Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity : 26-3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, September 25, 2022. 06:00.
Chapter 26: Being Spiritually Alone to Oneself-3.

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The law of the higher self, therefore, is a protector of the lower self. Hence, the higher is the friend of the lower, but law can also look like a terror. The disobedient may feel that law is an enemy. The obedient feels secure in the face of law. The one who is obedient to law is ever secure, always protected, guarded by the strength of law. But the disobedient is always in fear of law. The rods of administration are frightening. The arms of law reach up to the corners of the earth, and so the thief has no place to stay anywhere. So the law, the administration, is an enemy sometimes, but we know very well it is really not an enemy. Thus is the meaning here. 

The higher self is the friend and also the enemy: 

ātmaiva hy ātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ.

Bandhur ātmātmanas tasya yenātmaivātmanā jitaḥ (BG 6.6). 

The higher self is the friend of that self which is controlled by its own self.

Anātmanas tu śatrutve vartetātmaiva śatruvat: The unrestrained self will feel that the higher is always its enemy, a dreaded spectre. We fear God Himself. We do not know what God can do to us, merely because we know that we are always disobedient to His principles. Not for a moment can we fully obey His law, and therefore we are always awfully in fear of that Being who looks like a terror incarnate, while the greatest friend is God Himself. 

Suhṛdaṃ sarvabhūtānāṃ jñātvā māṃ śāntim ṛcchati (BG 5.29): 

The great friend ofmankind is God the Almighty, who is apparently looking like a great enemy of man, insisting on obedience to His law.

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So the practical methods of yoga of restraint of the self for the sake of the realisation of the higher Self are now being briefly stated in some of the slokas. :

yogī yuñjīta satatam ātmānaṃ rahasi sthitaḥ,

ekākī yatacittātmā nirāśīr aparigrahaḥ (BG 6.10).

śucau deśe pratiṣṭhāpya sthiram āsanam ātmanaḥ,

nātyucchritaṃ nātinīcaṃ cailājinakuśottaram (BG 6.11).

tatraikāgraṃ manaḥ kṛtvā yatacittendriyakriyaḥ,

upaviśyāsane yuñjyād yogam ātmaviśuddhaye (BG 6.12).

samaṃ kāyaśirogrīvaṃ dhārayann acalaṃ sthiraḥ,

saṃprekṣya nāsikāgraṃ svaṃ diśaś cānavalokayan (BG 6.13).

praśāntātmā vigatabhīr brahmacārivrate sthitaḥ,

manaḥ saṃyamya maccitto yukta āsīta matparaḥ (BG 6.14).

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Here is a concentrated recipe of yoga. The yogi should unite himself with himself: yogī yuñjīta satatam ātmānaṃ. 

Satatam means always, permanently, without remission of effort. The yogin should always be engaged in being in union with himself. The yogi is the Self referred to here. We are all the Self. The Self is ever engaged in being what it is. Always exert effort to be what you are. Never be what you are not. 

What does it mean? 

Yogī yuñjīta satatam ātmānaṃ: The Self should always remain in its own status. You should not forsake your Selfhood at any time. You should not become other than what you are at any time, which means to say, you should not have any kind of longing for anything outside.

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We are sunk in the world of outward longings. Every one of us can think of life only in terms of longing for things. A life without any desire is no life at all. Who can expect to live in that manner? There is always a need of some kind, a pressure, sometimes some comfort reaching up to a luxury. Can anyone think of a condition where it is not necessary to want anything? We cannot imagine such a state because we live in a world of relationships. We are immersed in a web of contacts with everything possible. The whole environment is sticking to us as an accretion grown on our own self. We carry the coat of externality wherever we move. We cannot be without it. So to be without this dress of external attachment would look like living naked. A totally desireless life is unthinkable to ordinary human minds. The difficulty in even imagining such a state arises because we have not been accustomed to think in these novel ways which may be considered as the spiritual outlook of life. We have a worldly outlook of life – a physical, social, political, economic and family-ridden life of attachments – which we consider as the only possible way of living, and there cannot be any other way of life. This is mine, that is mine, this is not mine, that is not mine, I am this, I am that. There is no other way of thinking except in these ways.

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Therefore, we may have to get re-educated entirely into a new system of thinking. The mind which has been brainwashed into the belief that to be alive is to be desiring cannot understand how it can be alive without longing for objects outside, without possessing them and without enjoying them, because life is satisfaction. We do not live in a life of sorrow. We have somehow acquiesced in the conviction that to have nothing of one's own is to live a life of utter poverty, a life of vegetating, and not a real life at all.

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To be continued ....

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