What if the deepest spiritual secret wasn’t hidden somewhere far away, but woven into your ordinary life right now?
In Chapter 9 of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna reveals what he calls the “king of knowledge” and the “most confidential secret”. A teaching so simple and intimate that most people overlook it completely. This episode explores the heart of bhakti yoga: devotion, relationship with the divine, and the radical idea that the sacred permeates everything.
We explore:
🔹 Why Krishna says the divine is both everywhere and beyond everything
🔹 The paradox at the center of yoga philosophy and why it matters
🔹 How devotion shifts from external ritual to inner relationship
🔹 Why sincerity matters more than spiritual performance
If you’ve ever wondered where the divine actually lives, or what devotion really means beyond ritual, this episode will change the way you see your practice.
👉 Dive deeper into yoga’s origins with my History of Yoga Course → https://www.brettlarkin.com/history-of-yoga-course/
📗 Join the book club → https://www.brettlarkin.com/uplifted/
📖 Different translations explored:
Barbara Stoler Miller: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-Krishnas-Counsel-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553213652
Godsong by Amit Majmudar: https://www.amazon.com/Godsong-Verse-Translation-Bhagavad-Gita-Commentary/dp/1524733474
Eknath Easwaran: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/1586380192
Bhagavad-Gita As It Is by Swami Prabhupada: https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-As-Bhaktivedanta-Swami-Prabhupada/dp/0892131233
FREE Practice: Easy Kundalini Yoga for Women | Kriya to be DIVINE LOVE EMBODIED
Relevant Blog: What is Bhakti Yoga? The Philosophy and Practice
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
📚 History of Yoga
🎧 Also Listen to:
#401 – Who Has Your Attention? Attention Economy vs the Ancient Path
#415 – From Self-Improvement to Reverence (Bhagavad Gita Chapter 7)
#422 – What Happens When You Die? Bhagavad Gita Chapter 8 Explained
© 2026 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
Transcript:
Brett Larkin:
Welcome to the Uplifted Yoga Podcast, where ancient yogic wisdom meets modern business strategy. I’m Brett Larkin, creator of Uplifted Yoga, where I’ve certified thousands of yoga teachers, built a multi-seven figure business, and guided over half a million students on YouTube. Here’s the truth, you don’t have to choose between embodying deep yogic wisdom and building a thriving, freedom-based business.
This podcast is your space to integrate both. Because yoga isn’t just what you do on the mat, it’s how you show up in every part of your life. Whether you’re here to deepen your yoga practice, grow your teaching career, or align your energy with your purpose, you’re in the right place.
Let’s dive in. I’m about to tell you the deepest secret, and if you understand it, you’ll be free from suffering. This is basically verbatim what Krishna says at the beginning of Chapter 9 of the Bhagavad Gita.
Kind of a big deal, right? This is one of those moments where everything just kind of pauses in the book, in the story, and you can feel that something really important is about to be revealed. Not just another teaching, not just another philosophy, but something Krishna calls the most confidential knowledge. Think about that.
The most confidential knowledge. So you should be on the edge of your seat right now if you’re hopefully excited like me for today’s episode. And what’s so interesting is that this secret we’re going to learn isn’t hidden because it’s complicated.
It’s hidden because it’s actually so simple, so close, so woven into your everyday life that most of us miss it completely. By the end of this episode, you are going to be in the inner circle, in the club of knowing this deepest secret. You’re going to understand where the divine actually lives in your life and how devotion can be something embodied.
Let’s dive in. Hello, my friends. Today we are exploring Chapter 9 of the Bhagavad Gita.
And to set the stage, let’s look at the different ways that this chapter is titled across some different translations. So Barbara Stoler Miller calls this ninth chapter, the ninth teaching, the sublime mystery. The Bhagavad Gita as it is calls it the most confidential knowledge.
And the Godsong translation translates the title of this chapter to royal wisdom, royal secret. So we’re about to be revealed something that is a big deal, that is royal wisdom, royal secret, a hidden sublime mystery. We are now in the bhakti yoga arc of the Gita.
So we are hearing from Krishna a little bit more about how to be in a devotional relationship with the divine. And Chapter 8 asked what happens when we die, essentially. That was something Krishna was really curious about, especially because he’s a warrior about to go into a battlefield where he might die.
Krishna answered Arjuna and he said that that final moment right before you die actually reflects the mind that you cultivated throughout your life, a.k.a. your attention throughout your life shapes your consciousness and your consciousness shapes the trajectory of your life. And all of that is going to inform that final moment. Now in Chapter 9, we’re zooming out again and asking a bigger question, which is, okay, we’re going to train our attention towards the divine, towards consciousness, towards God, however you want to define that.
Cool. We’re going to train our consciousness towards that. We got it.
We got it from Chapter 8 where our attention flows, energy goes. It’s all leading up to this big final moment at the end of our life where we can’t suddenly fake it, right? Our final moments are going to be a culmination of how we lived, where we chose to train our focus and attention. And now Chapter 9 is going to ask, okay, so, but what is that? What is this divine consciousness, God thing that we’re orienting towards? Like, what actually is it? And Krishna opens this chapter with a really dramatic statement.
He tells Arjuna that he’s now going to reveal the king of knowledge and the king of secrets. He says in the first verse, and this is Barbara Stoller Miller’s translation, I will teach you the deepest mystery, since I find no fault in you, realizing it with knowledge and judgment, you will be free from misfortune. So that’s like a pretty bold promise.
Another translation is Krishna basically says, I shall impart to you this most confidential knowledge and realization, knowing which you will be relieved of the miseries of material existence. Wouldn’t you like to be relieved of the miseries of material existence? Meaning that, you know, we always have more desires. We always have more aversions.
Joy is fleeting. Like, all of us should be on the edge of our seats right now. Let’s look at the God song translation.
Krishna says to Arjuna, I’ll proclaim to you the utmost secret, knowledge together with discernment. Knowing it will free you from misfortune. This is a big setup.
This is a bold promise. Like what, what is going to be revealed? And a key idea here is that we’re going to be taught this secret, but the secret isn’t a secret because it’s hidden. It’s because it’s really easy to overlook.
There’s a big difference. And what we’re going to see in the next few verses is that Krishna is going to present us with essentially a paradox, a divine cosmic paradox. And these are very important verses.
So looking at verse three, Krishna says, without faith in sacred duty, men fail to reach me, Arjuna. They return to the cycle of death and rebirth. So this is referring to a lot of the reincarnation beliefs that were common at that time.
The whole universe is pervaded by my unmanifest form, says Krishna. All creatures exist in me, but I do not exist in them. OK, that is verse four.
So we have a riddle. Who doesn’t love a riddle? All creatures exist in me, but I do not exist in them. What does that mean? He goes on to say in verse five, behold, the power of my discipline.
These creatures are really not in me. Myself quickens creatures, sustaining them without being in them. So if all beings exist in me, yet I do not exist in them, and yet beings do not exist in me, sounds contradictory to you because it definitely does to me.
It’s like, wait, what? It’s because this paradox is describing something incredibly subtle. It’s describing the divine as the field in which reality exists. And the best analogy I think to use here to wrap our minds around this is like waves in the ocean.
So, for example, the ocean contains all the waves and is what all the waves are made out of. But the ocean is not limited to any one specific wave. So essentially, the fabric of our reality is the divine.
The divine permeates the whole universe. However, the divine also transcends the universe. So the universe is the divine, but the divine is not just the universe.
A wave is part of the ocean, but the ocean is not just the wave. And the point here is that ultimate reality is both cosmic and also very intimate. These verses are so confusing because Krishna is actually trying to express something that defies logic and goes beyond ordinary categories.
He’s trying to define the relationship between the divine and the universe. The ocean contains the waves, but it also transcends them. And that’s the paradox Krishna is telling us about here.
Now, then, he even in the text is like, people might not get this. Arjuna might not get this. Let me use a metaphor to expand.
And so that’s what we get in verse 9.6. So he’s saying just as the wind moves everywhere within space, all beings exist within the divine. So the idea here is that space contains everything without being affected by everything. So like I’m waving my hands around right now, if you could see me.
And so space, the space around me and the space around you in your car or walking wherever you’re listening to this, space allows for movement, but it somehow remains untouched. So this is reinforcing the paradox. This idea that reality exists within this divine field, but the divine field like space is free and unlimited.
And so in the West, this can be a really hard idea to wrap our mind around because God is often imagined as either a separate being or existing outside of the universe or observing or controlling events sort of from like afar. What Krishna is saying here is the divine includes the universe, but it’s not limited to it. So God or universal consciousness, however you want to define it, is imminent.
It’s right here. It’s present in everything, but it’s also transcendent. It’s also beyond everything.
So key idea is that existence itself, you, me, this podcast recording, you listening to it, wherever you’re sitting or walking right now, everything exists within the divine. The divine is the underlying reality in which our universe exists. The universe exists in the divine, but the divine is greater than the universe.
All creatures exist in me, but I do not exist in them. We see this in many mystical traditions, this same paradox. In Taoism, it says the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.
Another fun riddle, right? Christian mystics often describe God as both hidden, but at the same time everywhere, omnipresent. The Upanishads say that Brahman is both smaller than the smallest and greater than the greatest. So paradox here is like a tool to help us see beyond logical categories.
Let’s keep going because now Krishna is going to talk about the cycles of creation. So looking at verse seven, this is all Barbara Stoller Miller’s translation. As an eon ends, all creatures fold into my nature, Arjuna, and I create them again as a new eon begins.
Verse eight, gathering in my own nature again and again, I freely create this whole throng of creatures helpless in the force of my nature. These actions do not bind me. This is now verse nine, since I remain detached in all my actions, Arjuna, as if I stood apart from them.
So Krishna has zoomed out, zoomed out, and he’s talking about like whole universes like appear and disappear in cycles. So creation is not a one-time event. It’s this rhythmic thing.
And we also see this in Buddhist cosmology, Hindu cosmology. It’s the idea that the universe is not a static object. It’s an unfolding process.
And then verse 9.9 is really interesting because Krishna says, even though the universe is unfolding through him, what does he say? He says, I remain unattached. Verse nine, he says, these actions do not bind me since I remain detached in all my actions, Arjuna, as if I stood apart from them. So here’s another paradox.
The divine is fully involved, like creating universes, dissolving universes, but at the same time somehow like completely free. And that’s another paradox that’s hard to wrap our minds around, right? Like the divine is fully involved, yet also completely free. And this is setting up and showing us like what the Gita wants us to do as humans.
Like think back to all we’ve learned if you’ve been listening along to the various episodes, especially the first arc of the first six chapters of the book were very much about like acting without attachment, like doing your dharma, your duty in the world without attachment to the outcome. And that’s exactly how Krishna is explaining to us that the divine operates. The divine does this as well.
It’s very active, it’s very involved, and yet it’s at the same time completely free. So it’s setting up a model for us, like how can we act in the world and yet also paradoxically be unattached to the fruits of our labors, be unattached to the outcome. Let’s look at verse 11, sticking with Barbara Stoler Miller, Krishna says, deluded men despise me in the human form I have assumed, ignorant of my higher existence as the great Lord of creatures.
So this is important because like, reminder, Arjuna at this point is still seeing Krishna primarily as his friend and cousin. But Krishna’s hinting, and this is so beautiful, so I really want you to get this. Krishna’s hinting that the divine often appears in forms that we might underestimate.
Who or what in your life, situation, person, circumstance, might actually be the divine in disguise. I want you to think about that. And Krishna’s saying, what fools, what deluded people do is they miss it.
They miss me. They miss the divine when I look ordinary, or when I look maybe unpleasant, or when I – here he’s using the example that he’s in right now, which is that he’s come into human form. But the broader theme here is that, well, he just told us like everything is divine, right? So the traffic jam you’re sitting in right now, or the struggle that you’re having with another person, like what if they’re Krishna in disguise? That’s what he’s asking us all to think about.
And this is, again, a theme that appears in many traditions. We see it in the incarnation in Christianity. We see it in the avatars in Hinduism.
We see it in the enlightened beings in Buddhism. The sacred often appears as ordinary. So we need to be paying attention, and we need to understand this concept that the divine is everywhere.
So Krishna just told us like, fools don’t recognize me. But now he’s going to go on, we’ll skip to verse 13, and he’s going to tell us about the opposite kind of people, the people who do, who do recognize him. So he says, in single-minded dedication, great souls devote themselves to my divine nature, knowing me as unchanging, the origin of creatures.
I actually really love, like go Barbara, I like this translation, the origin of creatures. Because again, this is hinting back to like the divine is the underlying fabric of our universe, meaning that all these obstacles you think you have, and all these problems you think you have, and all this stuff happening with other people, like, well, guess what? The origin of all that is divine. So Krishna is saying that these great souls, these people who get it, they see the divine in everything, they remain devoted, they remember the divine constantly.
And this ties back to exactly what we talked about in chapter eight, which is that attention shapes our consciousness, and wise people train their attention toward the divine. And so this chapter is about like, well, what is the divine? Well, turns out the divine is everything. And luckily, that’s exactly what he’s about to go back to.
So let’s look at verse 16. This is so beautiful. So actually, let’s go to 14, because that way you can see this whole.
So always glorifying me, he’s talking about the wise people, striving, firm in their vows, paying homage to me with devotion. They worship me, always disciplined. So we have worship me, aka bhakti yoga, always disciplined, aka, you know, you need to put work in, right? You need to have that karma yoga as well.
You need discipline to have the worship, the bhakti. Okay, verse 15, sacrificing through knowledge, others worship my universal presence in its unity and its many different aspects, right? It’s many different aspects. The divine could be the technology that’s broken right now, right? The traffic jam that just cropped up, exactly what we were saying before.
And then this is the really beautiful part. Verse 16, I promised you I’d switch to the God song translation for this bit. Krishna says, I am one and multiple, manifold, facing everywhere.
I am the right. I am the sacrifice. I am the offering.
I am the herb. I am the mantra. I am the ghee.
I am the fire. I am the liberation. I am the father of the universe.
Its mother, founder, grandfather, the not yet known, the purifier, the syllable om, the rig, the sama, the yajurveda, path, scaffold, master, witness, home, sanctuary, friend, genesis, dissolution, base, treasury, imperishable seed. I heat up. I hold in.
And I send out the rain. I am deathlessness and death, real and unreal, Arjuna. So those were verses 15-ish to 19.
So to help these verses really land, you need to understand that earlier in Vedic culture worship often meant performing rituals, right? We see that word right in verse 16, I am the right. That’s another word for ritual. I am the ritual.
And in these rituals, they would light fires, they would chant specific hymns, they would honor particular deities, and then they would also slaughter and sacrifice animals. So this verse, I am the right, I am the sacrifice, I am the offering, meaning the animal that’s going to be sacrificed. I am the herb, I am the mantra, meaning the Vedic chant that’s going to be chanted.
I am the ghee, I am the fire, I am the liberation. What Krishna is describing here, which is so, so powerful, is this shift from external ritual to internal ritual. He’s describing the traditional Vedic ritual, but he’s saying, actually, I am every aspect of this ritual that you’re trying to do.
So instead of worship being like this checklist of stuff that you have to like light on fire in a certain way and say a mantra in a certain way and sacrifice an animal in a certain way. Instead of all of that, you need to realize that God, the divine, is actually underlying the reality of your entire ritual process. The ritual, the worshiper, the animal being sacrificed, everything, it’s actually all an expression of the same cosmic reality.
This is a huge philosophical shift. He is reframing worship from ritual performance to a conscious, individual relationship with the divine. Worship isn’t something you perform doing these fancy rites and rituals.
No, it’s something you live. It’s a way of orienting your whole life toward the sacred. And if you’re not a fool, if you’re not deluded, you’re actually seeing that the divine is the fabric in which every single one of these steps that you’re doing to try to do this perfect ritual for the divine, like it’s actually already made up of the divine, all of those steps.
If you’ve been loving all the yoga philosophy we’ve been exploring on this podcast, but sometimes feel like you’re missing the bigger picture, my History of Yoga course is basically your best friend. It gives you a clear visual timeline of how yoga actually evolved from the Vedas to the Upanishads to the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, Hatha Yoga, all the way through to modern postural yoga. I’m talking slides, printable timelines, a gorgeous manual.
Everything finally clicks into place. If you want context, not just concepts, you can explore it at brettlarkin.com/history or grab the course at the link in the show notes. So in chapter seven, Krishna revealed that the divine is permeating reality.
It’s everywhere. In chapter eight, he said that the key to spiritual practice is remembering the divine. And then especially because if you are like Arjuna and going to die soon, he was very curious about like at the moment of death.
Now in chapter nine, Krishna reveals that devotion is living in awareness of that divine reality. It’s not confined to temples. It’s not confined to rites and rituals.
It’s present in every moment of life. So devotion is less about what you offer and do externally and more about the sincerity and orientation of your heart. And when I was reading this, it so reminded me, those of you who are familiar with the Christian tradition in the New Testament, Jesus tells his followers that true worship is not confined to specific locations and temples or rituals, exactly the same thing as what’s being said here.
But it happens in spirit and in truth. Both of these traditions are moving towards this idea. Both of these philosophies are orienting towards this idea that authentic devotion comes from our inner alignment, not from external performance.
There’s this really, it stands out to me because it’s kind of like one of the weird Jesus parables or stories where Jesus gets kind of angry and he goes into the temple grounds during Passover and what he finds is all of these merchants selling animals to be sacrificed in the temple. So like if you visualize the temple outside, there’s like a big forum, right? And in the forum, there’s hundreds and it’s like a crazy bazaar, right? Like think about a shopping mall on steroids. And there’s all these vendors who have to pay to set up tents to sell their animals.
And there’s all these people buying animals, just like walk into the temple, do their slaughter sacrifice and move on with their day. And meanwhile, the entire system is corrupt because like the religious leaders are corrupt and they’re taking a huge portion of the profits of the merchants who have to rent the stands. And you know, the animals need like a license fee probably, and that’s also taxed.
And then this money is also split and divided with Rome. So it’s basically just like a profit center. And Jesus comes in and he gets angry.
That’s why it always stands out to me because it’s like one of the few stories where Jesus is really mad and he starts overturning these tables where people are selling the animals and he starts screaming and yelling like, why are you guys defiling my father’s house? Like why are you making my dad’s house corrupt? He says, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers. Basically, like you guys are corrupt. This is like superficial rituals and none of you are authentic.
And this temple marketplace is just like this corrupt or religious economy. And in John’s version of the story, Jesus even makes a whip and like drives out these animals, aka like freeze these animals so they don’t end up being slaughtered for sacrifice. And Jesus is just like so angry at the way that ritual had become commercialized and performative.
He’s just like over it. He’s like, I’m over this like external religiosity, like these rites, rituals that are totally corrupt, totally superficial, that completely lack inner transformation. And I feel like Jesus and Krishna challenge like it’s the same religious pattern, right? When spirituality becomes about external performance, like having the ghee and the fire and the mantra and the Vedic, you know, to like control everything, like when everything has to just be so, and it’s about external performance, that’s all just ritual display.
And what Krishna is interested in and what Jesus is interested in is your authenticity, your spiritual authenticity matters more than ritual display. So we see this shift in both of these wisdom traditions, right, away from the rites, the rituals, the sacrifices toward inner sincerity, humility, authentic relationship with the divine. And there’s a beautiful line that Krishna is about to say.
So let’s keep going about what different options of what you can offer to the divine in these rites and rituals if you choose to do them. So forgive me, we’re going to skip ahead a little, just a couple of verses. But Krishna says here, verse 25, Krishna says, Devotees of gods go to the gods, devotees of forefathers go to the forefathers, devotees of spirits go to spirits.
Those who sacrifice to me are sure to go to me. A leaf, a flower, fruit, water, food, with devotion, by a striving Atman, that devoted offering, I eat. Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you give, whatever you burn for, son of Kunti, which is Arjuna, do that as an offering to me.
Okay, this line is really famous. Verse 26, Krishna basically says, he is talking about the radical simplicity of devotion, and it has to do with exactly what we were just talking about. You don’t need to slaughter a lamb, you don’t need six Brahmins chanting with the fire blazing just so.
He says, whoever offers me a leaf, a flower, a fruit, or water with devotion, I accept it. This is essentially the democratization of spirituality. He’s saying, you don’t need wealth, you don’t need elaborate rituals, you don’t need priestly authority.
The only requirement is sincerity. And if you have that, devotion is accessible to anyone. And again, when I was reading this, I thought about when Jesus told the parable about the two men praying in the temple.
This shows up in the Gospel of Luke. He talks about two men praying in the temple. One of the men is a religious leader performing his righteousness publicly.
And the other man is a humble tax collector. And remember, tax collectors were like hated during that time, the enemy. The other man was a humble tax collector, quietly asking for mercy.
And he, in preaching, says to the audience, which of these two men do you think is more devout? And what he says is that the humble one, the one who may seem even like an enemy to our people, but he’s humble and he’s asking for forgiveness. Jesus says that man went home justified before God rather than the other one. So both Krishna and Jesus are saying, we’re not interested in performative righteousness.
Like big showy stuff. We want to be in an intimate relationship with you. And I love how Krishna says, like, even if you just offer a leaf, a flower, I accept it.
You don’t need a lot of money. You don’t need anything fancy. You don’t need to put on your fancy clothes.
And now let’s go back to verse 22. Let’s read the God song translation of that same verse. Men who sit close by me, yoked perpetually, tie their thoughts on no one else.
I bring them what they need for yoga. Interesting. Let’s look at one more translation, because that one was quite different from the first one we read.
This is Bhagavad Gita as it is. But those who always worship me with exclusive devotion, meditating on my transcendental form to them, I carry what they lack and I preserve what they have. OK, I’m glad we did that, because I think this is actually my favorite translation for this particular verse, because what he’s saying is another dimension to this.
He’s saying those who meditate on the divine with devotion, not in a showy way, but authentically, humbly, they are supported and sustained by me, which is exactly what we’ve been talking about in this bhakti yoga arc that the universe is not neutral. Do you guys remember that? If you’ve been listening to prior episodes, if not, you can go check them out. But we had this whole theme of like the universe is not neutral.
It has a relational dimension and it actually wants a relationship with you. You are not authoring your own awakening through like force and effort. You need to be in devotion, in relationship with this divine reality.
This reality is not confined to temples. It’s present in every moment of life. And so what chapter nine is doing is it’s it’s redefining worship instead of worship being about performing rituals for the gods.
Krishna is shifting the emphasis towards relationship. Devotion is not about what you’re offering externally. It’s about the sincerity and orientation of your heart.
And that’s exactly what Jesus tells his followers to worship is not confined to specific locations or rituals, but happens in spirit and in truth. And remember how this chapter started. Krishna’s like secret in chapter nine is that the sacred is woven into the fabric of our current reality.
So devotion actually isn’t striving and reaching towards something distant. It’s learning to recognize the presence, the people, the love that’s already here. And then this chapter ends, verse 44, with Krishna saying mind on me, devoted to me, sacrifice to me and bow to me.
Yoking yourself like this, you’ll come to me, your passage beyond. That was the God song translation. Let’s look at Barbara Stoller Miller’s keep me in your mind and devotion.
Sacrifice to me. Bow to me. Discipline yourself toward me and you will reach me.
Very encouraging. Let’s look at the Gita as it is translation. Engage your mind always in thinking of me.
Become my devotee. Offer to me and worship me. Be completely absorbed in me.
Surely you will come to me. So engage your mind in always thinking of me. That’s like, to me, that’s like, as you go about your day, have one foot tethered to this idea of staying humble, that we’re in a reality that’s underpinned by the divine and that the divine actually might be showing up in very unexpected places, like not necessarily during our third eye meditation, where we’re working our little booty off to try to get somewhere or hear a voice like it can be in the ordinary moments of our day, maybe even in the form of obstacles or enemies.
The divine permeates reality. To tie it in a bow, I’m going to try to just look at, let’s just look at three verses that summarize the whole chapter. And scholars often point to these three verses in chapter nine as like the heart of the teaching of the Gita at large.
And it’s verse 922, which we already looked at. That was the verse about divine reciprocity, right? That the universe is not neutral. Krishna says, those who meditate on me, this is 922, with devotion, I preserve what they have and provide what they lack.
This is introducing the idea that the relationship with the divine is mutual. It’s not only humans reaching upward, the divine response. Can you think about how powerful this is, if this was something you really let yourself melt into? That if you meditate on me with devotion, if you turn your attention to consciousness, God, the divine, whatever it is that you define it as, with devotion, that the things you want to keep, you’re going to get to keep.
He says, I will preserve what they have, and not only that, you’re going to get the things that you need. Now, you might not get the things you need in the exact way, timeline, and form that you would like them, but the universe has your back, right? He says, and I will preserve what they have and provide what they lack. If you’re in a relationship with the divine, this is something that Krishna in this text is promising.
Really beautiful. So we have this idea of divine reciprocity, verse 9.22. Then the other big verse we looked at, verse 9.26, and it’s actually one of the most beloved verses in the entire Gita, which was that democratization of religion, essentially, where Krishna says that even a simple offering, a leaf, flower, fruit, water, is accepted when given with devotion. Again, it’s this idea, it doesn’t matter what you give, because the essence of devotion is sincerity and not elaborate rituals.
And then this last verse that we just looked at, 9.34, final summary, Krishna closes by saying, fix your mind on me, be devoted to me, bow to me. And that’s bhakti yoga in a nutshell. Like you got it right there.
Fix your mind on me, be devoted to me, bow to me. So before we close today, I want to leave you with a few questions to sit with. You don’t need to answer these right now.
You can just let them linger in your awareness. Maybe you want to journal on them this week. But where do you currently encounter the sacred in your life? Where? Is it only in specific places like your yoga mat or in your meditation or at a place of worship where you go? Are there moments in your everyday life where you sense something deeper moving through ordinary experience? I know for me, I’m very cognizant of those moments.
And they’re like my favorite moments, right, where you’re just looking at the sunset or just gazing out on the distance or watching your kids sleep, something and you feel that something much deeper is moving and underpinning your ordinary experience. Because what this text is teaching us in this chapter is that the divine is more present in more places than we usually notice. My other prompt for you is like, what does devotion look like in your life right now? Like when you hear that word devotion, right, this is the heart of bhakti yoga, what comes to mind for you? Like, do you think about music or going to a certain kind of class or gratitude journaling or prayer or meditation like, but what is it? What small act in your life could become an offering? And then my third prompt is like, think about where you might be overcomplicating stuff.
Because many traditions accumulate like layers and layers of rituals and expectations and stuff, right, that when we go back and we look at the original text, whether it’s the Gita or the Bible or the Dao, like whatever, we like see that, you know, actually things can be stripped down, right? Like a lot of modern approaches are overcomplicating things. So this chapter nine is suggesting that devotion isn’t about reaching towards something far away. It’s not about overcomplicating it, making it fancy and complicated.
It’s about recognizing the sacred presence that that’s already here, right? And in your breath, in the moment, in the simple ways that we connect with the divine, with a sincere heart. If you are still here, thank you so much for listening, for being here all the way to the very end. I hope this prompt some reflection and ideas and stirred something in you.
Until next time, take care of you. Loving what you’re learning on the podcast? Apply the ancient science of yoga to your daily life surrounded by incredible peers in my Uplifted 200-hour online yoga teacher training, or grow into your role as a leader of others in my 300-hour professional program for yoga teachers, which is also a high-level business mastermind. At any time, I would love to welcome you into my Yoga for Self Mastery course to help you uncover your personal blueprint to serenity, or join my Uplifted Yoga membership for an all-access pass to my most popular yoga courses, thematic class plans, and practice calendars.
Don’t forget to prioritize your well-being and get on your mat today. From my heart to yours, namaste.
