God is not present less in the hearts of the godless Gita 15.15

Transcript

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God is not present less in the godless.
For those who are practicing spiritual life, and especially those who have made some moral improvement because of the practice of their spiritual life, it is a very strong temptation for them to start looking down upon the godless. Because we feel that we are more morally elevated than others, so we naturally think that we are in a superior position and others are in an inferior position. And because our moral elevation means that we have now become disconnected from some worldly pleasures, that we have become constrained to give up some material pleasures, so we are in need of some other pleasure.
And of course, we may have got some access to spiritual happiness by our devotional practices, but that access may not be consistent because we are still under the influence of our mind and senses. So, when the higher taste of pure spiritual love is not readily accessible, at least regularly, and when the lower sensual pleasures have been given up, then we are left with something in the intermediate. What is that? That is the higher material pleasure of self-righteousness.
Because our consciousness is still material, but because we have to some extent given up cross-material pleasures, so now we start looking for higher material pleasures. And the pleasure of the ego, of feeling oneself to be morally superior to others, can be a very gratifying pleasure, although it is not at all a spiritually elevating pleasure. So, we need to resist this temptation.
And one meditation that can help us to resist this temptation is that God is not present less in the godless. God is present in the hearts of all living beings, as stated in the Bhagavad Gita 15.15. And all living beings means that there is no exception at all. Even if somebody is godless, extremely godless, still God is not less present in their hearts.
God is equally present in their hearts as much as he is present in the hearts of those who are godly, even those who are saintly. Of course, his presence is less manifest to the godless and through the godless. That means that for godless people, they themselves don’t perceive God’s presence in their heart.
And similarly, others too can’t perceive the presence of God when they are in the presence of such godless people. So, God is equally present in the hearts of all living beings, but he is not equally manifest in everyone’s heart. And we can spiritually advance when we associate with those in whose heart God is manifest more.
And we ourselves spiritually advance when God manifests more in our heart also. So, there is a necessity to have some amount of discernment by which we understand who are close to God and who are far away from God. But such discernment is best done in a humble mode of self-protection, not in an arrogant mode of self-congratulation.
A humble mode of self-protection means that we understand that if I associate indiscriminately with the godless, then my own God-consciousness will go down and therefore I need to be careful, maybe keep a safe distance from them, if not physically, at least emotionally. But in addition to this, if instead of this humble mode of self-protection, this is what I need to do for protecting myself, because I am still vulnerable to sinful contaminations. Instead of this, we adopt the arrogant mode of self-congratulation, wherein we think, just see how elevated I am and how fallen they are.
But then we end up finding ourselves overwhelmed by the conditionings that dog all of us, and one of those conditionings is the conditioning of the ego. So, when the egoistic mode of self-congratulation consumes us, then we are not thinking of Krishna. Instead, we are thinking of ourselves and our own glory.
Then, whereas earlier, sinfulness had stopped us from coming close to Krishna, now self-righteousness stops us from coming close to Krishna. So, if we see that God is not present less in the hearts of the Godless, then we can slowly but steadily move onwards towards bringing ourselves close to Him and bringing Him close to others. We can see how can I conduct myself in a way that I can go close to my Lord and that I can help others feel inspired to move close to my Lord.
Such is the meditation of compassion, and the actions that emerge from this meditation of compassion, those actions provide others, even those who are fallen, the inspiration for transformation. Only when we have the vision of compassion can we provide the inspiration for transformation. If we have the vision of condemnation, of judgmentality, then we cause alienation