Krishna then explains how the seeker enriched by yoga-pursuit, and with a properly integrated personality, derives the ability to remain free from all bondage, in spite of all his bodily and mental activities and interactions. This part of the gospel is profoundly great. The one Upanishadic call to know and realize the Immortal Self, though tremendous in appeal, is elusive to many. Krishna softens the path and makes the call easier to heed by the unique touch and elegance of yoga. The three verses that follow carry a full message of clarity and oneness:
The yoga-integrated one, with his heart purified and his body, mind and senses under control, realizing his Self as the Self in all beings, does all actions, but remains unaffected and untainted by them.
To pursue yoga-sadhana is to get constantly purified and sublimated. It is to be balanced and moderated, gaining elevation and expansion every time. This process of purity and expansion cannot but grace the yogic seeker. As a result, he imbibes a new vision and dimension. He realizes easily and naturally his undeniable inner impersonality. And in that core, the whole universe begins to reign as one. The ideas and influences of differences no more infect and dislodge him. With facility and joy he perceives the grandeur of oneness everywhere, in everything.
When such self-control, self-enrichment and self-expansion grace him abundantly, his active life and pursuit assume increasing purpose and potential. His heart and mind begin to radiate the ecstasy of freedom and natural poise, untouched by any taint or blemish from anything done or experienced.
“Kurvann-api na lipyate” are the words Krishna meaningfully uses. He does not say that such a Yogic Knower loses all interest and concern for actions, withdrawing and remaining mute and insensitive. The Knower remains free amidst intense creative activities, benefiting one and all, preserving and displaying the lofty notes of Nature.
This clearly brings home that pursuit of yoga does not call for any forced immature withdrawal from activities. Instead, activities do help to bring forth and focus the latent notes of impurity, and yoga-sadhana consists in sublimating or eliminating them consistently. Instead of posing any conflict to each other, activities and introspection become abiding complements.
His personality, he realizes, is greater, vaster, subtler and more pervasive. He becomes a sarva-bhuta-atma-bhutatma (one who identifies his Self as the Self in all beings). This expression, nay description, is characteristic of the land’s culture and heritage. Within the circumscribing body of flesh reigns the uncircumscribable Spirit, the Self. Analyzed by worldly reason, it may seem impossible. But nursed by the yoga-pursuit, it shines as a perceptible reality.
As in the ocean, all waves are mere bubbles floating and drifting, so too in the sensory (external) expanse, the objects, however perceived or constituted, are but bubbles rising and sinking ceaselessly. This vision, this realization, makes the Yogi more fervent, wholesome and devout. Like a mother growing to parent the new children born to her, with no addition to her two hands or to the twenty-four hours of the day, the Yogic Knower begins to host in his spiritual horizon, the endless world with ease and poise. He acts doubly or trebly, nay, even more. No inner fatigue accrues from whatever he does. His mind embraces more, feels for more. No lepana (taint) of any kind can touch his being.
A question arises: Krishna specifically states that yoga-sublimation is necessary before the full-fledged sannyasa pursuit is taken up. Does it mean that this is an inviolable law or compulsion? How is it that this holy land of Bharat, right from the Vedic ages, encouraged and produced a number of ascetics, generation after generation?
Krishna says that without the required maturity and purification, sannyasa is hard to adopt. He does not say that sannyasa should not be attempted or adopted at any time by anyone. In fact, before telling Arjuna that he was fit only to take up the yoga-pursuit, he had clearly expressed (2.46) that jnana-nishtha, the ultimate in spiritual pursuit and achievement, takes one to the level of all-flooding fullness (sarvatah samplutodake). It is like the state when all places are equally flooded, making it redundant to search for a well, tank, lake or even a river for collecting water, be it for any purpose.
The question was and still is whether Arjuna, or one like him, can and should take up exclusive wisdom-pursuit or not. In the variety of births and growths this holy land bestows from time to time, there has always been a small but powerful spiritual section. Backed by the strength of purity, righteousness and dispassion – the most redeeming spiritual virtues – this small number has no hesitation in plunging into sannyasa. This felicity will continue to reign in the country, despite the seeming degeneration and divergence. Krishna’s arguments in favour of yoga do not, in any way, invalidate or question this fact and great truth about human potential.
In the next two verses, Krishna further describes the magnificence of Yogic perception and excellence – inner as well as outer. Thus comes his precise description of the magic worked by the Yogic vision:
(Bhagavad Gita 5.8, 5.9)The Knower of Truth, who has achieved ‘integration’ through yoga, will think ‘I do nothing’ even though he sees and hears, touches and smells, eats and moves about, sleeps and breathes, speaks and answers the calls of nature, opens and winks his eyes. He clearly realizes that in all these activities, the senses merely interact with the sense-objects.
These two verses have their singular place in the message of Bhagavad Gita and also in the world of spiritual enunciation.
The yukta becomes a tattva-vit, says Krishna. To be integrated by yoga is to be a Knower. There is no yoga-sadhana without generating the deeper and subtler wisdom in the seeker. Every day of sadhana must bring more of spiritual enlightenment, permeation and expansion. The climax comes when the wisdom begins to reveal the Self - the Self that reigns undimmed, unaffected, non-acting and full. All the fascinations and imaginations about the activities at all levels, outer and inner, stand as utterly false.
The senses do perceive. But the objects only get perceived. In any perception, the perceived objects do not enter the perceiver. The perceiver is but the Witness of all perceptions– the Seer, the one uninvolved with any object at any time.
In fact, does the real ‘he’ perceive at all? If perception means a process and outcome, then both do not befall him. Any number of thoughts may emerge and subside within him. None of them adds anything to or takes anything away from him. If you give food to the body, it increases the weight of the stomach for a while. But, is this so with the inner being? No thought ever lasts. The moment it emerges, it subsides too. It is all a course of rising and setting, appearing and disappearing, coming and going, as on the movie screen. Matter can add to matter. It can also bring reduction, when taken away. But does the same principle apply when matter is perceived by the Spirit? Perception does not dislodge any object, making it enter or leave the perceiver.
And so the Yogic Knower realizes that he, in essence, is a full ‘zero’, though immensely potent in any action or perception. The processes take place beside him, away from him, peripheral to his real being. “Naiva kincit karomiti yukto manyeta tattva-vit” is thus the true description of such an illumined one. To be a ‘yukta’, integrated with yoga-buddhi and yoga-samatva, to be a sthitaprajna and sthitadhi, is to realize one’s true non-actingness, which is uninvolved in its core level.
The Knower feels so, not by remaining ‘quiet’ in a place, without acting, without thinking, without interacting. On the other hand, he performs all actions at different levels of his being freely, confidently, with poise. Krishna details all the different acts leaving no scope for any misunderstanding. He begins with seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting – the functions of the organs of knowledge. These are the gross physical actions by which anyone senses the world. But all activities are not covered by these. So, to give a clearer and fuller picture of the Knower’s active life, Krishna adds: walking, sleeping, breathing, speaking, excreting, holding, and closing and opening the eyes.
All these are quite visible, involving interactions and sensations. Krishna wants to say that the Yogic Knower visibly allows all these interactions to be in their own place and with their own purpose. His intention is to be natural and full.
The full being of the Yogic Knower acts with all its capacity, complexity and variety to be in abiding harmony and synthesis. He allows it, rejoices in it, floats in it freely stretching himself in full. How? By the single assessment and realization that while the senses are interacting with their objects, he is far beyond the body. By the mastery of spiritual perception, the Knower of Truth, in a way, ‘nullifies’ and ‘disowns’ all actions, interactions and their outcome.
Everything transpires only around him, around the core within. He is the profound still Subject, the Self. All else, including his body, is ‘the object’. How can the ‘Subject’ ever become the ‘object’?
Should he not then rejoice in interactions, welcoming them rightly? Or should he resent, revolt and renounce them all? “I do not do anything at all” is thus an impenetrable fortress, dwelling in which, he lives with greater confidence, effectiveness and excellence!
“Arjuna,” Krishna asks, “what greater benefit can sannyasa, if true to its purpose, bestow or mean? Is not this enlightened, exalted interaction itself verily ‘sannyasa’ – the gift of Yogic vision, spiritual integration and fullness? I am, in fact, fulfilling the mission of bringing sannyasa to the Karmayogi, infusing it into his being through the magic of this dialogue. Whether he, sooner or later, takes up the lofty sannyasa order of life as a spontaneous choice or fruition, is another point. Even in that order of life, the real attainment will be this and this alone – of course, in its full dimension and felicity.”
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(From the Series Essential Concepts In Bhagavad Gita - Volume 3)
