The Soul, the ‘Self is the Infinite God. +

The Bhagavad Gita says: ~ Among thousands of men, scarcely one strives for perfection; and of those who strive and succeed, scarcely one knows the ‘Self’ in truth.

The path of wisdom attracts only those who are in search of truth and they appreciate it greatly.   The ignorant are not spiritually mature enough to receive Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana.  

The ignorant indulge in argument and provocation and personal attack, which hinders their own realization of the ultimate truth or Brahman. 

That is why Jesus said: - Do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. (Matthew -7:6)

~ Jesus meant knowledge of Spirit or Knowledge of God or  Self-knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana.

Bhagvad Gita says: ~ “Don't unsettle the minds of ignorant by revealing the esoteric truth."

Katha Upanishad says: ~ This Atman is attained by him alone whom It chooses. ( II -23-P-20) 

Thus, those who have taken the path of wisdom are chosen ones.  The chosen one will get the grace of the Soul, the inner Guru. The path of wisdom is the Soulcentric path, whereas all other paths are egocentric.  All egocentric paths are leads to hallucination.

The inner 'Self' reveals ‘what is real’ and ‘what is unreal” when the seeker is receptive and ready.

Religion can never make you know God because it propagates the belief as God. Only an intense urge to know what God supposed to be in truth can make you realize God.     

The Soul, the ‘Self is the Infinite God.   

The Soul is the Self. God is the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness. God is the fullness of consciousness without the illusory division of form, time and space.  Therefore, there is nothing apart from it.  

God is self-evident. God is not established by extraneous proofs. It is not possible to deny God because God is the very essence of the one who denies it. God is the basis of all kinds of knowledge, presuppositions, and proofs. God is within the universe in which you exist, the God is without the universe in which you exist.

The Vedas confirms God is Atman (Spirit), the Self.

Yajurveda – chapter- 32:~  God is Supreme Spirit has no ‘Pratima’ (idol) or material shape. God cannot be seen directly by anyone. God pervades all beings and all directions. 

Thus, Idolatry does not find any support from the Vedas.

Rig Veda: ~ The Atman is the cause; Atman is the support of all that exists in this universe. May ye never turn away from the Atman the innermost self. May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman?" (10:48, 5) 

Vedas says: May ye never accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman? Thus, to know the real God Self-realization is necessary. Self-realization is God realization. Self-realization itself is real worship. 

How can you worship God? That implies two ~ the worshipper and the worshiped, whereas God is nondual. One can worship his idea of God only or realize his unity with it when he can’t worship it as apart. 

When Upanishads and Vedas declare that, “God is the form of the Athma, and God is indeed Athma itself” then why to accept another God in place of the Atman nor worship other than the Atman. 

God is the Supreme Being the One eternal homogeneous essence, indivisible consciousness and intelligence, which is beyond the form, time, and space. To which the Sages describe in a variety of ways through diverse words.

Remember:~

Bhagavad Gita: ~ ‘All those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires, they worship many Gods. (7- Verse -20)

Only the path of wisdom leads the seeker of truth on his journey to the ultimate realization of the true nature of the Universal Essence, which is the Soul. The Soul is present in the form of consciousness. 

Bhagavad Gita: 7: 19:~ "Such a man who has attained true knowledge, the knowledge of Self, the knowledge of Atman, worships ‘Self’ as~ Atman (God in truth) alone exists~ everything is Atman, there exists nothing except Atman. Such a man is extremely rare." 

The Bhagavad Gita: ~ Brahmano hi pratisthaham ~ Brahman (God) is considered the all-pervading consciousness, which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material. (14.27). 

When Bhagavad Gita says, God is considered the all-pervading consciousness which is the basis of all the animate and inanimate entities and material then nothing has to be accepted as God other than consciousness. 

Lord Krishna says Ch ~V: ~ “Those who know the ‘Self’ in truth.". The last two words (tattvataha) are usually ignored by pundits, but they make all the difference between the ordinary concept of God and the truth about God.  

The dualistic worship of "God” is only for the ignorant populace. The God in truth is only Atman, the innermost Self. In reality, there is no duality, no differentiation. Only Atman exists. 

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad IV-13:~ ‘As a mass of salt has neither inside nor outside, but is entirely a mass of taste, thus indeed, has that Self neither inside nor outside but is altogether a mass of Knowledge. Just as a lump of salt has inside as well as outside one and the same saltish taste, not any other taste, so also that Brahman (consciousness) has inside as well as outside one and the same intelligence. Inside and outside are mental creations only. When the mind melts in silence, ideas of inside and outside vanish. The sages’ cognizes one illimitable, homogeneous mass of consciousness only. 

Causality taught in the Upanishads is only to enable us to understand the supreme truth of no-origination. The world is not different from the consciousness and the consciousness is not different from the Soul, the innermost Self, and the Soul is not different from the ultimate truth or Brahman. That the consciousness appears as the diverse world is only an illusion. If it really became diverse than the immortal would become mortal. 

The dualists who seek to prove the origination of the unborn, by that very enterprise try to make the immortal, mortal. Ultimate nature can never change - the immortal can never become mortal and vice versa. 

Sage Goudapada quotes from the Upanishads: ~ "There's no plurality here"; "The Soul through its powers appears to be many"; "those who are attached to the creation or production or origination go to utter darkness"; "the unborn is never reborn, for what can produce it?” 

To see "Brahman in action" one must act. Therefore, if he remains inactive in a cave can never see Brahman. 

The true meaning of "kill doubt" is not to refrain from inquiry as Pundits, yogis and religionists say, but to tackle every doubt and to go on until you answer or solve it satisfactorily and thus the doubt disappears. 

Lord Krishna tells Arjuna to fight is misrepresented by half-Vedantins as an order to kill other human beings, because they are mere Ideas, Illusory, whereas whole Vedanta says these ideas too are Brahman, and the ‘Self’ and hence no killing really occurs. Only when you see all individuals, especially the ‘Self’ as imagined ideas, can you rise to see them later as Brahman? Thus, there are two stages. You must first see the ‘Self’ as illusory before you see others as illusory. ~ CH.2 v.16 

Bhagavad Gita gives dualistic worship of "God” only for the lower minds; it also teaches Advaita for the more evolved. all the insights of the Advaitic wisdom are hidden and misinterpreted so to get a glimpse of truth is very difficult.   

Likewise, thinkers and poets of the Age of Devotion (Bhakti) of the 16th century believed in a God with attributes who became very tangible when incarnating as Avatar and was attainable simply through love and devotion rather than scholastic and intellectual meditation. 

For the religious people,  the Bhagavad Gita became the main vehicle of inspiration with its qualified and deistic Monism, rather than the scholastic and esoteric path shown by Sage  Sankara’s  Advaitic path. 

Sage Sankara never rejected devotional prayer (Bhakti) or denied its value for he held that it was a necessary but intermediate stage for the adept on his journey to the ultimate realization of the true nature of the Universal Essence.

People worship God in various ways, not knowing the Truth. At different levels, at different epochs, in different lands, people have different conceptions of God. They have quarreled because they did not know the truth about God. 

The conflict of opinions among mystics and religionists proves that all are imagining God as they like, not knowing God. 

Vedanta it is said that Lord teaches us in the Gita and in it, he lashes out against the karmakanda. It is generally believed that the Buddha and Mahavira were the first to attack the Vedas. 

It is not so. Lord Krishna himself’ spoke against them long before these two religious leaders. At one place in the Gita, he says to Arjuna: "The Vedas are associated with the three qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas. 

You must transcend these three qualities. Full of desire, they (the practitioners of Vedic rituals) long for paradise and keep thinking of pleasures and material prosperity. They are born again and again and their minds are never fixed in Samadhi, these men clinging to Vedic rituals. 

In another passage, Krishna says: "Not by the Vedas is ‘Self’ to be realised, nor by sacrifices nor by many studies. . . . " 

Bhagavad Gita 2:46:~ "A man of true knowledge who has attained enlightenment, has the same use for all the scriptures as one has a small reservoir of water in a place flooded on all sides." 

Lord Krishna taught the Karma and Bhakti yogis their own paths only in order to lead them up to the Gnana yoga path, which is the highest and the real object of his teaching. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar