How do wise men see Truth?

Vidyaavinaya sampanne brahmane gavi hastini |

Shuni chaiva shwapaakecha panditaah samadarshinah || 5.18 ||

Meaning:

Sages look with an equal eye upon a BRAHMANA endowed with learning and humility, on a cow, on an elephant, and even on a dog and an outcaste.

My meaning:

Wise men, whose ignorance of the self has been removed by the knowledge, see equality in a Brahmana endowed with humility, a cow, an elephant, a dog and even in all lower beings. If everything is part of that universal Self, then how can one differentiate between lower and higher beings. Only tides are different from each other, but ocean which forms those tides, is same. Like this, the self in every creature is the same. Thus wise men can see divinity in everything.

Commentary by Chinamayananda Swami:

The wise cannot but see and recognise the same presence of Divinity everywhere. The ocean has no difference in feeling for different waves. Gold cannot recognise itself as different in different pieces of ornaments. From the stand-point of mud, all mud pots are the same. Similarly, an egoless man, having recognised himself to be God, can find in no way, any distinction in the outer world of names and forms. The distinctions generally recognised, are all the distinctions of the containers. Man to man, there may be differences in form, shape and colour of the body, or the nature of the mind or the subtlety of the intellect. But as far as Life is concerned, It is the same everywhere, at all times.

Therefore, it is said in this stanza, that the Self-realised cast an equal eye on a Brahmana endowed with scholarship coupled with humility, on a cow, on an elephant, on a dog or on a pariah. Everywhere he realises the presence of the same Truth, whatever be the container.

Equal vision is the hall-mark of Realisation. The perfected cannot make distinctions based upon likes and dislikes. In and through all forms and situations, he sees the expressions of the same dynamic Truth which he experiences as his own Self.