Chapter VI (Verses 15, 20, 21, 22 & 23)
Dhyana Yoga – The Yoga of Meditation
(Verses 15)
युञ्जन्नेवं सदात्मानं योगी नियतमानसः ।
शान्तिं निर्वाणपरमां मत्संस्थामधिगच्छति ॥ ६-१५॥
Thus, always keeping the mind balanced, the YOGI, with his mind controlled, attains to the Peace abiding in Me, which culminates in total liberation (NIRVANA or MOKSHA) .
After thus describing the physical pose, the mental stability and the consequent intellectual self-application, the Lord now describes the last lap in the technique of meditation to His beloved friend, the Pandava Prince. When all the above details are worked out by anyone, that individual becomes a man steadfast both in his physical and in his subtler life, and thereby, he comes to release from himself a large quantity of his psychic vitality. In this stanza it is said that, when a meditator controls his mind and ‘constantly’ (Sada) keeps his mind away from its agitations, he can easily and surely reach the Supreme.
The term ‘always’ (Sada) should not be misunderstood as suggesting that the practitioner should live, criminally neglecting all his duties towards his home and the world around himself. Here the term ‘always’ only connotes “a duration of constant and consistent inner silence,” during one’s meditation. At the peak of meditation, the practitioner comes to a point of perfect ‘halt’.
The individual comes to experience infinite peace which is “the peace that resides in him.” The Self is Peace Absolute (Shantam), inasmuch as the processes of physical excitements, mental agitations and intellectual disturbances are not in the Self, It being beyond these matter envelopments. Here it may look as though Krishna is advocating the dualistic school of philosophy, since it is said: “The meditator reaches the peace that is My own nature.” To conceive of a Truth having qualities, is to reduce the Eternal to the finite status of a substance (dravya). Again, if the meditator experiences “THE PEACE THAT RESIDES IN ME,” then the goal gained becomes an ‘object’ apart from the meditator.
The subtle philosopher, Sri Krishna, recognises this unavoidable imperfection of the spoken language, and therefore, he tries to neutralize the fallacy in his expressions by the significant terms “the Peace, that ultimately culminates in the Supreme liberation” (Nirvanaparamam).
In short, when the meditator has come to the moment of perfect silence within, he comes to experience, at first, a peace that is unknown in the world without. Soon, as it were, the experiencer gets slowly acted upon and digested into the very substance of the Truth, whose fragrance was the Peace, which the dying ego of the meditator seemed to experience at the gateway of its own Real Divine Nature. In fact in the last stage of fulfilment in meditation, the meditator ‘awakens’ to his status of Self-hood. This Advaita experience is the one fact that has been repeated and emphasised all through Krishna’s Song Divine.
(Verses 20)
यत्रोपरमते चित्तं निरुद्धं योगसेवया ।
यत्र चैवात्मनात्मानं पश्यन्नात्मनि तुष्यति ॥ ६-२०॥
When the mind, restrained by the practice of YOGA, attains quietude and when seeing the Self by the self, he is satisfied in his own Self;
(Verses 21)
सुखमात्यन्तिकं यत्तद् बुद्धिग्राह्यमतीन्द्रियम् ।
वेत्ति यत्र न चैवायं स्थितश्चलति तत्त्वतः ॥ ६-२१॥
When he (the YOGI ) feels that Infinite bliss — which can be grasped by the (pure) intellect and which transcends the senses — wherein established he never moves from the Reality;
(Verses 22)
यं लब्ध्वा चापरं लाभं मन्यते नाधिकं ततः ।
यस्मिन्स्थितो न दुःखेन गुरुणापि विचाल्यते ॥ ६-२२॥
Which, having obtained, he thinks there is no other gain superior to it; wherein established, he is not moved even by heavy sorrow.
(Verses 23)
तं विद्याद् दुःखसंयोगवियोगं योगसंज्ञितम् ।
स निश्चयेन योक्तव्यो योगोऽनिर्विण्णचेतसा ॥ ६-२३॥
Let it be known: the severance from the union-with-pain is YOGA. This YOGA should be practised with determination and with a mind steady and un-despairing.
These four verses together give a complete picture of the state of Yoga and Krishna ends with a very powerful call to man that everyone should practise this Yoga of Meditation and self development. In order to encourage man and make him walk this noble path of self-development and self-mastery, Bhagawan explains the goal which is gained by the meditator. When the mind is completely restrained, as explained in the above four stanzas, it attains a serene quietude and in that silence gains the experience of the Self, not as anything separate from itself, but as its own true nature.
This self-rediscovery of the mind, that is in fact nothing other than the Divine Conscious Principle, is the State of Infinite Bliss. This awakening to the cognition of the Self can take place only when the individual ego has smashed its limiting adjuncts and has thereby transcended its identifications with the body, mind and intellect.
That this bliss is not an objective experience such as is gained among the pleasures of the world, is evident by the qualification that it “transcends the senses” (Ati-indriyah). Ordinarily we gain our experiences in the world outside through our sense-organs. When the spiritual masters promise that Self-Realisation is a State of Bliss, we are tempted to accept it as an objective goal, but when they say that it is beyond the senses, the seekers start feeling that the promises of religion are mere bluff. The stanza, therefore, has to clearly insist that this Bliss of Self recognition is perceivable only through the pure intellect.
A doubt may now arise that when, as a result of these almost super-human efforts, an individual has at last, come to experience this transcendental Bliss, it may provide only a flashy moment of intense living, which may then disappear, demanding, all over again, similar super-human efforts to regain one more similar moment of Bliss-experience. To remove this possible misunderstanding, the stanza insists: “ESTABLISHED WHEREIN, HE NEVER DEPARTS FROM HIS REAL STATE.” The Geeta repeatedly endorses that the experience of the Self is an enduring state from which there is no return.
Even supposing one has gained this Infinite Bliss, will he not again come to all the sorrows that are natural to every worldly being? Will he not thereafter feel as great an urge as anyone else to strive and struggle, to earn and hoard, and thirst to love and be loved, etc.? All these excitements which are carbuncles upon the shoulders of an imperfect man, are denied to a perfect one, as the following stanza (VI-22) explains the Supreme Truth as “HAVING COME TO WHICH NO ONE CAN CONSIDER ANY OTHER GAIN AS EQUAL TO IT, MUCH LESS EVER ANYTHING GREATER.”
Even after these explanations the Lord Himself raises the question which a man of doubts may entertain. It will be quite natural for a student, who is striving to understand Vedanta purely through his intellect, to doubt as to whether the experience of Divinity can be maintained, even during moments of stress and sorrow and in periods of misery and mourning. In other words: is not religion a mere luxury of the rich and the powerful, a superstitious satisfaction for the weak, a make-believe dream-heaven for the escapist? Can religion and its promised perfection stand unperturbed in all our challenges of life: bereavements, losses, illness, penury, starvation? This doubt — which is quite common in our times too — has been unequivocally answered here with a daring statement that “WHEREIN BEING ESTABLISHED ONE IS NOT MOVED EVEN BY THE HEAVIEST SORROW.”
To summarise: when by the quietude of the mind, gained through concentration, one comes to rediscover one’s own Self, his is the Bliss Absolute, which cannot be perceived through the senses and yet, can be lived, through a ‘pure intellect,’ and having reached which there is no more any return; having gained which there is no greater gain to strive for; and which is not shaken even by the lashings of the greatest tragedies of our existence. This is the wondrous Truth that has been indicated as the Self by the Geeta, the goal of all men of discrimination and spiritual aspirations.
This Self is to be known. The means of knowing this goal, as well as the state of its experience, is called “Yoga” in the Geeta. (VI — 23). Here we have one of the noblest, if revolutionary, definitions of Yoga.
We have explained earlier how the Geeta is an incomparable re-statement of the declaration of the Upanishads, in the context of the Hindu-world available at the time of the Mahabharata. The old idea that Yoga is a strange phenomenon, too difficult for the ordinary man to practise or to come to experience, has been remodeled here to a more tolerant and all-comprehensive definition. Yoga, which was till then a technique of religious self perfection available only for a reserved few, has now been made a public park into which everyone can enter at his free will and entertain himself as best he can. In this sense of the term, the Geeta has been rightly called a revolutionary Bible of the Hindu Renaissance.
Apart from the divine prerogative of one who is an incarnation, we find a brilliant dash of revolutionary zeal in Krishna’s Godly personality both in His emotions and His actions. When such a divine revolutionary enters the fields of culture and spirituality, He could not have given a more spectacular definition of Yoga than that which He has given us here: “Yoga — a state of disunion from every union-with-pain.” This re-interpretation of Yoga not only provides us with a striking definition but at the same time, it is couched in such a clapping language of contradiction that it arrests the attention of every student and makes him think for himself.
The term “Yoga” means “contact.” To-day, man in his imperfection has contacts with only the world of finite objects and therefore, he ekes out of life only finite joys. These objects of the world are contacted through the instruments of man’s body, mind and intellect. Joy ended is the birth of sorrow. Therefore, life through the matter vestures is the life of pain-Yoga (dukha samyoga).
Detachment from this pain — Yoga is naturally a process in which we disconnect (Viyoga) ourselves from the fields of objects and their experiences. A total or even a partial divorce from the perceptions of the world of objects is not possible, as long as we are using the mechanism of perception, the organ of feeling, and the instrument of thinking. To get detached from the mechanism of perceptions, feelings and thoughts, would naturally be the total detachment from the pain-Yoga — (Dukha-Samyoga- Viyoga).
Existence of the mind is possible only through its attachment; the mind can never live without attaching itself to some object or other. Detachment from one object is possible for the mind only when it has attached itself to another. For the mind, detachment from pain caused by the unreal is possible only when it gets attached to the Bliss, that is the Nature of the Real. In this sense, the true Yoga — which is the seeking and establishing an enduring attachment with the Real — is gained only when the seeker cries a halt in his onward march towards pain, and deliberately takes a ‘right-about-turn’ to proceed towards the Real and the Permanent in himself. This wonderful idea has been most expressively brought out in the phrase which Bhagawan employs here, as a definition of Yoga — (Dukha-Samyoga-Viyoga).
A little scrutiny will enable us to realise that in defining Yoga thus, Sri Krishna has not introduced any new ideology into the stock of knowledge that was the traditional wealth of the Hindu scriptures. Till then, Yoga was emphasized from the standpoint of its goal, rather than from the exploration of its means. This overemphasis of the goal had frightened the faithful followers away from its salutory blessings. And the technique of Yoga had sunk to become a mysterious and a very secret practice meant only for a few.
This Yoga is to be practised, insists Krishna, with “AN EAGER AND DECISIVE MIND.” To practise with firm resolve and an undespairing heart is the simple secret for the highest success in the practice of meditation, as the “Yoga with the Truth” is gained through a total successful “Viyoga from the false.”
If we feel uncomfortably warm by being very near the fire-place we have only to move away from it to reach the cool and comforting atmosphere. Similarly, if, to live among the finite objects and live its limited joys is sorrow, then to get away from them is to enter into the Realm of Bliss which is the Self. This is “Yoga.”