Swami Sri Atmananda

Omm Namo Bhagavate

It is said that the divine attributes lead one to liberation and the undivine attributes lead to bondage. Arjuna, grieve not, for you are born with divine attributes.

Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Verse 575

In this verse the two mutually opposing sets of attributes are explained, the divine and the undivine.  One set of attributes takes man towards liberation and the other takes man towards perpetuation of bondage.  The list in the preceding verses describes the drives or tendencies latent in the human system.  Because this is the sixteenth chapter we can interpret these in terms of the gunas.  We can say that the divine attributes are rooted in sattwa guna and the undivine attributes are rooted in rajas and tamas gunas.  All human beings are either made up of divine or undivine attributes.  Those who are possessed of divine attributes make progress in yoga, and this progress is manifested in their life’s actions.  They carry the possibility of sadhana and siddhi.  Sadhana is the capacity to strive to make progress in yoga; siddhi is the capability to become an instrument or channel of divine.

The sixteenth chapter comes in the third part of Gita, the manifestation section.  Manifestation means sadhana is finished and the result is manifested through life’s action.  Gita emphasizes manifestation, so if what you are attaining is not manifested through life’s action, then Gita is not prepared to accept that it is your attainment.  It is just your information.  The moment something is attained in the system, it always finds its expression through action, reaction, and interaction.  Those who are dominated by undivine attributes manifest arrogance, diffidence, “I-ness,” pride, anger, superiority complex, ignorance about the reality of this world, and showiness.  These egoistic traits are the symptoms of an asuric tendency and nature.  Those who have predominantly divine attributes exhibit many such traits.  Foremost among them is absence of fear, or abhaya.  This is not fearlessness; fearlessness is different than absence of fear.  Then come purity, simplicity and all the attributes explained in the first three verses of this chapter.

Chapter 16 explains the way the world is manifested.  The world consists of two basic types of human beings.  One group is predominantly rajasic and tamasic; the other is primarily sattwic.   When the yogi in the path of Gita yoga reenters society after attaining the highest state, how is he supposed to deal with this manifest world?  To make it clear, the Lord explains the nature of human beings.  The sixteenth chapter begins with, “The Blessed Lord said.”  No question is asked by Arjuna but the spontaneous revelation from Lord Krishna continues.  Here Arjuna is no longer a yogi, no longer a seeker.  He has merged, and after the merger he asked one question, at the beginning of Chapter 12, and it is a question of the mind.

You may ask how there can still be a mind after the merger has come.  My answer is, the surface human mind will always remain, but it will not have the power to issue any commands to a God-realized soul for getting involved in this material, sensory world.  Still, mind will be there because mind symbolizes matter.  Even God-realized saints have this surface curiosity, but not have any deep curiosity.  Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, as he was reading the newspaper, “Bhagavan, what are you reading?  For you, everything is the Being, the Self.”  Bhagavan replied, “This Self is trying to know what the Self is doing when it is non-Self.”

Surface mind wants to know, but the curiosity of a deluded human being is different from the surface curiosity of a God-realized saint.  For the latter, because they still have to function in the world of matter, their surface mind is still active, but it is so thin that it cannot command anything.

Arjuna’s merger came in the eleventh chapter, when he could see Krishna in everything in the universe.  In his universal vision, he saw Krishna in a tree, a mountain, a river, a lake, a star in space, in human beings, in animals and everywhere.  He saw God as love, fear, horror, beauty, terror, mystery–everything.  When someone goes through the merger process, these are the experiences.  Sometimes there will be infinite beauty and charm; sometimes there will be oceanic sorrow; sometimes there will be pure ecstasy; and sometimes there will be a deafening solitude.

It is like watching a film on the screen, and like a dream.  The difference is, when you come out of a dream, you know that you were dreaming, but the person who has gone through the merger process does not feel it was a dream.  It is just the opposite: he feels that the merger is the reality and that this waking plane is just a reflection of that reality.  The reflection is as real as a person’s reflection in a mirror.  That is the state of God-realized mahatmas and saints.  Just for functional necessity they discharge their responsibilities, but they don’t get identified with anything.  Loss or gain, fame or defamation, hardship or luxury, these do not affect the state of the God-realized yogi.

In that state Arjuna asked the question, “Tell me, Lord, who is the greater devotee,” that is, who has attained a higher state in devotion?  That is a surface comparison.  Arjuna must have realized that although he has merged with the force he still cannot proceed without the form.  The form is still dear to him.  The surface mind must have given this prompting, “Then you have not attained the universal state of merger,” so it asked, “Tell me, Lord, who is more dear to you, one who is clinging to you the form or one who is only linked with you, the force?”

The Lord said, “Both are dear to me.  But, Arjuna, until one has gone beyond identification with his own body it is very difficult and painful to proceed in the path of yoga.”

What is there to be attained that is still difficult and painful for a God-realized soul?  He has nothing to attain in the material plane, but much to attain in the spiritual plane.  That is the last attainment in Gita yoga.  The God-realized soul has no desire or aspiration for material or social expansion and attainment, but he still has a hidden aspiration to transcend the veil.  From God-realization to gunatita will be a difficult and painful part of the journey if the form is not there, because the soul is liberated but the samskara is there, the samskara of this universe and of prakriti.

Purusha’s samskara is gone because the reason for which purusha entered the body has been fulfilled and there is nothing left for the purusha to want.  Just imagine such a state, of someone who has reached a stage of nothingness, but his life still remains.  Such a person has no desire, no hankering, and no aspiration–not even the aspiration for sadhana.  He sees and feels the futility of everything, but has no power to leave the body because there is a long life still to go.  Those who attain the gunatita state usually live longer.  Imagine if there is no form with whom you can share, for whom you can live, and to whom you can release your irritation or your worries.  And you do not have any way to quit.

Attaining a static state of the being is not a big attainment.  A dryness comes when a person experiences the pure static state of samadhi, and there is no tendency for anything.  That is the time the Mahaprakriti, the Maheshwari, the Divine Mother, takes care of the human body through some form.  Otherwise the yogis will leave the body.  They will be crushed under a lorry or fall from a mountain, or they may walk into a flooded river and be washed away, because mind as such is not there at that time.  Mind is temporarily merged, withered away.  The yogi has survived that stage and travelled farther.  He has entered into the shore of devotion, and that devotion takes him more and more inside the sea.

The Lord says yoga is very difficult and painful for such a person who is proceeding farther from the state of God-realization and heading towards the gunatita stage. You have no anchor and no goal.  At that time, if you are linked with a form that has attained the gunatita state, you get some strength and find some purpose to be in the body, even if it is not your individual purpose.

If there is no life after merger, the person remains in a state of God-ecstasy and then he leaves the body.  That’s the most desirable state.  But usually God-realized souls, if they are chosen to play a role, do not drop the body easily.  These yogis reach the God-realization state much earlier, in their forties, thirties, or even their twenties.  Bhagavan Ramana attained it at the age of sixteen.  Before fifty percent of the life is gone, the person must have reached either Self-realization or God-realization so that Prakriti gets the chance to work through the form.

This list of divine and undivine attributes is given in the sixteenth chapter because those who persevere and reach the gunatita level are either chosen instruments or channels.  This list enables them to know the nature of the world, that basically there are two types of people, the divine and the undivine, and only the divine type carries the possibility of sadhana, siddhi, and manifestation.  Therefore one should not waste time unnecessarily with those who have predominantly undivine attributes.

Just as you know that you cannot teach a dog to chant Veda, when you reach the gunatita stage you will also know clearly that there are some human beings who are basically undivine because they are dominated by tamas and rajas and you will not waste your precious time to try to change such people.  How much rajas or tamas they have determines the intensity of their I-ness, ego, clinging, demand, fear and imposition. Those who do not have sattwa will not be interested in liberation or yoga or sadhana.  They will be interested for bhoga, pleasure.  For the sake of discharging his role, one should see which form is more endowed more with divine attributes and which with undivine attributes.

The final phase of manifestation–the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth chapters–is nothing but preparation for withdrawal.  Everything is accomplished, so let us be ready for the return journey.  Moksha Yoga, the title of the eighteenth chapter, refers to how a fully liberated being drops the body and goes.  The sixteenth and seventeenth chapters are the last work to be performed before dropping the body: what you have attained has to be transmitted.

A liberated being must finish the last karma so that he will be allowed to drop the body.    The last karma is to give back, and transmit the light that you have received.  Every gunatita person carries that responsibility to give the light back to society.  For this, they will select those who have predominantly divine attributes.  One’s time on Earth is short; don’t make it longer by spending time with those who cannot be transformed.  That is the implied, hidden direction here.

Your job is to ensure that many are liberated, because you are liberated.  As a rich man gives away his wealth by writing a Will before he dies, so also an enlightened being must transmit and give away right before he drops the body.  If you cannot do that, you will come back again.  You will not return as a deluded being, but you will come back, because that’s the final duty.

The avatar comes again and again because while discharging his role he again gets compassion and promises something to someone, and in order to fulfill that he has to return.  This is how the perpetual play of Divine goes on and on.  In Rama avatar he created some karma, and to discharge that he came back in Krishna avatar.  Krishna avatar is considered purna avatar, complete, because that time he did everything as a play.  He will not come back to discharge any leftover karma.  The gunatita person should live life the way Krishna lived, whereby everything is just a divine play.  This is the most important hidden aspect.

Those who have divine attributes are naturally capable to move towards liberation.  Those who have undivine attributes are naturally moving away from liberation, so the gunatita person should not waste time on them.

[From an April 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India.]

Omm Namo Bhagavate

In this verse, Arjuna is asking Krishna to tell him the symptoms of one who has attained the state of sthitaprajna, or equanimity. How is such a person able to retain that state? If he feels to speak, what does he say and how does he say it?  How can we know that a person has attained equanimity, and how can that person know that he has attained such a state? What are the inner experiences of such a person?

One may ask why such questions came to Arjuna. In the previous verse, the Lord said, “Arjuna, when your bewildered intellect will be free from contradictory statements and rests in the Self in a steady and undistracted position, you will attain to yoga.” Prior to that, in Verse 99, Lord Krishna said,  “When your intellect will be free from the mire of delusion you will have no interest to hear anything in the material plane, and you will have no identification with what you have heard.”

Naturally Arjuna must have wondered about that state to which Krishna was referring. Arjuna has not yet experienced that state but he has heard about it and seen some highly evolved spiritual beings. Now that he is in the battlefield of yoga and wants to reach that state, he is asking these questions.

Sthitaprajna depends upon the intellect, but first come the senses and the mind. The senses are very powerful. It is the dharma of the senses to run towards the object, but it is the duty of the yogi to restrain the senses from the object because the yogi wants to attain a higher state. If the senses are always allowed to run towards the object, the yogi will spend his life experiencing only the objects. Gita does not say that experiencing the object is not desirable. Rather, it says that you should experience not only the object, but also the subject.

The being came to the zone of experience to experience. This being in its pure state is only awareness, and entered the world of becoming to experience the becoming. While experiencing the becoming you should not lose the experience of the being. The entire essence of Gita yoga can be summarized with this single sentence.

When the being descended to the becoming and started experiencing the becoming, it gradually lost its own awareness. Yoga means to get back its own awareness of the Being, and it should happen while remaining in the becoming. That’s the whole purpose of yoga.

The yoga of Gita is not the struggle for renunciation or transcendence. On this path, the yogi must retain the state of transcendence even while experiencing the becoming–otherwise you cannot reach the highest goal of Gita. The state of transcendence must be retained. Beyond the gunas but on the gunas–that is the Purushottama state.

Compared to the sadhana of Gita, others yogas are just a chocolate or an ice cream. Other siddhis come very quickly, but the siddhi of Gita may take a lifetime or several lifetimes. However, Lord Krishna says you should achieve it quickly and fulfill the purpose of your descent. This is called the triple sadhana. Regaining the awareness is the first attainment, having the capacity to experience the becoming is the second, and third is while experiencing the becoming, you are not losing your state of the being. It is a long and very difficult sadhana. The yogi of Gita is required to have several attainments, several siddhis, and the first is the siddhi of equanimity. Without that, the yogi can never have other siddhis. If the equanimity state is attained, all other states will naturally come.

Sthitaprajna means one whose intellect is stable. Intellect is higher than the mind, and mind is higher than the senses. All the objects are external. You, the subject, have the instruments or avenues to experience that which is outside, and you have come to experience that. To do so, you have eleven components: five senses of perception, five organs of action, and one that controls those ten.

The five organs of perception are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin. These organs will tell you there is a beautiful object, a delicious dish, a soothing environment, and so on. The organs are not you; they are just your instruments. Through these instruments you get the idea of the object. Once you get the idea, you will experience the object. For that some effort is needed, so you are given the five organs of action: hands, feet, mouth, and the organs of reproduction and elimination. You are within the body, not inside your organs of perception, nor in the organs of action. The scriptures say you are in the innermost layer, in what some say is the heart, but it is not the physical heart. I have translated it as the core layer of consciousness. Consciousness is chit. So you, the being, are in the center of that chit, in the core layer. Remaining there you are experiencing everything.

The five organs of perception and the five organs of action are under the control of the mind. That mind is also not you. Mind is only one instrument through which you, the being, will experience the becoming. Mind, eyes, hands, nose, and ears–these are all instruments, given to you to enable you to experience the becoming without losing the state of the being. This is the challenge.

Gita says that if your intellect is stable you will be able to do this, and intellect will be stable if it is linked with the being, because the being is the only stable thing here. Everything else is unstable. Objects are unstable: they come and go, constantly changing, now they are here, next they are absent. Mind is also unstable.

The mind uses the senses, saying, “Go to that object,” and because mind is by nature unstable, it does not allow the senses to be stable: “Hey, come from there, go over there, go here, go there.” This is the reason man has so much fleeting thought. Mind does not allow the senses to remain on one object, so prakriti has kept mind under the control of the intellect. But what happens is, people do not use their intellect. Ninety percent of actions are performed only from the mental plane. That is called impulsive life, and indicates that a person is simply living on the surface mind. How can these people do yoga?

Gita says this type of person should be taught to discriminate, to take some time and think. Think what you want to ask, think what you want to see, think what you want to eat, think what you want to give, think what you want to receive. Make it a habit through practice. From practice you will go to jnana, that is, discrimination and contemplation. If you make it a habit you will see your nature begin to change.

Discrimination means you are beginning to use your intellect. Decay through disuse is the biggest problem. Misuse means you are using it in a wrong way. First begin to use it. That is the yoga. Now you are using only your senses and you are being used by the mind, and mind is unstable. The dharma of the senses is to run to the objects. Don’t blame your eye if it sees something alluring. Don’t blame your ear if it is hearing some distracting music. That is the dharma of the senses, and the dharma of the mind is to be restless. Neither blame the senses nor the mind.

You are different from the object and the senses, and you are not the mind. Your dharma is that you must use the intellect. You can use the senses, but due to their dharma they always run to the object, so you must restrain them. You can restrain them through your mind, but mind is unstable, so you cannot depend on it. Gita says, use the intellect. The intellect has the power to command the mind, and the mind has the power to restrain the senses. Apply your intellect to issue a command to the mind to restrain the senses. This is how the process goes. Intellect does not directly command the senses. This has to be understood. Activate your intellect. Once you use the intellect, it expands.

This is why Gita first taught of the concept of the being, the soul, to make you aware that you are that. Your whole sadhana of Gita rests on the foundation of the concept of soul.  You have to experience this concept to be grounded on yoga. To do so you need to complete six stages, until the sixth chapter. That is why Krishna is saying that when your intellect will be linked with the being, with the soul, and not with the mind, then you will begin to experience stability.

The intellect should be always linked with the Self, not with the non-Self. Then it can command the mind to allow that experience for a length of time that will not take away your awareness.

I had not explained the concept of sthitaprajna before this because I wanted people to first have experiential depth. Prajna, or intellect, will be stable if it is linked with something that is not moving. In the very beginning, Krishna explained the component that is unmoving, imperishable and neither comes nor goes.

“These bodies are perishable but not that which dwells in them. Bodies come and go, but that which dwells within never comes or goes. Neither you nor I nor any of those who are standing before us have ever gone. They were all here, we are all here, and we all will be here. What comes and goes is the body.”

He blasted something that the intellect cannot comprehend and the mind cannot hold. Then drop-by-drop he started injecting how this abstract concept can be experienced. If you are able to experience one drop of it, you have entered into yoga. If you are not able to experience even that much yet you are capable to give discourses up to the eighteenth chapter, that is called intellectual rubbish.

Equanimity is a big attainment, but in the language of Gita’s attainment it is a drop, just an ounce, because that’s the first attainment. That drop can make your intellect stable, and make you a sthitaprajna. Arjuna had experienced that, but he was not able to retain it. It comes and goes. That is why he is asking how to retain it and what is the nature of the samadhi state. Samadhi at this stage is not a static concept. It is dynamic, fluid, and not yet stabilized. Stable samadhi, or the Self-realization stage, will come in the sixth chapter. But here in the second chapter, the moment you are linked with the being, that is, you are experiencing the being, this type of samadhi comes. It may remain one second or one minute, but it comes.

Do not commit the mistake of concluding that the intellect getting linked with the self means twenty-four hours per day, three hundred sixty-five days per year. It gets linked but since it is not stable, it again gets delinked. At this stage the experiential depth is so tiny, like a droplet, that the experience is swallowing this drop of awareness.

That is why a yogi of Gita should always remember: thus far, no farther. Stop the experience the moment it threatens the entire awareness. When there is too much turmoil, I just go and lock myself off and become delinked from everything and everyone. I enter into Me and then I get back my state. When my battery is recharged, I come out again. The result is that I don’t care about success or defeat, profit or loss, fame or defamation, acceptance or rejection, because the intellect is linked with the Self.

When a man is using his intellect regarding how to enjoy the objects, his intellect is not linked with the Self. Objects are varied and perishable, not constant, and if the intellect is linked with that which is unstable, it will also naturally be unstable. But if the intellect will be linked with that which is stable then the person will be heading towards equanimity. That is what Lord Krishna says in the verses 99 and 100.

Verse 99 states that when your intellect will cross the mire of delusion you will be indifferent to what you hear and what is yet to be heard. Your organ of hearing is used for external hearing and material dialogues, but when your intellect will be free from this, you will begin to hear the voice that speaks to you within.

The words you are hearing, that I am speaking to you, are not important, but by hearing them something is starting to speak to you within, and you are able to hear that. When you will be able to perfectly hear the voice of the being within, there will be no need for you to hear me or anyone else. Your response will not be affected by what you hear because the inner voice will tell you how to respond.

The next verses show how the sthitaprajna is able to retain that state, not losing his quota of equanimity while interacting with others. You may notice that you are likely to lose your state after you talk to someone. The more you see that, the more you avoid talking to that person. It happens naturally. That is not repulsion. Repulsion is different from withdrawal. People in our group withdraw when they see that their system cannot handle something. You do not have any hatred, anger, or bad feeling for that person. You simply experience that your state is getting diminished and you are losing your equanimity, so you apply your discrimination and avoid a situation that exposes you to that person or situation or environment. That is yoga. That’s the proof that you are conscious of your sadhana. With some people you start talking about mundane things and while talking or performing ordinary tasks your consciousness goes very high. But with some people, even if you talk of yoga and scriptures, you feel that your energy is completely gone, you feel lifeless. This happens because words are not important. What is transmitted through words is important. Everything in the ultimate analysis is nothing but energy, consciousness.

Experiential understanding is the key to reach the goal in Gita. If you put emphasis on mind’s understanding you will become just an intellectual, a professor of yoga, but not a yogi.

[From a November 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India.]