ॐ

भक्त्या मामभिजानाति यावान्यश्चास्मि तत्त्वतः।ततो मां तत्त्वतो ज्ञात्वा विशते तदनन्तरम्।।18.55।।

bhaktyā mām abhijānāti yāvān yaśh chāsmi tattvataḥ tato māṁ tattvato jñātvā viśhate tad-anantaram

Sanskrit Chant Recitation
Chapter 18, Verse 55
0:000:00

Scripture Translation Room

Sanskrit to English Translation

Translator:
By devotion, he knows Me in truth, who and what I am; then, having known Me in truth, he immediately enters into the Supreme.

A Reading - Rantideb

Why: through devotion, one comes to know Krishna in truth, as he is, and having known him in truth, one enters into him immediately afterward, again tying the deepest, truest knowledge specifically to devotion rather than pure intellectual effort alone.

In life: the deepest understanding of anything genuinely significant in your life, a person, a value, a purpose, tends to come through sustained devoted engagement with it rather than through purely intellectual analysis from a distance.

Teaching: for whatever you most want to deeply understand, invest in sustained devoted engagement with it rather than only analyzing it intellectually from a distance, this chapter consistently treats devotion, not analysis alone, as the path to the deepest kind of knowing.

bhaktyāby loving devotion
māmme
abhijānātione comes to know
yāvānas much as
yaḥ cha asmias I am
tattvataḥin truth
tataḥthen
māmme
tattvataḥin truth
jñātvāhaving known
viśhateenters
tat-anantaramthereafter

Deep Classical Commentary (Bhashya)

Author:
18.55 भक्त्या by devotion? माम् Me? अभिजानाति (he) knows? यावान् what? यः who? च and? अस्मि (I) am? तत्त्वतः in truth? ततः then? माम् Me? तत्त्वतः in truth? ज्ञात्वा having known? विशते (he) enters? तत् that? अनन्तरम् afterwards.Commentary My devotee? O Arjuna? who has attained to union with Me through singleminded and unflinching devotion is verily My very Self. Devotion culminates in knowledge. Devotion begins with two and ends in one. ParaBhakti (supreme devotion) and Jnana are one. Devotion is the mother. Knowledge is the son. By devotion he knows that I am allpervading pure,consciousness he knows that I am nondual? unborn? decayless? causeless? selfluminous? indivisible? unchanging he knows that I am destitute of all the differences caused by the limiting adjuncts he knows that I am the support? source? womb? basis? and substratum of everything he knows that I am the ruler of all beings he knows that I am the Supreme Purusha? the controller of Maya? and that this world is a mere appearance. Thus knowing Me in truth or in essence? he enters into Me soon after attaining Selfknowledge.The act of knowing and the act of entering are not two distinct acts. Knowing is becoming. Knowing is attaining Selfknowledge. To know That is to become That. Entering is knowing or beoming That. Entering is the attainment of Selfknowledge or Selfrealisation. These are all jugglery of words only. Knowing and entering are synonymous terms. It is very difficult to understand or comprehend transcendental spiritual matters. The teachers use various terms or expressions? analogies? similes? parables? stories? etc. to make the aspirant grasp the matter clearly and lucidly. Words are imperfect and languages are defective. They cannot fully express the inner spiritual experiences. The teacher somehow or other expresses to the students or aspirants these spiritual ideas. The aspirant himself will have to realise the Self. That is beyond the reach of words of expressions or analogies of similes. How can there be similes for that nondual Brahman These words are a sort of help or prop for the aspirants to lean upon in the beginning to understand spiritual matters. When he realises the Self? these words are of no value to him. He himself becomes an embodiment of knowledge.