PART 4: WHO OWNS GOD. NO ONE. EVER!

PART 4: God refuses to be OWNED. And the Gita refuses to endorse the One True Owner claim

How the Gita builds pluralism into the Divine Code

In Parts 1 to 3 we sat inside a burning house…and my! was it hot!

A Jewish teacher gets killed by Roman empire, with support of a few jewish priests and members of the public
The Church shifts the blame onto the whole Jewish race and weaponizes Christ for genocide
Islam picks up its own revelations from Quran and, in too many places, builds a theology around kuffār and conquests
Both Christians and Muslims send missionaries and preachers across continents, and wherever they went in “one true God and that is ours” mode, local cultures have died or lived in permanent conflict

Look at the world map. Large parts of the world where Christian and Islamic mass conversion projects ran the hardest are still sitting on long-held pains and fracture lines. Latin America, many parts of Africa, West Asia and even India.

No one can honestly call that “peace”. So, now we step out of that house. Not to do ‘kumbaya.’ But to show that there actually is a way to speak of the Divine that does require anyone to monopolize God, nor does it require conversion by force, and yet respects a hierarchy of consciousness.

This beautiful dimension and way of life is already written in a dialogue on a battlefield – more than 5000 years ago!

The Gita’s starting point – One Absolute; many routes

Lord Krishna does not speak as the ‘CEO’ of some new religion. He speaks as THE Voice of the Absolute inside a dharmic civilization that already knows many devatas, many paths, and has many scriptures.

There are two specific lines in the Bhagavad Gita that set the spine for this world view:

ye yathā māṁ prapadyante tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham
“As people approach Me, in that same way I respond to them.”

and,

yānti deva vratā devān
pitṝn yānti pitṛ vratāḥ
bhūtāni yānti bhūtejyā
yānti mad yājino mām
(Bhagavad Gita 9.25)

“Those who are devoted to the gods go to the gods. Those devoted to ancestors go to the ancestors. Those who worship spirits go to those beings. Those who worship Me come to Me.”

This is not a slogan for “all paths are the same” – they cannot be. Variety is a default feature of creation. It is a very precise law of the consciousness.

There is ONE ultimate Reality – call it Brahman, Paramātman, Bhagavan – whichever dimension of this manifestion you want to relate to.
That Reality makes way for many levels and forms of experience
You go where you aim. If your devotion is to a particular form, you reach that particular plane. If you want to associate with the formless, that is accepted too. Even atheism is allowed and there is an entire atheistic school of thought in Vedic tradition.
If your devotion is to the Supreme, you reach the Supreme

Hierarchy is real. Pluralism is also real and very naturally acceptable. You do not get John 14:6 here, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” You get Gita 9.25, “You go where you worship.”

The difference is ENORMOUS. In fact, it is incomparable as it is incompatible too!

Pluralism is not an ‘add-on’; it is built into the engine

In many modern ‘interfaith’ conversations, pluralism is treated like a patch or at worst, a taboo topic. What an irony – because pluralism is the domain of the advanced intelligence. Deep inside, every religion, wven when they smile and wave, is under the weight of its own theology that still says “only our path is true”, but at the surface people say “of course we respect everyone” – to be polite.

In the Gita, plurality is not a patch. It is build into the system and is woven into the existential fabric. It is how the system works.

i) Lord Krishna does not ‘panic’ or get ‘jealous’ about other devatas

The Lord says clearly:

“Whoever desires to worship whatever form, I make their faith steady in that form.”
(paraphrasing Gita 7.21–22)

He even says that the fruits received from other gods also come from Him in the end. The devotee may not know that, but He does. There is no insecurity here.

ii) He acknowledges partial destinations without hatred

The Gita 9.25 is brutally honest.

If you worship at ancestral level, you stay at ancestor level
If you worship nature/spirits or subtle beings, you go to that dimension
If you turn fully to the Supreme, you reach the Supreme Destination!

There is hierarchy for sure. But there is no demonisation of other people’s choices. A Christian style monopoly would say, “Everyone outside our path is damned.” An Islamist monopoly would say
“Everyone outside our path is kuffar.”

Lord Krishna simply says, “You go where your heart and practice are aimed. If you are satisfied with a lower destination, the universe will not stop you. If you want Me, aim higher.” Everything is a part of His own Creative energy – so there is no questions of insulting or demonizing any other choice. What The Lord gives is pluralism with physics. Not pluralism with sentimental slogans of hatred.

No Conversion Mandate – Only Alignment

There is absolutely no concept or framework for conversion in Vedic Dharma. It is worth noticing a very important declaration missing the the Bhagavad Gita:

There is no line that says, “Arjuna, go and make the whole world follow only Me.” Lord Krishna’s instructions in the Gita are very personalized even when it is universal:

Understand your true nature
Align with Me.
Act without attachment.
Stand for dharma in your own context
In the end, give up all types of dharmas and surrender unto Me

Lord Krishna has ZERO anxiety or expectation about how many “followers” He has. He is not running a cosmic market share game. Because of that, the Hindu civilization did not develop and does not even make way for one single prophet whose acceptance is mandatory for salvation. It also has no ONE single book that must replace all other books. And also not one institution that must stamp your identity before God will hear you. If this is not real freedom, I do not know what is!

Hindu Missionary activity, when it appears in dharmic cultures, is usually around “teach, uplift, share a path” and not “convert entire populations or they are doomed, and use force, if you have to.”

That is why Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism did not produce a global “convert or die” empire pattern. You can argue about their faults, if any, but you cannot say they tried to wipe the planet clean of other religions. Even Judaism hasn’t done this – except for couple of specific/minor historical instances – but never as a religion.

How Lord Krishna’s Words break the Abrahamic Monopoly Logic

This whole series is about – Who owns God. In the Abrahamic ffaith fight, each side says:

Only this revelation.
Only this covenanted people.
Only this mediator.
Everyone else is either wrong, incomplete, or saved “through us” without knowing it.

So the whole game is about exclusive license. Jews said “we are the chosen people” – fair enough, they at least did not go on conversion rampages. Christians say “you rejected the Messiah, we are the new Israel, and no one comes to the Father except through Christ”. Muslims say “Islam is the final and complete revelation, previous scriptures are corrupted, and the only fully acceptable identity before Allah is Muslim.”

The Bhagavad Gita quietly refuses to play this game at all. It doesn’t even operate in this dimension. Because there is no chosen race nor is there any single historical founder who must be accepted by name. There is hierarchy but it is based on guna and karma. Lord Krishna is also a God who is above gender biases. His laws are Absolute, ruthless, and compassionate at the same time.

It lets everyone keep their path. It also tells the truth about where each path leads. You do not need to murder or convert anyone. You only need to decide what you yourself want. It also gives issues an advisory on cause- effect, choice-consequence, good-bad binaries. But you have your free will.

The Message for the places already Burning

The issue with conversion, invasions, and proselytization is that wherever Christian missionaries and Islamic preachers arrived with a mass conversion agenda, they did not offer another way to love God. But they tore worlds open and foundations of people. They taught people that their ancestors walked in darkness. It was a psy op which made children ashamed of their own grandparents. They set up a permanent split inside the same village or family. They brought God as a knife that cuts communities into “saved” and “lost”.

From a Gita vantage point, this is a double insult. You insult the Absolute by pretending It only recognises your logo. You insult human beings by turning their most intimate search into a market share target. This is borderline unpardonable!

A culture aligned to the Gita way would never send missionaries to the Amazon rainforest to tell a tiny tribe, “Everything your forefathers believed is demonic. Sign this membership form or burn.” But it might send a yogi who lives with them, learns their ways, and quietly shares practices that raise spiritual awareness, without ripping their culture apart.

Pluralism does not mean you freeze everyone where they are. It means you do not destroy their roots in the name of growing your tree.

Lord Krishna’s answer to “Who owns God”

If you listen very carefully, the Gita gives you a stupefying answer that no Abrahamic creed answer directly, without collapsing.

On one side the Lord in the Gita declares, “I am the source of all. From Me everything comes. In Me everything rests, and in the end everything returns to Me.” He also says, “However people approach Me, I meet them that way.”
So the clear Divine logic is:

Ultimate Ownership – The Lord triumphantly declares in summary, “Everything is in Me. I am everything and am Above and Beyond everything as well, yet am Whole” He is His own Boss!
Human Ownership – No – No group owns Me, no book owns Me, no prophet owns Me. He is svarat. He is abhigna

You cannot stamp proprietary rights on the Absolute. Lord Krishna speaks as the Source, not as the founder of a brand. He does not tell any community “you alone are my legitimate dealers on earth” Even though it appears like He is partial towards His devotees, He has declred that he is equal to everyone.

That is why the Gita can hold together:

deep commitment to one isṭa devatā (like Abrahamic Faiths)
respect for other devatas and paths (Like other polytheistic religions)
clarity that turning to the Supreme is different from staying at limited levels without falling into war.

Reopening Coexistence without Flimsiness

We are not writing this series to say, “Let us all hold hands and declare all paths identical.” We are saying:

Abrahamic traditions have turned God into a weapon
Their monopoly claims have created horrible collective karma
Jews have been crushed between Christian and Islamic readings they never signed up for
Hindus and other dharmic cultures have been burnt by the same fire.

So what does the Gita offer in this human scale mess we are sitting on:

A language for and of God that is big enough to include genuine differences in destination, without hating anyone
A map of consciousness where each person or culture goes where it aims, without needing to control the whole planet
A built-in acceptance that other people’s devotion may be fine to accept, even when their picture is partial

We can say it like this: The Gita does not say every path is the same. It says every path has a specific destination. If you want the Supreme, aim there. If you choose lower worlds, you will get them. But you never get a licence to murder or erase someone else because they stand at a different point on the map.

That is how you step out of the Abrahamic karmic carousel. Not by pretending nothing happened. Not by pretending all gods are the same brand. By refusing to turn the Infinite into a monopoly product again.

This entire series is dedicated to His Divine Grace AC Bhakti Vedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada who gave this beautiful reconciliatory knowledge without diluting the essense of the Vedic knowledge.