caturvidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ sukṛtino’rjuna ārto jijñāsurarthārthī jñānī ca bharatarṣabha (16)
caturvidhāḥ – four-fold; janāḥ – people; sukṛtinaḥ – who do good actions; mām – me; bhajante – worship; arjuna – O Arjuna!; ārtaḥ – the one in distress; arthārthī – the one who seeks security and pleasure; jijñāsuḥ – the one who desires to know; ca – and; jñānī – the one who knows; bharatarṣabha – O the foremost in the clan of Bharata!
Arjuna, the foremost in the clan of Bharata! People given to good actions, who worship me are four-fold–the distressed, the seeker of security and pleasure, the one who desires to know (me), and the one who knows (me).
The jijñāsu is not invoking Īśvara’s grace for simple accomplishments. He wants to know the truth of Īśvara, the ultimate cause of everything. And this jijñāsu is a great devotee. He does not use Bhagavān as an accomplice for his small pursuits. He wants to know who is Īśvara and as a bhakta he invokes Īśvara’s grace for this.
Knowledge of Īśvara is nothing but knowledge of ātmā. Īśvara, the cause of everything, happens to be in essence, oneself. If Īśvara were other than ātmā, he would be anātmā, and therefore, inert. The only conscious being is ātmā, and Īśvara is not separate from it.
This seeming difference between Īśvara and the individual is due to upādhi, as we have seen. There is only one reality which the jijñāsu wants to know. He is a devotee because he seeks the help of Īśvara and performs prayerful actions to earn this help.
When one is a jijñāsu one necessarily becomes a jñānī, the one who knows the truth of Lord Viṣṇu, Parameśvara, as oneself. Such a person is a real bhakta.
The jñānī’s devotion is what we call sādhya-bhakti. There are two types of bhakti. One is sādhana-bhakti, a devotion to Īśvara as a means. This is the devotion of a jijñāsu. But the bhakti of one who understands Īśvara, who recognises the truth of Īśvara as ātmā, is sādhya-bhakti. It is a bhakti that has fulfilled itself in the form of parama-prema-svarūpa-bhakti, absolute love.
This is the devotion of a jñānī. For him, the bhakti has fulfilled itself. So, how can we call him a bhakta? He is still a bhakta if we consider a bhakta as someone who is in union with Īśvara. For a jñānī, Īśvara is aparokṣa, immediate. It is the only difference, and it is a great difference.
For a jijñāsu, however, there is a possibility of Īśvara becoming aparokṣa and for the jñānī, he is aparokṣa because Īśvara, the cause of everything, is non-separate from ātmā. Even though Īśvara is the ātmā of everyone, it is only the jñānī who appreciates it. Only he has an intellect subtle enough to recognise what is true for everyone. And the jñānī is distinguished here among the bhaktas as a fulfilled bhakta. The jijñāsu is going to be fulfilled.
Bhakti, devotion, is any type of union between jīva and Īśvara. By a proper action or even a thought you are uniting yourself to Īśvara. But jñānī does not try to make a bridge between jīva and Īśvara. Gaining the knowledge, he finds that he is always united. There is only one thing–Īśvara, that is ātmā. There is no second thing at all to unite with. So, he is nitya-yukta, always united.
There are four kinds of virtuous men who worship me, Arjuna: the man in distress, the man who seeks power, the man who seeks wisdom, and the sage. ~Bhagavad Gita 7:16 (tr-Stephen Mitchell)
