The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita : 15-11.

Chapter 15: The Rarest of Devotees-11.

There is a great ethical point that is made out in this wondrous universal religion of the Bhagavadgita. There is no sinner in the eye of God. The idea of sin does not occur. The sin that we think of does not exist in the brilliant light of God-perfection. What we call a ‘sin’ is a dereliction, a deviation, a movement away from the centre. It is a tentative or a temporary mistake that the soul commits on account of its inability to visualise the present state of affairs with the great goal towards which it is moving.

It is a blindness of vision that causes the commission of errors which, when they are related to the set-up of all things in the cosmos are called sins, and when they are committed with respect to mere human society are called crimes. But they are all stages that shall be passed, transcended one day or the other. No one can be a criminal or sinner for all time to come.


There are stages and stages of education. There are faltering steps that each one takes. We tumble down and fall into the pit many a time, only to wake up into the awareness that there is a pit and it has to be avoided. In the eyes of the all-seeing God, error is completely obviated, and the soul that commits a sin or error is taken into the fold of God one day or the other, because what God expects of anyone is a longing for Him. This longing may be expressed in many ways. The history of religion is a standing example of the variety that is there in the manner that devotees express their devotion.

Many a time a most sincere form of devotion may look very odious in the eyes of polished or aristocratic human society. There were butchers, hunters, carpenters, shoemakers and farmers who knew not the elegancies of modern intelligentsia, but they were more sincere and more devoted to the great Creator than aristocrats.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ....