A powerful religious impulse permeates the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Chapters of the Bhagavadgita. The religious consciousness reaches its culmination by certain specific stages in these central Chapters. The presence of God becomes a more intimate affair than it was in the earlier stages. God does not any more remain merely as a Creator, a transcendent Father, capable of attainment, perhaps, after the shedding of the physical body. In the Eighth Chapter, and even in the earlier ones, we do not seem to have been given any hope of God being capable of contact in this particular life. It seemed that the chances are remote, and even when it looked that there is some possibility, it also appeared that this possibility is only after death, and not in this life. But God is not a future reality, He is an Immediate presence. The awe-striking distance that the soul maintains between itself and God converts God into a future possibility and not a present existence. Everyone of us must be having an idea in the mind that God can be contacted only tomorrow or the day after, after some years, or perhaps at the end of several births, and not just now. This difficulty is purely psychological, and it is based on a notion that the soul has its own independent structure. However much we may be told that God is All-in-All, it does not easily become possible for the mind to accept that there is a timeless immediacy in God’s Presence even in this particular life itself. God is a ‘Here’ and a ‘Now’. We cannot imagine what is timelessness. When we conceive of God, or the attainment of liberation, we consider it as a fag end in the time series, and the notion of time does not leave us. The idea that we are in space and time has become part and parcel of our consciousness and existence. So, if we are in time, we cannot extricate the presence of God from the time-series; God becomes a future possibility and not an immediate realisation. Not so is the fact emphasised here. God is the Supreme Inclusiveness which enfolds into its being all souls, all things, all individuals, everything that exists, in any manner. There is nothing on earth or in heaven which is not finally rooted in God’s being, so that nothing can ever be, if God is not to be. We cannot be a present being and God remain a future existence; that would be a fallacy of argument. If God were a future existence, we too would become future beings and not have a present life. But we are sure that we are presently existing, we are here just now. Yet, we cannot feel that God is just now, we adore Him as a future attainment. This is the defect in the time-consciousness which worms itself gradually into our being, so that we cannot think except in terms of space and time. But the Bhagavadgita tries its best to teach the eternity of God and not merely a durationless extension of God’s existence. Whatever was, whatever is and whatever shall be,—all this is engulfed in God’s Infinitude. He is the Cause of all causes, and a Cause existing not outside the effect but inseparable from all effects. In a way we may say that God is the Cause as well as all the effects. He is the Creator and also the creation. Knowing this truth, blessed souls adore him and worship him, sing His names as the one Absolute (Ekatvena), as the manifold universe (Prithaktvena), and as every particular thing in the world (Bahudha). Omnifaced is the Supreme Being. He is Immortality (Amrita) and Death (Mrityu), Existence (Sat), as well as Non-existence (Asat).

Every speck of space, every atom of matter, can be regarded as a vehicle which reflects one face of God. To think God would be to drown one’s self in an indescribable completeness whereby one loses one’s presence, the individuality evaporates like mist before the blazing Sun. But if there is any desire in the mind to worship God for personal purposes, if there is a desire to go to heaven and enjoy the delights of celestial life, it should be noted that even meritorious deeds have an end, they exhaust themselves when the force of Karma is depleted, and there is a reversal of the agent of action to the state from where it rose. There is a return to the earth even after one reaches heaven, and so it is an unreliable satisfaction. But those who are capable of tuning their minds in an undivided manner to the All-inclusive Almighty Being,—they lack nothing, There will be no necessity to go to heaven for enjoying delights or pleasures. Whatever is required will be provided to them, then and there, by the law of God. And this law works in such a way that it is the height of spontaneity of fulfilment. One need not have to ask the law to operate in any particular manner. It works of its own accord. The great promise that is given in one of the verses in the Ninth Chapter is that God will provide us with everything that we need. Not merely that,—He, shall take care of everything that belongs to us, and protect not only ourselves but also whatever are our needs. Even thousands of fathers and mothers cannot equal God in compassion and concern, in love and affection, in goodness and kindness. The love that God has for man is a million-fold greater than the love that man can imagine in himself in respect of God. This mighty law of God operates in this manner because of His being present everywhere, at every time. If He had been a limited being confined to space and time, He would have taken time to act, and would have to cover some distance to travel for the purpose of executing a deed. God does not travel, because He is not in space; and He does not take time to act, because He is eternity. This is the difference between the operation of God and the actions of other beings. Even the words ‘instantaneous action’ are’ a poor apology for the magnificent manner in which God works. Our language is ridden over with spatial concepts and temporal ideas. So, even the highest notion that we can entertain in our minds is shackled by spatio-temporal limitations. It is not given to us to contemplate God as He is in Himself, We can only approximate ourselves, we can only try our best, to touch the bare fringe of His being, but the true glory of God is beyond comprehension.

In the Tenth Chapter, the presence of God as a superb glory in every form of excellence is described with particular instances quoted as illustrations. Anything that is supernal, whether in knowledge or power, anything that is superhuman in the way of its action, should be considered as a force or expression of God. There are things in this world which lie beyond human control and understanding. Everyone knows what these things are: Natural laws operate in a superhuman manner, and there are occasions when phenomena manifest themselves in the world which speak of the existence of powers over which man has no control and of which man can have no knowledge. These excellences of tremendous might and glory are the Vibhutis, the majestic manifestations of God. God is Supreme Majesty, indescribable glory, unimaginable bliss and joy, by the very thought of which we would run into a state of rapture and ecstasy. Anything which stirs the soul from within can be regarded as a manifestation of God. There are things even in this world which stimulate our souls, whereby our entire being seems to well up into action, and we do not then merely think as intellectuals or feel as minds; we are transported above ourselves, we are thrown overboard and freed from the limitations of body and mind. Very rarely do we have such experiences. In utter agony and utter joy we have satisfactions of this type, which go beyond the body-mind limitations. When God touches us, we cease to be human beings and we do not think as intellects or minds at that time. And it is impossible to describe in language what would be that state when we are magnetised by the glory of God. We melt away into nothing, we cease to be, as if we are possessed by a supernal beatitude. For those who have not passed through such experiences, these raptures are only words without sense, they might convey some grammatical dictionary-meaning, but the spirit of it is lost when the soul is not active, and God is present only when the soul is awake, for God is the Soul of the universe. And when the Soul speaks, it is God summoning. Such glories are visible even in this world. In mighty incarnations, sages, saints and seers, and in the various natural phenomena, anything that stuns us, transports us, strikes us with wonder, as a miracle, and attracts us wholly, from which we cannot turn our eyes away, that which absorbs us entirely,—such a thing is a ray of God’s manifestation. When we hear all these things, we do not know what to say and what to think in our minds. We stand stupefied at this glory and mystery behind creation; stupefaction is the only word, nothing else can describe our condition. Our minds cease to think and our feelings do not any more operate. We do not know at that time whether we are alive or dead, whether we are, or whether we are not. Such a condition we get into when we are prepared for God’s vision. These descriptions of divine glory, which are delineated in the Ninth and Tenth Chapters, excite the curiosity in the deepest spirit of Arjuna’s aspiration, and leave him wondering if he could have a vision of these glories. Here commences the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.