapes, in faith– ‘Tis I who give them faith! I am content!

The heart thus asking favour from its God, Darkened but ardent, hath the end it craves,

The lesser blessing–but ’tis I who give! Yet soon is withered what small fruit they reap: Those men of little minds, who worship so, Go where they worship, passing with their gods.

But Mine come unto me! Blind are the eyes Which deem th’ Unmanifested manifest, Not comprehending Me in my true Self!

Imperishable, viewless, undeclared, hidden behind my magic veil of shows, I am not seen by all; I am not known–Unborn and changeless–to the idle world.

Know all things which were, and all which are, and all which are to be, Albeit not one among them knoweth Me! By passion for the “pairs of opposites,”

By those twain snares of Like and Dislike, Prince! All creatures live bewildered, save some few Who, quit of sins, holy in act, informed, Freed from the “opposites,“and fixed in faith, Cleave unto Me.

Who cleave, who seek in Me refuge from birth[FN#14] and death, those have the Truth!

Those know:

• BRAHMA know Me
• ADHYATMAN know the Soul of Souls
• KARMA know my work
• ADHIBHUTA know the Lord of Life
• ADHIDAIVA know the Lord of all the Gods
• ADHIYAJNA know the Lord of Sacrifice

Worship Me well, with hearts of love and faith, and find and hold me in the hour of death.