121. samam sarvesu bhutesu
tisthantam paramesvaram …..
yah pasyati sa pasyati
The Bhagavad Gita(XIII-28)
The same in-all-beings-
dwelling-Paramesvar:
who see (this), sees indeed.
The highest level of spiritual realization consists in recognizing the divine principal in everything and in every event. These lines in the Gita express one of the fundamental tenets of the Hindu world view, indeed the doctrinal essence of Hinduism. The most important realization of Hindu seers, the fundamental revelation that comes from their meditation and spiritual search is that beneath and beyond the material and the physical world lies a spiritual reality. It is only when one recognizes this that one has truly lived the human life. This insight has been expressed by other thinkers and philosophers as well.
An analogy with the physicist’s endeavor may clarify this thesis. We see, observe, and experience countless physical phenomena around us: lightning and sunrise, erosion of rocks and the colors of the rainbow, the blossoming of flowers and the freezing of water in the cold, and many more. But when we become aware of these as various consequences of fundamental physical laws, our depth of understanding is enhanced, and our appreciation of the phenomenal world is enormously enriched. Likewise, say the seers, when we become aware of the spiritual substratum of the universe, our experience of it is heightened a thousandfold. Indeed, it is only when we achieve this that we really begin to see, i.e. understand, anything.
As the physicist can see through the mind’s eye the ultimate quarks and leptons of which the material world is constituted, so too the spiritually awakened person can recognize in the core of his/her being the all-pervading entity which is the spiritual substratum of reality.