Chapter IV (VERSE 39) & CHAPTER VI (VERSE V)
Jnana Karma Sanyasa Yoga – The Yoga of Renunciation of Action with Knowledge
CHAPTER IV
Verse 39
श्रद्धावाँल्लभते ज्ञानं तत्परः संयतेन्द्रियः ।
ज्ञानं लब्ध्वा परां शान्तिमचिरेणाधिगच्छति ॥ ४-३९॥
The man who is full of faith, who is devoted to It, and who has subdued the senses, obtains (this) ‘Knowledge’ ; and having obtained ‘Knowledge, ‘ ere long he goes to the Supreme Peace.
The qualities that are necessary for an individual to be assured of the Knowledge-Divine are being enumerated here as vividly as from the leaf of a Science text-book. Three great qualities have been indicated and to understand them is to understand why the so-called seekers, in spite of their claims to sincere self-application, do not actually reach anywhere near the ladder of development. Faith, devotion, and self-control are the three imperative necessities to be acquired ere we can hope to evolve to the diviner stature from our present mortal encumbrances. But these three words are more often misunderstood than rightly evaluated.
FAITH (Shraddha) — Exploiters of religions have been making capital out of repeating this word as their safest excuse for all problems spiritual, to clear which devotees may approach these men who pose themselves as guides in religion. Invariably, we find that the ordinary devotees are completely rendered, sometimes fanatical and often poorer, in their intellectual and mental growth, because of the unintelligent insistence of Shraddha translated as “blind faith and unquestioned acceptance of any declaration said to be divine.”
Shankara tolls the death-knell of this misunderstanding when he explains Shraddha as “that by which an individual readily understands the exact import of the scriptural text as well as the pregnant words of advice of the preceptor.”
DEVOTED TO IT (Tatparah) — Whatever be the ‘path’ of divine self-development that he may be following, it is an unavoidable necessity that the seeker must give his undivided attention to it, and must, on all occasions, maintain in his mind a continuous consciousness of the Divine. A mere intellectual study of the scriptures will not help us in purifying and shaping our “within’ to the glorious Beauty of the Divine. It is necessary that we must pour out our mind and intellect into the scheme of living that the Upanishads advise.
WHO HAS SUBDUED THE SENSES — The Shraddha and Jnana explained above will not sustain themselves, and no seeker can consistently hope to entertain them unless he is constantly striving his best to live in a spirit of self-control. It is the sense-organs that seduce us away into the life of excessive sensuousness, and when one has entered into the troubled waters of a sensuous life, one has no chances of maintaining oneself quietly in the higher values of life. To walk the Path-Divine is to get out of the gutters-ofsensuousness. Excessive sense-life and Absolute God-life are antitheses to each other; where the one is, the other cannot be. Where the light of inward serenity and deeper peace have come, the darkness created by sense passions and animal appetites must depart. It is imperative, therefore, that a seeker should learn to live in steady and constant sense-control.
Why should we live renouncing sense enjoyments, and employing our mind in remembering constantly the Divine goal of life, with faith both in ourselves and in the science of religion? Ordinarily, an intellect can enquire only as to the cause-and-effect of things. The ego is ever employed in its own motive-hunting. A seeker in the initial stages of his self-development remains constantly in his intellect. Naturally, he will enquire what the result of such a conspicuous sacrifice would be. To convince him, the second line is given.
That a seeker who lives the above-mentioned tripleprogramme of Divine life, reaches the State-of- ‘Knowledge’ is the promise and guarantee of the Rishis, who are the authors of the immortal scriptures. A doubt again arises as to why we should, after all, acquire the ‘Knowledge-Divine.’ Krishna explains here that, having gained the right-knowledge, the individual “SOON REACHES THE SUPREME PEACE.” The promise of reaching the great Goal-of-life is not guaranteed to take effect in a definite period of time. Just as, in the previous stanza, it was said, “In good time” (Kalena), so too, here it is said, “Ere long” (Achirena). In short, after gaining this ‘Knowledge,’ one would “soon” reach the Goal-of-life.
SUPREME PEACE (Param Shantim) — The Goal-of-life is labelled here as the “Great Peace” that knows no diminution. In these days of peace-mongers getting ready for war in the name of peace, one is apt to become honestly sceptical about the goal indicated in this stanza. The term ‘peace’ here is not that undefined vague concept, that is often repeated in politics, whenever it is convenient for a set of politicians to do so, but the term Shanti has a wealth of psychological suggestiveness.
It is very well-known that every living creature is, at all moments, trying to gain a better happiness, through all its activities in life. From breathing and eating, to the organised endeavour in capturing the world-market through war and destruction, all activities are attempts by the frail individuals to discover a greater and a better joy or happiness. This is true not only in man but in the animal kingdom, and even in the vegetable world. In short, no action is possible unless the actor is motivated by an inner urge in him to seek a greater sense of fulfilment or joy unto himself.
If thus, the whole world is striving to win the highest joy that it possibly can, and having gained it, to invest all energy and intelligence to retain the same, then the goal of life should be ABSOLUTE-HAPPINESS, where all strife ends, all desires are fulfilled, all thoughts and agitations are finally exhausted. Desires for joy give rise to thought disturbances, which, trying to fulfil themselves in the outer world, become the visible actions in everyday life.
The restlessness of the mind and the weary fatigue of the body shall both end, when Absolute Joy is attained. Therefore, Absolute Joy is Absolute Peace.
Here, in this stanza the Goal-of-life is indicated as the Supreme Peace, which may be, in other words, explained as the Supreme Joy.
Dhyana Yoga – Yoga of Meditation
CHAPTER VI
(Verse 5)
उद्धरेदात्मनात्मानं नात्मानमवसादयेत् ।
आत्मैव ह्यात्मनो बन्धुरात्मैव रिपुरात्मनः ॥ ६-५॥
Let a man lift himself by his own Self alone, and let him not lower himself; for, this Self alone is the friend of oneself, and this Self is the enemy of oneself.
As a complete Shastra, the Geeta has to be faithful to Truth and Truth alone, irrespective of what the tradition of the country, at a given period, might have made the faithful ones believe. It is not very unhealthy to believe that Grace from an external source is constantly helping a true seeker striving on his path — but this is really healthy only when this thought is correspondingly complemented with sufficiently intense self-effort. “MAN SHOULD UPLIFT HIMSELF BY HIMSELF,” is an open statement declared by no less a person than Lord Krishna Himself — not cooed in a playful mood in the company of the gopis on the Jamuna-banks at a hilarious hour of laughter and play, but roared to Arjuna on the battlefield at a serious moment of His life’s fulfilment as an Avatara. Man, if he wants to exalt himself into the greater cultural and spiritual possibilities now lying dormant in him, has to raise the lower in himself to the greater perfection that is the true and eternal core in himself.
Everyone has in himself a picture of the ideal. This intellectual conception of ourselves is always very vivid in each one of us. But unfortunately, this ideal remains only in the realm of thought and is not lived in the world of activity. Intellectually we may have a clear and vivid picture of what we should be, but mentally and physically we behave as though we were the opposites of our own ideal concepts. The gulf between the ‘IDEAL-ME’ and the ‘ACTUAL-ME’ is the measure of man’s fall from his perfection.
Most of us are generally unconscious of this duality in ourselves. We mistakes ourselves to be the ideal and are generally blind to our own ACTUAL imperfections. Thus we find a notoriously selfish man in society warmly and sincerely criticising the slightest traces of selfishness in his neighbour! In a world of no mirrors, it is possible that a squint-eyed man may laugh at another squint-eyed person because the one who laughs knows not the angle in which his own eye-balls are facing each other!!
Within ourselves, if we, carefully watch, we can discover that intellectually we have a clear concept of a morally strong, ethically perfect, physically loving and socially disciplined man that ‘we should be’; but in the mental zones of our emotions and feelings, however, we are tantalised by our own attachments, likes and dislikes, loves and hatreds, appetites and passions, and we behave like curs fed by the way-side gutters and ever quarrelling with others of the same ilk over dry and marrowless bones!!
As long as the individual has not realised the existence of this dual personality in himself, there cannot be any religion for him. If an individual has discovered that there is “enough in him to be divided into two portions,” and when he wants to keep the lower as brilliant and chaste as the higher, the technique that he will have to employ to fulfil this aspiration is called RELIGION.
Mind is the saboteur that enchants us away from perfection, to be a slave to the flesh and the external objects of brittle satisfaction. Mind is the conditioning that distorts the ideal and creates the lower Satanic sensuous self in us, which is to be brought into unison with the intellect, the equipment for the higher Self to manifest. In short, when the rational and discriminative capacities of a limited intellect are brought to bear their authority upon the wavering and wandering, sense-mongering-mind, the lower is brought under discipline and made to attune with the nobler and the diviner in us. The processes by which the lower is brought under the direct management and discipline of the higher are all together called the spiritual techniques.
This process of self-rehabilitation and self-redemption of the Satan in us cannot be executed by inviting tenders and giving the contract to the lowest bidder! Each will have to do it all by himself: “ALONE TO THE ALONE ALL ALONE” IS THE WAY. No Guru can take the responsibility; no scripture can promise this redemption; no altar can, with its divine blessings, make the lower the higher. The lower must necessarily be trained slowly and steadily to accept and come under the influence of the discipline of the higher. In this process, the teacher, the scripture, and the houses-of-God, have all their proper appointed duties and limited influences. But the actual happening depends upon how far we ourselves learn to haul ourselves out from the gutters of misunderstanding in ourselves.
So far Bhagawan has indicated an exhaustive treatment which may be, in many of its aspects, considered as equivalent to the modern psychological process called introspection. Realising our own weaknesses, rejecting the false, asserting the better, and trying to live, generally, as best as we can, the higher way-of-life, is the process of introspection. But his is only half the entire process and not the whole of it.
The other half also is insisted upon, here, by Krishna. It is not only sufficient that we look within, come to note our weaknesses, erase them, substitute the opposite good qualities, and develop in ourselves the better, but we must see to it, that, whatever little conquests we might have made out of Satan’s province are not again handed back to Satan’s dominion. Krishna warns, almost in the same breath, “DO NOT ALLOW THE SELF THEREAFTER TO FALL DOWN AND BE DRAGGED AGAIN” to the old level of the cheaper way of existence.
The second line of the stanza contains a glorious idea shaped into a beauty of expression which almost immortalises Vyasa. We are considered both as our own friend and our own enemy. Any intelligent man observing and analysing life will vouchsafe for the truth of the statement, but here, more is meant philosophically, than meets the eye. Generally, we do not fully understand the import when we say “THE SELF IS THE FRIEND OF THE SELF.”
The lower in us can ever raise itself to the attunement of the Higher, but the Higher can influence only when the lower is available for Its influence. To the extent the lesser in us surrenders itself to the influence of the Higher, to that extent, It can serve the lower as a great friend. But if the lower refuses to come under the influence of the Diviner in us, the Divine Presence is accused as an enemy of ourselves, inasmuch as the dynamism of life provides us Its energy both for our “life of higher aspirations” and the “life of low temptations.”
Ultimately, it is for the aspirant himself to accept the responsibility for blessing or damning himself. The potentiality for improvement, the chances for self-growth, the strength to haul ourselves out from our own misconceptions, are ever open for employment. But it all depends upon how we make use of them.