Chapter V (VERSE 23) & CHAPTER 6 (VERSE 14)
Jnana Karma Sanyasa Yogam – The Yoga of Renunciation of Action with Knowledge
CHAPTER V
(Verse 23)
शक्नोतीहैव यः सोढुं प्राक्शरीरविमोक्षणात् ।
कामक्रोधोद्भवं वेगं स युक्तः स सुखी नरः ॥ ५-२३॥
He who is able, while still here (in this world) to withstand, before the liberation from the body (death), the impulse born out of desire and anger, he is a YOGIN, he is a happy man.
Krishna himself feels that his over-enthusiastic description of the Perfect-man and his mental life may give to any reader a despairing sense of impossibility or futility. No one living the present life of agitations, can ever dare to hope that such a perfect happiness is ever possible for a mortal living upon this ever-spinning globe. If a philosophy is only an idealism which has no contact with the practical world, that philosophy is merely Utopian poetry fit for entertaining a pleasant idea, but never capable of making man a nobler being.
In order to remove that misunderstanding, Krishna, in this stanza, gives the assurance that man is capable of living that perfect joy in this VERY WORLD, if only he makes the necessary adjustments in himself.
My great-grandfather was a great violinist. His violin was preserved and worshipped in my house till now. I too have gained now a preliminary nodding acquaintance with music. Suddenly an idea struck me: “Why not take my great-grandfather’s instrument and play upon it and thus become overnight a great musician?” If I play directly upon that ancient and faithful instrument, I will be forced to break it into pieces, for, that violin, in that condition, cannot give me perfect music. It needs general cleaning and dusting; perhaps, re-stringing and a lot of tuning up. When these adjustments are made, then only can it
faithfully give out all the notes, implicitly obeying the strokes of my bow and the ticklings of my finger. In the same fashion, today, our mind and intellect, the instruments of singing the song of Perfection, neglected from beginningless time, need a lot of re-adjustments before they can gurgle out their contents of laughter and joy.
The technique of re-adjusting the inner-instruments is beautifully summarised here by Lord Krishna. The very brevity and simplicity of this verse are the obstacles to our understanding its full import. The advice has a deceptive look of simplicity. “WITHSTAND THE IMPULSE OF DESIRE AND ANGER,” then he is a Yogi, even while here, before his death, the happy man. To a modern student of Freud and others, soaked with the ideas of behaviourism and such other modern superficialities of psychology, this
may look rather an unscientific expression of a crude enthusiast. But when we analyse and try to grapple with its full import and implication, we shall see that it contains volumes of suggestions.
“Desire” is the avalanche of thoughts sweeping down from the pinnacles of our intellect, along the valleys of our heart, towards an object-of-desire in the outer world. When this avalanche of thought is barricaded on its sweep by a substantial obstacle ere it reaches it destination, the blast with which it shatters itself on that obstacle is called “anger.” It is these two types of thoughts that generally agitate our bosom. The greater the desire with which we ponder over an object, the greater shall be the anger against any obstacle that comes between us and our object-of-desire.
To one who has won over joy and grief, and who has gained a certain amount of detachment from external objects, desire for obtaining the pleasant or the unpleasant is no emotion at all. Where there is no desire, hatred is an unknown alien factor there. He who has gained over these two impulses, powerful and almost irresistible as they are, is he who can afford to live in this world of multiplicity and imperfections as an independent solitary man of true and steady happiness.
Thus Krishna assures Arjuna — and through Arjuna all others like us who will read and try to understand this immortal scripture — that man can live perfectly happily even while in this form, among these very objects, in this very world, during this very life, if only he, in his spiritual evolution, learns to renounce his impulses of desire and hatred.
Dhyana Yoga – The Yoga of Meditation
CHAPTER VI
(Verse 14)
प्रशान्तात्मा विगतभीर्ब्रह्मचारिव्रते स्थितः ।
मनः संयम्य मच्चित्तो युक्त आसीत मत्परः ॥ ६-१४॥
Serene-minded, fearless, firm in the vow of BRAHMACHARYA , having controlled the mind, thinking on Me and balanced, let him sit, having Me as the Supreme Goal.
When the meditator has thus practised meditation for a certain period of time, as a result of his practice, he comes to experience a larger share of quietude and peace in his mind. This extremely subtle form of inward peace is indicated here by the term “Prashanta.” This inward silence, a revelling in an atmosphere of extreme joy and contentment — is the exact situation in which the individual can be trained to express the nobler and the diviner qualities which are inherent in the Divine Self.
A meditator invariably finds it difficult to scale into the higher realms of experience due to sheer psychological fear-complex. As the Yogin slowly and steadily gets unwound from his sensuous vasanas, he gets released, as it were, from the cruel embrace of his own mental octopus. At this moment of transcendence, the unprepared seeker feels mortally afraid of the thought that he is getting himself dissolved into “NOTHINGNESS.” The ego, because of its long habit of living in close proximity to its
own limitations, finds it hard even to believe that there is an Existence Supreme, Divine and Infinite. One is reminded of the story of the stranded fisher-women who complained that they could not get any sleep at all when they had to spend the night in a flower-shop, till they put their baskets very near their noses. Away from our pains, we dread to enter the Infinite Bliss!This sense of fear is the death-knell of all spiritual progress. Even if progress were to reach the bosom of such an individual, he would be compelled to reject it, because of the rising storm of his subjective fear.
Even though the mind has become extremely peaceful and joyous, and has renounced all its sense of fear through the study of the Scriptures and continuous practice of regular meditation, the progress is not assured because the possibility of failure shall ever hang over the head of the seeker, unless he struggles hard to get established in perfect Brahmacharya.
THE ASCETICISM OF BRAHMACHARYA — Here the phrase implies not only its Upanishadic implications, but definitely something more original, especially when it comes from Lord Krishna’s mouth and that too, in the context of the Geeta. Brahmacharya, generally translated as ‘celibacy,’
has a particular meaning, but the term has also a wider and a more general implication. Brahmacharya is not ONLY the control of the sex-impulses but is also the practice of self-control in all avenues of sense-impulses and sense-satisfactions. Unless the seeker has built up a perfect cage of intelligent self-control, the entire world-ofobjects will flood his bosom, to bring therein a state of unending chaos. A mind thus agitated by the inflow of sense stimuli, is a mind that is completely dissipated and ruined.
Apart from this meaning, which is essentially indicative of the goal, or rather, a state of complete detachment from the mind’s courtings of the external world-of-objects, there is a deeper implication to this significant and famous term. Brahmacharya, as such, is a term that can be dissolved in Sanskrit to mean “wandering in Brahma- Vichara.” To engage our mind in the contemplation of the Self, the Supreme Reality, is the saving factor that can really help us in withdrawing the mind from external objects.
The human mind must have one field or another to engage itself in. Unless it is given some inner field to meditate upon, it will not be in a position to retire from its extrovert pre-occupations. This is the secret behind all success in “total celibacy.” The successful Yogin need not be gazed at as a rare phenomenon in nature, for his success can be the success of all, only if they know how to establish themselves in this inward self-control. It is because people are ignorant of the positive methods to be practised for a continuous and successful negation and complete rejection of the charms of the sense-organs, that they invariably fail in their endeavour.
Naturally, it becomes easy for the individual who has gained in himself all the three above-mentioned qualities to control and direct the new-found energies in himself. The inward peace, an attribute of the intellect, comes only when the discriminative faculty is relatively quiet. Fearlessness brings about a great control over the exhausting thought commotions in the mental zone. Brahmacharya, in its aspect of sense-withdrawal, lends a larger share of physical quietude. Therefore, when, by the above process, the intellect, mind and body are all controlled and brought to the maximum amount of peace and quietude, the ‘way of life’ pursued by the seeker provides for him a large saving of mental energy which would otherwise have been spent away in sheer dissipation.
This newly-discovered and fully availed-of strength makes the mind stronger and stronger, so that the seeker experiences in himself a growing capacity to withdraw his wandering mind unto himself and to fix his entire thoughts “in the contemplation of Me, the Self.”
The concluding instruction in this most significant verse in the chapter is: “LET HIM SIT IN YOGA HAVING ME AS HIS SUPREME GOAL.” It has been already said in an earlier chapter that the meditator should continue meditation, and ere long (achirena), he will have the fulfilment of his meditation. The same idea is suggested here. Having made the mind tame, and keeping it away from its own endless dissipations, we are instructed to keep the single-pointed mind in contemplation of the Divine Self and His Eternal Nature. Immediately following this instruction is the order that we should remain in this attitude of meditation, seeking nothing else but “ME AS THE SUPREME GOAL.” Ere long, in the silence and quietude within, the withering mind and other equipments will exhaust themselves, and the seeker will wake up to realise his own Infinite, Eternal, Blissful and quiet Nature, the Self.