Verse 4.11

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration, Word-for-word and English translation of verse 4.11:

ये यथा मां प्रपद्यन्ते तांस् तथैव भजाम्य् अहम् ।
मम वर्त्मानुवर्तन्ते मनुष्याः पार्थ सर्वशः ॥ ११ ॥

ye yathā māṃ prapadyante tāṃs tathaiva bhajāmy aham |
mama vartmānuvartante manuṣyāḥ pārtha sarvaśaḥ || 11 ||

ye–they; yathā–as; mām–Me; prapadyante–as they serve; tān–them; tathā–so; eva–certainly; bhajāmi aham–I love and serve; mama vartma–My path; anuvartante–follow; manuṣyāḥ–all men; pārtha–O son of Pṛthā; sarvaśaḥ–in all respects.

O Pārtha, in whichever way a person renders service to Me I reciprocate with him accordingly. Everyone follows My path in all respects.

Commentary: Sārārtha-Varṣiṇī Ṭīkā

(By Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura; the innermost intention of the commentary named ‘the shower of essential meanings’)

One may ask the following question: “Only Your exclusive, one-pointed devotees understand Your birth and activities to be eternal. Others, who have an inclination toward jñāna and other processes, take shelter of You to perfect a particular process, but they do not accept the eternality of Your birth and activities. What will happen to them?” In response, Śrī Kṛṣṇa speaks this verse beginning with ye yathā. “Those who take shelter of Me perform bhajana, and I reciprocate by granting them the result of that bhajana. I am the Supreme Master, and My birth and pastimes are eternal. To those who understand this and who also worship Me by serving My pastimes specifically to please Me, I as the Supreme Controller, being independent to act or not act as I choose, also make their birth and activities eternal. I make them My eternal associates (parikaras) and at the appropriate time, I become manifest and unmanifest in this material world, along with them. In this way, I bestow My mercy upon them at every moment by giving them prema as the fruit of their service.

“There are others, such as the jñānīs, who take shelter of Me, considering My birth and activities to be temporary and My deity form to be a product of the external energy. In turn, I repeatedly throw them into the net of the cycle of repeated birth and action, which is subject to destruction. There, in the snare of illusion, I give them misery in the form of birth and death. However, those jñānīs who consider My birth and activities to be eternal and My deity to be composed of eternality, knowledge and bliss take shelter of Me to perfect their knowledge. For such liberationists, who desire through abandoning their gross and subtle bodies, I destroy their stay in the cycle of birth and death, which is born of ignorance, and grant them brahmānanda (the bliss of liberation) as the fruit of their worship. Thus, not only My devotees take shelter of Me, but also jñānīs, karmīs, yogīs, renunciants, worshippers of the demigods and all others follow My path. Since I am sarva-svarūpa, the form of everything, all paths, including jñāna and karma, are paths to Me.”

Commentary: Sārārtha-Varṣiṇī Prakāśikā-vṛtti

(By Śrīla Bhaktivedānta Nārāyaṇa Gosvāmī Mahārāja; the explanation that illuminates the commentary named Sārārtha-varṣiṇī)

tāṃs tān kāmān harir dadyād yān yān kāmayate janaḥ
ārādhito yathaivaiṣa tathā puṃsāṃ phalodayaḥ

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (4.13.34)

It is understood from this verse that according to the intention with which people worship Bhagavān Śrī Hari or take shelter of Him, He rewards them accordingly. The pure devotees worship Him to attain eternal service to His spiritual form, which is sac-cid-ānanda, composed of eternality, cognizance and bliss. Making such loving devotees His eternal associates, Bhagavān Śrī Hari fulfils their desire to attain loving service to Him. In accordance with the desire of the impersonalist empiric philosophers, Bhagavān grants them liberation in the form of nirvāṇa, in the featureless nirviśeṣa-brahma, which is the unvariegated manifestation of His personality. Bhagavān appears to those desirous of material enjoyment as He who bestows the fruits of their prescribed duty. And He appears to the yogīs as Īśvara, the Supreme Lord, and gives them mystic powers or liberation. However, of all the various achievements, the ultimate is to attain service to Vrajendra-nandana Śrī Kṛṣṇa in Goloka Vraja.

It should be clearly understood from the present verse of Bhagavad-gītā that the results of different types of bhajana depend on the desires of the practitioners and are not the same. Some explain the words manuṣyāḥ pārtha sarvaśaḥ to mean that everyone is following the path of service to Bhagavān and that all will attain the same result, whatever action they perform. This conception is completely incorrect. The idea that the miscreants, the jñānīs, the devotees and the premī-bhaktas ultimately achieve the exact same destination has been refuted in scriptures such as the Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

This is stated later in the Gītā (9.25):

yānti deva-vratā devān pitṝn yānti pitṛ-vratāḥ
bhūtāni yānti bhūtejyā yānti mad-yājino’pi mām

Those who worship the demigods go to the planets of the demigods, those who worship the forefathers go to their planet, those who worship the ghosts and spirits go to the planet of the spirits, and those who worship Me attain Me.

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura quotes Kṛṣṇa as follows, “I reciprocate with the mood in which one accepts shelter of Me and worships Me. Everyone can certainly attain Me, because I am the ultimate objective of all paths. Those who are pure devotees attain transcendental bliss by eternally rendering confidential eternal service to My spiritual form, which is composed of sac-cid-ānanda, eternality, cognizance and bliss, in the Supreme Abode. To the worshippers of My featureless aspect, the impersonalists, I award nirvāṇa-, total absorption in the nirviśeṣa-brahma, by way of self-annihilation. Since they do not accept the eternality of My sac-cid-ānanda form, they consequently lose their own eternal, blissful form.

“According to their degree of conviction, I cast some of them into the cycle of birth and death. I appear as void to the nihilists, or śūnyavādīs, merging their existence with the void. I completely cover the consciousness of the materialistic empiricists, as well as those who identify themselves as being born of nature, by making their consciousness almost inert. I am only attainable to them in the form of inert nature. I appear as Īśvara to the yogīs, rewarding them with mystic powers or impersonal liberation. In this way, as the intrinsic form of everything (sarva-svarūpa), I am the object of achievement for all types of beliefs. Among them all, the only one that should be considered supreme is attainment of transcendental service to Me. All human beings follow one of My various paths.”