SECOND CHAPTER

2. THE YOGA OF THE INTELLIGENT WILL

In the moment of his turning from this first and summary answer to Arjuna's difficulties and in the very first words which strike the keynote of a spiritual solution, the Teacher makes at once a distinction which is of the utmost importance for the understanding of the Gita,—the distinction of Sankhya and Yoga. The Gita is in its foundation a Vedantic work ; it is one of the three recognised authorities for the Vedantic teaching. But still its Vedantic ideas are throughout and thoroughly coloured by the ideas of the Sankhya and the Yoga way of thinking and it derives from this colouring the peculiar synthetic character of its philosophy. It is in fact primarily a practical system of Yoga that it teaches and it brings in metaphysical ideas only as explanatory of its practical system.

What, then, are the Sankhya and Yoga of which the Gita speaks ? They are certai nly not the systems which have come down to us under these names as enunciated respectively in the Sankhya Karika of Ishwara Krishna and the Yoga aphorisms of Patanjali. Still, all that is essential in the Sankhya and Yoga systems, all in them that is large, catholic and universally true, is admitted by the Gita, even though it does not limit itself by them like the opposing schools. Its Sankhya is the catholic and Vedantic Sankhya such as we find it in its first principles and elements in the great Vedantic synthesis of the Upanishads and in the later developments of the Puranas. Its idea of Yoga is that large idea of a principally subjective practice and inner change, necessary for the finding of the Self or the union with God, of which the Raja-Yoga* is only one special application and not the most important and vital. The Gita insists- that Sankhya and Yoga are not two different, incompatible

* The Yoga system of Patanjali is a purely subjective method of Raja-Yoga.

Page 25

and discordant systems but one in their principle and aim; they differ only in their method and starting-point.

But what are the truths of Sankhya? The philosophy drew its name from its analytical process. Sankhya is the analysis, the enumeration, the separative and discriminative setting forth of the principles of our being of which the ordinary mind sees only the combinations and results of combination. It did not seek at all to synthetise. Its original standpoint is in fact dualistic, not with the very relative dualism of the Vedantic schools which call themselves by that name, Dwaita, but in avery absolute and trenchant fashion. For it explains existence not by one, but by two original principles whose inter-relation is the cause, of the universe,— Purusha, the inactive, Prakriti, the active. Purusha is the Soul, not in the ordinary or popular sense of the word, but of pure conscious Being immobile, ' immutable and self-luminous. Prakriti is Energy and its process. Purusha does nothing, but it reflects the action of Energy and its processes; Prakriti is mechanical, but by being reflected in Purusha it assumes the appearance of consciousness in its activities, and thus there are created those phenomena of creation, conservation, dissolution, birth and life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, sense-knowledge and intellectual knowledge and ignorance, action and in action, happiness and suffering which the Purusha under the influence of Prakriti attributes to itself although they belong not at all to itself but to the action or movement of Prakriti alone.

For Prakriti is constituted of three gunas or essential modes of energy; sattwa, the seed of intelligence, conserves the workings of energy; rajas, the seed of force and action, creates the workings of energy; tamas, the seed of inertia and non-intelligence, the denial of sattwa and rajas, dissolves what they create and conserve. When these three powers of the energy of Prakriti !are in a state of equilibrium, all is in rest, there is no movement, action or creation and there is therefore nothing to be reflected in the immutable luminous being of the conscious Soul. But when the equilibrium is disturbed, then the three gunas fall into a state of inequality in which they strive with and act upon each

Page 26

other and the whole inextricable business of ceaseless creation, conservation and dissolution begins, unrolling the phenomena of the cosmos. This continues so long as the Purusha consents to reflect the disturbance which obscures his eternal nature and attributes to it the nature of Prakriti; but when he withdraws his consent, the gunas fall into equilibrium and the Soul returns to its eternal, unchanging immobility ; it is delivered from phenomena. So the Sankhya explains the existence of the cosmos.

But whence then come this conscious intelligence and conscious will which we perceive to be so large a part of our being and which we commonly and instinctively refer not to the Prakriti, but to the Purusha ? According to the Sankhya this intelligence and will are entirely a part of the mechanical energy of Nature and are not properties of the soul; they are the principle of Buddhi, one of the twenty-four Tattwas, the twenty-four cosmic principles. (See Chap. Ill, Sl. 42 and Chap. XIII, Sl. 5.) If we find it difficult to realise how intelligence and will can be properties of the mechanical Inconscient and themselves mechanical {jada), we have only to remem- ber that modern Science itself has been driven to the same conclusion. But Sankhya explains what modern Science leaves in obscurity, the process by which the mechanical and inconscient takes on the appearance of consciousness. It is because of the reflection of Prakriti in Purusha; the light of consciousness of the Soul is attributed to the workings of the mechanical energy. To get rid of this delusion is the first step towards the liberation of the soul from Nature and her works,

What we do not seize at first is why Sankhya should bring in an element of pluralism into its dualism by affirming one Prakriti, but many Purushas. It would seem that the existence of one Purusha and one Prakriti should be sufficient to account for the creation and procession of the universe. But the Sankhya was bound to evolve pluralism by its rigidly analytical observation of the principles of things. First, actually, we find that there are many conscious beings in the world and each regards the same world in his own way and has his indepsndent experience of its subjective and objective things, his separate, dealings with the

Page 27

same perceptive and reactive processes. If there were only one Purusha, there would not be this central independence and separativeness, but all would see the world in an identical fashion and with a common subjectivity and objectivity. There is another difficulty quite as formidable. Liberation is the object set before itself by this philsophy as by others. This liberation is effected, we have said, by the Purusha's withdrawal of his consent from the activities of Prakriti which she conducts only for his pleasure; but, in sum, this is only a way of speaking. The Purusha is passive and the act of giving or withdrawing consent cannot really belong to it, but must be a movement in Prakriti itself. If we consider, we shall see that it is, so far as it is an operation, a movement of reversal or recoil in the principle of Buddhi, the discriminative will. Buddhi arrives by the process of discriminating things at the acid and dissolvent realisation that the identity of the Purusha ' and the Prakriti is a delusion. Buddhi, at once intelligence and will, recoils from the falsehood which it has been supporting and the Purusha, ceasing to be bound, no longer associates himself with the interest of the mind in the cosmic play. But if there were only the one Purusha and this recoil of the discriminating principle from its delusions took place, all cosmos would cease. As it is, we see that nothing of the kind happens A few beings among innumerable millions attain to liberation, the rest are in no way affected, nor is cosmic Nature in her play with them one whit inconvenienced by this summary rejection which should be the end of all her processes. Only by the theory of many independent Purushas can this fact be explained.

The Gita starts from this analysis and seems at first, even in its setting forth of Yoga, to accept it almost wholly. It accepts Prakriti and her three gunas and twenty-four principles; accepts the attribution of all action to the Prakriti and the passivity of the Purusha ; accepts the multiplicity of conscious beings in the cosmos ; accepts the dissolution of the identifying ego-sense,* the discriminating action of the intelligent will and the transcendence of the action of the three

* The ego-sense (Ahankar), is a principle of Nature which induces the Purusha to identify himself with Prakriti.

Page 28

modes of energy as the means of liberation. The Yoga which Arjuna is asked to practise from the outset is Yoga by the Buddhi, the intelligent will. But there is one deviation of capital importance,—the Purusha is regarded as one, not many ; for the free, immaterial, immobile, eternal, immutable Self of the Gita, but for one detail, is a Vedantic description of the eternal, passive, immobile, immutable Purusha of the Sankhyas.But the capital difference is that there is One and not many. This brings in the whole difficulty which ths Sankhya multiplicity avoids and necessitates a quite different solution. This the Gita provides by bringing into its Vedantic Sankhya the ideas and principles of Vedantic Yoga.

The first important new element we find is in the conception of Purusha itself. Prakriti conducts her activities for the pleasure of Purusha ; but how is that pleasure determined ? In the strict Sankhya analysis it can only be by a passive consent of the silent Witness. Passively the Witness consents to the action of the intelligent will and the ego-sense, passively he consents to the. recoil of that will from the ego-sense. He is Witness, source of the consent, by reflection upholder of the work of Nature, sakshi anumanta bharta, but nothing more. But the Purusha of the Gita is also the lord of Nature ; he is Ishwara (see Chap. XIII, Sl. 22). If the operation of the intelligent will belongs to Nature, the orgination and power of the will proceed from 'the conscious Soul; he is the Lord of Nature. If the act of intelligence of the Will is the act of Prakriti, the source and light of the intelligence are actively contributed by the Purusha ; he is not only the Witness, but the Lord and Knower, master of knowledge and will, jnata ishwarah. He is the supreme cause of the action of Prakriti, the supreme cause of its withdrawal from action. In the Sankhya analysis, Purusha and Prakriti in their dualism are the cause of the cosmos; in this synthetic Sankhya, Purusha by his Prakriti is the cause of the cosmos. We see at once how far we have travelled from the rigid purism of the traditional analysis.

But what of the one self immutable, immobile, eternally free, with which the Gita began ? That is free

Page 29

from all change or involution in change, avikarya, unborn; unmanifested, the Brahman,yet it is that "by which all this is extended." Therefore it would seem that the principle of the Ishwara is in its being ; if it is immobile, it is yet the cause and lord of all action and mobility. But how ? And what of the multiplicity of conscious beings in the cosmos ? They do not seem to be the Lord, but rather very much not the Lord anish, for they are subject to the action of the three gunas and the dualism of the ego-sense, and if, as the Gita seems to say, they are all the one self, how did this involution, subjection and delusion come about or how is it explicable except by the pure passivity of the Purusha? And whence the multiplicity? or how is it that the one self in one body and mind attains to liberation while in others it remains under the delusion of bondage ? These are difficulties which cannot be passed by without a .solution.

The Gita answers them in its later chapters by an analysis of Purusha and Prakriti which brings in new elements very proper to a Vedantic Yoga, but alien to the traditional Sankhya. It speaks of three Purushas or rather a triple status of the Purusha. The Upanishads in dealing with the truths of Sankhya seem sometimes to speak only of two Purushas. There is one unborn of three colours, says a text, the eternal feminine principle of Prakriti with its three gunas, ever creating; there are two unborn, two Purushas, of whom one cleaves to and enjoys her, the other abandons her because he has enjoyed all her enjoyments. In another verse they are described as two birds on one tree, eternally yoked companions, one of whom eats the fruits of the tree,—the Purusha in Nature enjoying her cosmos,—the other eats not, but watches his fellow,—the silent Witness, with- drawn from the enjoyment; when the first sees the second and knows that all is his greatness, then he is delivered from sorrow. The point of view in the two verses is different, but they have a common implication. One of the birds is the eternally silent, unbound Self or Purusha by whom all this is extended and he regards the cosmos he has extended, but is aloof from it; the other is the Purusha involved in Prakriti. The first verse indicates that the two are the same, represent

Page 30

different states, bound and liberated, of the same conscious being,—for the second Unborn has descended into the enjoyment of Nature and withdrawn from her; the other verse brings out what we would not gather from the former, that in its higher status of unity the self is for ever free, inactive, unattached, though it descends in its lower being into the multiplicity of the creatures of Prakriti and withdraws from it by reversion in any individual creature to the higher status. This theory of the double status of the one conscious soul opens a door; but the process of the multiplicity of the One is still obscure.

To these two the Gita, developing the thought of of other passages in the Upanishads, adds yet another, the supreme, the Purushottama, the highest Purusha, whose greatness all this creation is. Thus there are three, the Kshara, the Akshara, the Uttama. Kshara, the mobile, the mutable is Nature, Swabhava, it is the various becoming of the soul; the Purusha here is the multiplicity of the divine Being; it is the Purusha multiple not apart from, but in Prakriti. Akshara the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works. The Uttama is the Lord, the supreme Brahman, the supreme Self, who possesses both the immutable unity and the mobile multiplicity. It is by a large mobility and action of His nature, His energy, His will and power that He mani- fests himself in the world and by a greater stillness and immobility of His being that He* is aloof from it; yet is He as Purushottama above both the aloofness from Nature and the attachment to Nature. This idea of the Purushottama, though continually implied in the Upanishads, is disengaged and definitely brought out by the Gita and has exercised a powerful influence on the later developments of the Indian religious conscious- ness. It is the foundation of the highest Bhakti-Yoga which claims to exceed the rigid definitions of monistic

* Purusha..... .Aksharat..... .Paratah Parah,—although the Aksharah is supreme, there is a supreme Purusha higher than it, says the Upanishad.

Page 31

philosophy; it is at the back of the philosophy of the devotional Puranas.

The Gita is not content, either, to abide within the Sankhya analysis of Prakriti; for that makes room only for the ego-sense .and not for the multiple Purusha, which is there not a part of Prakriti, but separate from her. The Gita affirms on the contrary that the Lord by His nature becomes the Jiva. How is that possible, since there are only the twenty-four principles of the cosmic Energy and no others ? Yes, says the divine Teacher in effect, that is a perfectly valid account for the apparent operations of the cosmic Prakriti with its three gunas, and the relation attributed to Purusha and Prakriti there is also quite valid and of great use for the practical purposes of the involution and the withdrawal. But this is only the lower Prakriti of the three modes, the inconscient, the apparent; there is a higher, a ' supreme, a conscient and divine Nature, and it is that which has become the individual soul, the Jiva. In the lower Nature each being appears as the ego, in the higher he is the individual Purusha. In other words, multiplicity is part of the spiritual nature of the One. This individual soul is myself, in the creation it is a partial manifestation of me, mamaiva anshali, and it possesses all my powers; it is witness, giver of the sanction, upholder, knower, lord. It descends into the lower nature and thinks itself bound by action, so to enjoy the lower being: it. can draw back and know itself as the passive Purusha free from all action. It can rise above the three gunas and, liberated from the bondage of action, yet possess action, even as I do myself, and by adoration of the Purushottama and union with him it can enjoy wholly its divine nature.)

39. Such¹ is the intelligence (the intelligent knowledge of things and will) declared to thee in the Sankhya, hear now this in the Yoga, for if thou art in Yoga by this intelligence, O son of Partha, thou shalt cast away the bondage of works.

1. I have declared to you the poise of a self-liberating intelligence in Sankhya. I will now declare to you another poise in Yoga. You are shrinking from .the results of your

Page 32

40. On this path no effort is lost, no obstacle prevails; even a little of this dharma delivers from the great fear.¹

41. The fixed and resolute intelligence² is one and homogeneous, O joy of the Kurus; many-branching and multifarious is the intelligence of the irresolute.

works, you desire other results and turn from your right path in life because it does not lead you to them. But this idea of works and their result, desire of result as the motive, the work as a means for the satisfaction of desire, is the bondage of the ignorant who know not what works are, nor their true source, nor their real operation, nor their high utility. My Yoga, says the divine Teacher to Arjuna, will free you from all bondage of the soul to its works.

1. Arjuna is seized with the great fear which besieges humanity, its fear of sin and suffering now and hereafter, its fear in a world of whose true nature it is ignorant, of a God whose true being also it has not seen and whose cosmic purpose it does not understand. My Yoga, says the divine Teacher to him, will deliver you from the great fear and even a little of it will bring deliverance. When you have once set out on this path, you will find that no step is lost; every least movement will be a gain; you will find there no obstacle that can baulk you of your advance. A bold and absolute promise and one to which the fearful and hesitating mind beset and stumbling in all its paths cannot easily lend an assured trust.

2. Buddhi, the word used, means, properly speaking, the mental power of understanding, but it is evidently used by the Gita in a large philosophic sense for the whole action of the discriminating and deciding mind which determines both the direction and use of our thoughts and the direction and use of our acts; thought, intelligence, judgment, perceptive choice

Page 33

42-43. This flowery1 word which they declare who have not clear discernment, devoted to the creed of the Veda, whose creed is that there is nothing else, else, souls of desire, seekers of Paradise, _ it gives the fruits of the works of birth, it is multifarious with specialities of rites, it is directed to enjoyment and lordship as its goal.

and aim are all included in its functioning: for the characteristic of the unified intelligence is not only concentration of the mind that knows, but especially concentration of the mind that decides and persists in the decision, vyavasaya, while the sign of the dissipated intelligence is not so much even discursiveness of the ideas and perceptions as discursiveness of the aims and desires, therefore of the will. Will, then, and knowledge are the two functions of the Buddhi. The unified intelligent will is fixed in the enlightened soul, it is concentrated in inner self- knowledge; the many-branching and multifarious, busied with many things, careless of the one thing needful is, on the contrary, subject to the restless and discursive action of the mind, dispersed in outward life and works and their fruits.

iln the first six chapters the Gita lays a large foundation for its synthesis of works and knowledge, its synthesis of Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta. But first it finds that karma, works, has a particular sense in the language of the Vedantins; it means the Vedic sacrifices and ceremonies or at most that and the ordering of life according to the Grihyasutras in which these rites are the most important part, the religious kernel of the life. By works the Vedantins understood these religious works, the sacrificial system, the yajna, full of a careful order, vidhi, of exact and complicated rites, kriyavishesha. Bahulam. But in Yoga works had a much wider significance. The Gita insists on this wider significance; in our conception of spiritual activity all works have to be included, sarvakarmani- At the same time it does not, like Buddhism, reject the idea of the sacrifice, it prefers to uplift and enlarge it. Yes, it says in effect, not only is sacrifice, yajna, the most important part of life, but all life, all works should be regarded as sacrifice, are yajna, though by the ignorant they are performed without the higher knowledge and by the most ignorant not in the true

Page 34

44. The intelligence of those who are misled by that (flowery word), and cling to enjoyment and lordship, is not established in the self with concentrated fixity.

45. The action of the three gunas is the subject-matter of the Veda; but do thou become free from the triple guna, O Arjuna; without the dualities, ever based in the true being, without getting1 or having possessed of the self.

order, avidhi-pwvakam. Sacrifice is the very condition of life; with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Father of creatures created the peoples. But the sacrifices of the Vedavadins are offerings of desire directed towards material rewards, desire eager for the result of works, desire looking to a larger enjoy- ment in Paradise as immortality and highest salvation. This the system of the Gita cannot admit; for that in its very inception starts witli the renunciation of desire, with its rejection and destruction as the enemy of the soul. The Gita does not deny the validity even of the Vedic sacrificial works; it admits them, it admits that by these means one may get enjoyment here and Paradise beyond; it is I myself, says the divine Teacher (Ch. IX, Sl. 24), who accept these sacrifices and to whom they are offered, I who give these fruits in the form of the gods since so men choose to approach me. But this is not the true road, nor is the enjoyment of Paradise the liberation and fulfilment which man has to seek. It is the ignorant who worship the gods, not knowing whom they are worshipping ignorantly in these divine forms; for they are worshipping, thoug h in ignorance, the One, the Lord, the only Deva, and it is He who accepts their offering. To that Lord must the sacrifice be offered, the true sacrifice of all the life's energies and activities, with devotion, without desire, for His sake and for the welfare of the peoples. It is because the Vedavada obscures this truth and with its tangle of ritual ties man down to the action of the three gunas that it has to be so severely censured and put roughly aside; but its central idea is not destroyed; transfigured and uplifted, it is turned into a most important part of the true spiritual experience and of the method of liberation.

Page 35

in the true being , without getting ¹ or having , possessed of the self

46. As much use as there is in a well with water in flood on every side, so much is there in all the Vedas for the Brahmin who has the knowledge.

47. Thou hast a right to action,² but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits³ of thy works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity.

1 What gettings and havings has the free soul ? Once we are possessed of the Self, we are in possession of all things. And yet he does not cease from work and action. There is the originality and power of the Gita, that having affirmed this static condition, this superiority to Nature, this emptiness even of all that constitutes ordinarily the action of Nature for the liberated soul, it is still able to vindicate for it, to enjoin on it even the continuance of works and thus avoid the great defect of the merely quietistic and ascetic philosophies,—the defect from which we find them today attempting to escape.

2 The whole range of human action has been decreed by me with a view to the progress of man from the lower to the higher nature, from the apparent undivine to the conscious Divine. The whole range of human works must be that in which the God-knower shall move. Let no one cut short th e thread of action before it is spun out, let him not perplex and falsify the stages and gradations of the ways I have hewn.

3 But "let not the fruits of thy works be thy motive." Therefore it is not the works practised with desire by the Vedavadins, it is not the claim for the satisfaction of the restless and energetic mind by a constant activity, the claim made by the practical or the kinetic man, which is here enjoined.

Page 36

48. Fixed in Yoga1 do thy actions, having abandoned attachment, having become equal in failure and success, for it is equality that is meant by Yoga.

49. Works are far inferior to Yoga of the intelligence, O Dhananjaya; desire rather refuge in the intelligence; poor and wretched souls are they who make the fruit of their works the object of their thoughts and activities.

50. One whose intelligence has attained to unity, casts2 away from him even here in this world of dualitities both good doing and evil doing; therefore strive to be in Yoga; Yoga is skill in works.

1 It is because he acts ignorantly, with a wrong intelligence and therefore a wrong will in these matters, that man is or seems to be bound by his works; otherwise works are no bondage to the free soul. It is because of this wrong intelli- gence that he has hope and fear, wrath and grief and transient joy; otherwise works are possible with a perfect serenity and freedom. Therefore it is the Yoga of the Buddhi, the intelligence, that is first enjoined on Arjuna. To act with right intelligence and, therefore, a right will, fixed in the One, aware of the one self in all and acting out of its equal serenity, not running about in different directions under the thousand impulses of our superficial mental self, is the Yoga of the intelligent will.

Action is distressed by the choice between a relative good and evil, the fear of sin and the difficult endeavour towards virtue ? But this is true only of the action of the ordinary man, not of a Yogin.

2 For he rises to a higher law beyond good and evil, found- ed in the liberty of self-knowledge. Such desireless action can have no decisiveness, no effectiveness, no efficient motive, no large or vigorous creative power? Not so; action done in Yoga is not only the highest but the wisest, the most potent and efficient even for the affairs of the world; for it is informed by the knowledge and will of the Master of works: "Yoga is the true skill in works."

Page 37

51. The sages who have united their reason and will with the Divine renounce the fruit which action yields and, liberated from the bondage of birth, they reach the status1 beyond misery.

52. When thy intelligence shall cross beyond the whirl of delusion, then shalt thou become indifferent2 to Scripture heard or that which thou hast yet to hear.

53. When thy intelligence which is bewildered by the Sruti3, shall stand unmoving and stable in Samadhi, then shalt thou attain to Yoga.

1 But all action directed towards life leads away from the universal aim of the Yogin which is by common consent to escape from bondage to this distressed and sorrowful human birth ? Not so, either ; the sages who do works without desire for fruits and in Yoga with the Divine are liberated from the bondage of birth and reach that other perfect status [brahmi sthiti} in which there are none of the maladies which afflict the mind and life of a suffering humanity.'

2. The Vedas and the Upanishads are declared to be un- necessary for the man who knows (Sl. 46). Nay, they are even a stumbling-block; for the letter of the Word—perhaps because of its conflict of texts and its various and mutually dissentient interpretations—bewilders the understanding, which can only find certainty and concentration by the light within.

3 Sruti is a general term for the Vedas and the Upanishads. This criticism of the Sruti is so offensive to conventional religious sentiment that attempts are naturally made by the convenient and indispensable human faculty of text-twisting to put a different sense on some of these verses, but the meaning is plain and hangs together from beginning to end. It is confirmed and emphasised by a subsequent passage in which the knowledge of the knower is described as passing beyond the range of Veda and Upanishad, shabdabrahmativartate (Ch VI. Sl. 44). At the

Page 38

54. Arjuna said: What is the sign of the man in Samadhi whose intelligence is firmly fixed in wisdom? How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk ?

(Arjuna, voicing the average human mind, asks for some outward, physical, practically discernible sign of Samadhi. No such signs* can be given, nor does the Teacher attempt to supply them; for the only possible test of its possession is inward and that there are plenty of hostile psychological forces to apply. Equality is the great stamp of the liberated soul and of that equality even the most discernible signs are still subjective).

55. The Blessed Lord said: When a man expels,¹ O Partha, all desires from the mind, and is satisfied in the self by the self, then is he called stable in intelligence.

same time, as we have already seen, the Gita does not treat such important parts of the Aryan Culture in a spirit of mere negation and repudiation.

*The sign of the man in Samadhi is not that he loses consciousness of object? and surroundings and of his mental and physical self and cannot be recalled to it even by burning or torture of the body,—the ordinary idea of the matter; trance is a particular intensity, not the essential sign.

1 The test of Samadhi is the expulsion of all desires, their inability to get at the mind, and it is the inner state from which this freedom arises, the delight of the soul gathered within itself with the mind equal and still and high-poised above the attractions and repulsions, the alternations of sunshine and storm and stress of the external life. It is drawn inward even when acting outwardly; it is concentrated in self even when gazing out upon things; it is directed wholly to the Divine even when to the outward vision of others busy and preoccupied with the affairs of the world.

Page 39

56. He whose mind is undisturbed¹ in the midst of sorrows and amid pleasures is free from desire, from whom liking and fear and wrath have passed away, is the sage of settled understanding.

57. Who in all things is without affection though visited by this good or evil and neither hates nor rejoices, his intelligence sits firmly founded in wisdom.

58. Who draws² away the senses from the objects of sense, as the tortoise draws in his limbs into the shell, his intelligence sits firmly founded in wisdom.

1. The Stoic self-discipline calls desire and passion into its embrace of the wrestler and crushes them between its arms, as did old Dhritarashtra in the epic the iron image of Bhima. The Gita, making its call on the warrior nature of Arjuna, starts witli this heroic movement. It calls on him to turn on the great enemy desire and slay it. Its first description of equality is that of the Stoic philosopher. But the Gita accepts this Stoic discipline, this heroic philosophy, on the same condition that it accepts the tamasic recoil,—it must have above it the sattwic vision of knowledge, at its root the aim at self-realisation and in its steps the ascent to the divine nature. A Stoic discipline which merely crushed down the common affections of our human nature,—although less dangerous than a tamasic weariness of life, unfruitful pessimism and sterile inertia, because it would at least increase the power and self-mastery of the soul,—would still be no unmixed good, since it might lead to insensibility and an inhuman isolation without giving the true spiritual release. The Stoic equality is justified as an element in the discipline of the Gita because it can be associated with and can help to the realisation of the free immutable self in the mobile human being, param drishtwa, and to status in that new self-consciousness, esha brahmi sthitih.

2 The first movement must be obviously to get rid of desire which is • the whole root of the evil and suffering; and in order to get rid of desire, we must put an end to the cause of desire,

Page 40

59. If one abstains¹ from food, the objects of sense cease to affect, but the affection itself of the sense, the rasa, remains; the rasa also ceases when the Supreme is seen.

60. Even the mind of the wise² man who labours for perfection is carried away by the vehement insistence of the senses, O son of Kunti.

the rushing out of the senses to seize and enjoy their objects. We must draw them back when they are inclined thus to rush out, draw them away from their objects into their source, quiescent-in the mind, the mind quiescent in the intelligence, the intelligence quiescent in the soul and its self-knowledge, ob- serving the action of Nature, but not subject to it, not desiring anything that the objective life can give.

It is not an external asceticism, the physical renunciation of the objects of sense that I am teaching, suggests Krishna immediately to avoid a misunderstanding which is likely at once to arise; I speak of an inner withdrawal, a renunciation of desire.

1 The embodied soul, having a body, has to support it normally by food for its normal physical action ; by abstention from food it simply removes from itself the physical contact with the objects of sense, but does not get rid of the inner relation which makes that contact hurtful. It retains the pleasure of the sense in the object, the rasa, the liking and disliking,— for rasa has two sides; the soul must, on the contrary, be capable of enduring the physical contact without suffering inwardly this sensuous reaction (see Sl. 64).

2 Certainly self-discipline, self-control is never easy. All intelligent human beings know that they must exercise some control over themselves and nothing is more common than this advice to control the senses ; but ordinarily it is only advised imperfectly and practised imperfectly in the most limited and insufficient fashion. Even, however, the sage, the man of clear, wise and discerning soul who really labours to acquire complete self-mastery finds himself hurried and carried away by the senses.

Page 41

61. Having brought all the senses under control, he must sit firm in Yoga, wholly given up to Me; for whose senses are mastered1, of him the intelligence is firmly established (in its proper seat).

62. n him whose mind dwells on the objects of sense with absorbing interest, attachment to them is formed; from attachment arises desire; from desire anger comes forth.

63. Anger2 leads to bewilderment, from bewilderment comes loss of memory; and by that the intelligence is destroyed; from destruction of intelligence he perishes.

. This cannot be done perfectly by the act of the intelligence itself, by a merely mental self-discipline ; it can only be done by Yoga with something which is higher than itself and in which calm and self-mastery are inherent. And this Yoga can only arrive at its success by devoting, by consecrating, by giving up the whole self to the Divine, "to Me", says Krishna; for the Liberator is within us, but it is not our mind, nor our intelligence, nor our personal will,—they are only instruments. It is the Lord in whom, as we are told in the end, we have utterly to take refuge. And for that we must at first make him the object of our whole being and keep in soul-contact with him. This is the sense of the phrase " he must sit firm in Yoga, wholly given up to Me"; but as yet it is the merest passing hint after . the manner of the Gita, three words only which contain in seed the whole gist of the highest secret yet to be developed. Yukta asita matparah,

2 By passion the soul is obscured, the intelligence and will forget to see and be seated in the calm observing soul, there is a fall from the memory of one's true self, and by that lapse the intelligent will is also obscured, destroyed even. For, for the time being, it no longer exists to our memory of ourselves, it disappears in a cloud of passion; we become passion, wrath, grief and cease to be self and intelligence and will,

Page 42

64-65. It is by ranging¹ over the objects with the senses, but with senses subject to the self, freed from liking and disliking, that one gets into a large and sweet clearness of soul and temperament in which passion and grief find no place; the intelligence of such a man is rapidly established (in its proper seat).

66. For one who is not in Yoga, there is no intelligence, no concentration of thought; for him without concentration there is no peace, and for the unpeaceful how can there be happiness?

1.But how is this desireless contact with objects, this unsensuous use of the senses possible ? It is possible, param drishtwa, by the vision of the Supreme,—param, the Soul, the Purusha,—and by living in the Yoga, in union or oneness of the whole subjective being with that, through the Yoga of the intelligence. Then, free from reactions, the senses will be delivered from the affections of liking and disliking, escape the duality of positive and negative desire, and calm, peace, clearness, liappy tranquillity, atmaprasada, will settle upon the man. That clear tranquillity is the source of the soul's felicity all grief begins to lose its power of touching the tranquil soul the intelligence is rapidly established in the peace of the self suffering is destroyed. It is this calm, desireless, grie Hess fixity of the buddhi in self-poise and self-knowledge to which the Gita gives the name of Samadhi.

The culmination of the Yoga of the intelligent will is in the Brahroic status, brahmi sthiti. It is a reversal of the whole view, experience, knowledge, values, seeings of earth-bound creatures.

Page 43

67. Such of the roving senses as the mind follows, that carries away the understanding, just as the winds carry away a ship on the sea.

68. Therefore, O mighty-armed, one who has utterly restrained the excitement of the senses by their objects, his intelligence sits firmly founded in calm self-knowledge.

69. That (higher being) which is to all creatures a night, is to the self-mastering sage his walking (his luminous day of true being, knowledge and power); the life of the dualities which is to them their waking (their day, their consciousness, their bright condition of activity) is a night ( a troubled sleep and darkness of the soul) to the sage who sees.

70. He attains peace, into whom all desires enter as waters into the sea (an ocean of wide being and consciousness) which is ever being filled, yet ever motionless _ not he who ( like troubled and muddy waters) is disturbed by every little inrush of desire.

71. Who abandons all desires and lives and acts free from longing, who has no “I” or “mine” (who has extinguished his individual ego in the One and lives in that Unity), he attains to the great peace.

Page 44

72. This is brahmi sthiti (firm standing in the Brahman), O son of Pritha. Having attained thereto one is not bewildered; fixed in that status at his end, one can attain to extinction in the Brahman.¹

Thus ends the second chapter entitled “Sankhya-yoga” (the Yoga of knowledge).

1.Nirvana is not the negative self-annihilation of the Buddhists, but the great immergence of the separate personal self into the vast reality of the one infinite impersonal Existence. Through- out the first six chapters the Gita quietly substitutes the still immutable Brahman of the Vedantins, the One without a second immanent in all cosmos, for the still immutable but multiple Purusha of tlie Sankhyas. It accepts throughout these chapters knowledge and realisation of the Brahman as the most important, the indispensable means of liberation, even while it insists on desireless works as an essential part of knowledge. It accepts equally Nirvana of the ego in the infinite equality of the immutable, impersonal Brahman as essential to liberation; it practically identifies this extinction with the Sankhya return of the inactive immutable Purusha upon itself when it emerges out of identification with the actions of Prakriti.

Such, subtly unifying Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta, is the first foundation of the teaching of the Gita. It is far from being all, but it is the first indispensable practical unity of knowledge and works with a hint already of the third crowning intensest element in the soul's completeness, divine love and devotion.

Page 45