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Devotion or the Unmanifest

Whether you worship the Lord in a form or the unmanifest Reality, which is better? Gita 12.1-5 holds Arjuna's question and the Lord's answer: the goal is one, but the roads differ in how hard they are.

In brief

Arjuna asks which knows yoga best: the worshipper of the Lord in a form, or the worshipper of the imperishable unmanifest (12.1).
In the Lord's view, the most united is the one who fixes the mind on Him, stays steady and has supreme faith (12.2).
Worshippers of the unmanifest also reach Him, but the road is far harder for those who live in a body (12.3-5).

One voice says that the Lord has a form and a name and can be loved. Another says He is beyond everything and cannot be tied to a shape. At the start of chapter 12, Arjuna puts this to Lord Krishna: which of the two kinds of worshippers is better?

The Lord's answer is direct. The one whose mind is fixed on Him, who is ever steady and has supreme faith, is the most united. Those who worship the unmanifest reach Him too, but for someone who lives in a body that road is much harder. "Unmanifest" here means the imperishable Reality that eye and mind cannot grasp.

This topic is the first stop on The Path of Devotion. The topic of the divine illusory energy and surrender comes next.

There are three readings of it: a simple reading that starts from a confusion, a detailed reading that takes the verses in order, and a deeper reading that goes into the hard questions and the streams of commentators.