Text 19]
The Process of Creation
205
is worshiped by Lord Brahmā and Śiva and all those who are transcendental to all pretensions. Being so revered with awe and veneration, may that Supreme Absolute be pleased with me.
PURPORT
The Supreme Lord, the Personality of Godhead, although the Lord of all followers of different paths of self-realization, is knowable only by those who are above all pretensions. Everyone is searching for eternal peace or eternal life, and with an aim to this destination everyone is either studying Vedic scriptures or other religious scriptures or undergoing severe austerity as empiric philosophers, as mystics  yogīs  or as unalloyed devotees, etc. But the Supreme Lord is perfectly realized by the devotees only because they are above all pretensions. Those who are on the path of self-realization are generally classified as  karmīs ,  jñānīs ,  yogīs , or devotees of the Lord. The  karmīs , who are much attracted by the fruitive activities of the Vedic rituals, are called  bhukti-kāmī , or those who desire liberation from material existence. The mystic  yogīs , who practice different types of austerities for attainment of eight kinds of material perfections and who ultimately meet the Supersoul Paramātmā in trance, are called  siddhi-kāmī , or those who desire the perfection of becoming finer than the finest, heavier than the heaviest, and who desire to get everything desired, to have control over everyone, to create everything liked, etc. All these are capacities of a powerful  yogī . But the devotees of the Lord do not want anything like that for self-satisfaction. They want only to serve the Lord because the Lord is great, and as living entities they are eternally subordinate parts and parcels of the Lord. This perfect realization of the self by the devotee helps him to become desireless, to desire nothing for his personal self, and thus the devotees are called  niṣkāmī , without any desire. A living entity, by his constitutional position, cannot be void of all desires (the  bhukti-kāmī ,  mukti-kāmī  and  siddhi-kāmī  all desire something for personal satisfaction), but the  niṣkāmī  devotees of the Lord desire everything for the satisfaction of the Lord. They are completely dependent on the orders of the Lord and are always ready to discharge their duty for the satisfaction of the Lord.
In the beginning Arjuna placed himself as one of those who desire self-satisfaction, for he desired not to fight in the Battle of Kurukṣetra, but to make him desireless the Lord preached the  Bhagavad-gītā , in which the ways of  karma-yoga ,  jñāna-yoga ,  haṭha-yoga , and also  bhakti-yoga  were explained. Because Arjuna was without any pretension, he changed his