SECOND CHAPTER THE CREED OF THE ARYAN FIGHTER 1. Sanjaya said: To him thus by pity1; invaded, his eyes full and distressed with tears2 ,his heart overcome by depression and discouragement, Madhusudana spoke these words. The Blessed Lord said: Whence3 has come to thee this dejection, this stain and darkness of the soul in the hour of difficulty and peril, O Arjuna? This is not _________________________________________________ 1. This pity of Arjuna is quite different from the godlike compassion mentioned later on in the Gita, which observes with an eye of love and wisdom and calm strength th

TWELFTH CHAPTER THE WAY AND THE BHAKTA I. Arjuna said: Those devotees who thus by a constant union seek after Thee, and those who seek after the unmanifest Immutable, which of these have the greater1 knowledge of Yoga? [To this question Krishna replies with an emphatic decisiveness.] ___________________________________________ l. The question raised here by Arjuna points to the difference between the current Vedantic view of liberation and the view propounded in the Gita. The orthodox Yoga of knowledge aims at a fathomless immergence in the one infinite existence, sayujya; it looks upon that alone as the entire l

EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER III. TOWARDS THE SUPREME SECRET (The teacher has completed all else that he needed to say, he has worked out all the central principles and the supporting suggestions and implications of his message and elucidated the principal doubts and questions that might rise around it, and now all that rests for him to do is to put into decisive phrase and penetrating formula the one last word, the heart itself of the message, the very core of his gospel. And we find that this decisive, last and crowning word is not merely the essence of what has been already said on the matter, not merely a concentrated description of the needed self-d

SIXTH CHAPTER NIRVANA AND WORKS IN THE WORLD 1. The Blessed Lord said: Whoever does the work to be done without resort to its fruits, he is the sannyasin and the Yogin, not the man who lights not the sacrificial fire and does not the works. What they have called renunciation (Sannhasa), know to be in truth Yoga, O Pandava; for none becomes a Yogin who has not renounced the desire-will in the mind.2 For a sage who is ascending the hill of Yoga, action is the cause2; for the same sage when he has got to the top of Yoga self-mastery is the cause. _____________________________

SECOND CHAPTER 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 th

EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER THE SUPREME SECRET ( The essence of the teaching and the Yoga has thus been given to the disciple on the field of his work and battle and the divine Teacher now proceeds to apply it to his action, but in a way that makes it applicable to all action. Attached to a crucial example, spoken to the protagonist of Kurukshetra, the words bear a much wider significance and are a universal rule for all who are ready to ascend above the ordinary mentality and to live and act in the highest spiritual consciousness.) 57. Devoting1 all thyself to Me, giving up in thy conscious mind all thy actions into Me, resorting to Yoga of the

APPENDIX III SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS A few words technically used in the notes in this edition require some explanation, as also certain metaphysical and psychological presuppositions. Each plane of our being—mental, vital, physical—has its own consciousness, separate though interconnected and interacting. These can be said to be interconnected because there is a continuity from one end to the other, and interacting because all the psychological processes in man—mental, vital, physical— are mixed up with one another. To our outer mind and sense they are all confused together; for the purpose of analysis, however, they may be d