Sanjaya said: 1. To him who was thus overcome with pity and despondency, with eyes full of tears and agitated, Madhusudana spoke these words.

The second chapter opens with an announcement from Sanjaya which, with a few rightly chosen words, gives a complete picture of Arjuna's sad mental state of desperation. His mind had become overwhelmed with pity and sorrow. The very expression clearly indicates that Arjuna was not the master of the situation at that time, but on the contrary, the situation had Arjuna as its victim! To get ourselves over-ridden by life's circumstances is to ensure disastrous failures on all occasions. Only a weakling, who allows himself to be overpowered by circumstances, can be victimised by the outer happenings. Arjuna, in his present neurotic condition, has become a slave to the outer challenges. The estimate of Sanjaya not only describes to us the mental condition of Arjuna but also pointedly gives us a hint that the cracking of the inner personality of Arjuna has made deep fissures into the character of the great hero. The greatest archer of his time, Arjuna, has been so totally impoverished within that he has come to weep like a simple maiden! To Arjuna, thus overwhelmed by an emotion of misplaced pity and tearless weeping, Madhusudana (slayer of the demon, Madhu), Lord Krishna, spoke the following words. Here, it is to be noted that modern psychology has also observed and recorded that a tearless weeping is the climax in the attack of hysteria.

The Blessed Lord said: 2. Whence is this perilous condition come upon thee, this dejection, un-Aryan-like, heaven-excluding, disgraceful, O Arjuna?

The Lord of the Hindus is surprised to see that a king, claiming to be an Aryan, is feeling so flabbergasted on the battlefield. The instinct of a true Aryan is to be balanced and equipoised in all conditions of life and to face situations diligently, compelling them to change their threatening attitude and make them favourable to himself. When life is courted properly, even the ugliest situation can be transformed into a charming smile of success. Everything depends upon the intelligent man's dexterity in steering himself upon the bumping roads of life. Thus, Lord Krishna characterises Arjuna's behaviour as un- Aryan. The Aryans are extremely sensitive to the higher calls of life, righteousness and nobility, both in thought and action. The Divine Charioteer is quite surprised at discovering such an attitude in his friend, whom he had known for years through thick and thin. The mood of dejection was, in fact, quite alien to the mental make-up and intellectual nature of Arjuna. Thus, we have here an expression of wonder and the Lord asks, "Whence comes upon thee this dejection, etc..." It is believed by the Hindus that to die fighting for righteousness is the duty of one born in a family of kings and by so sacrificing his life on the battle-field for a noble cause, he reaches and enjoys the Heaven of the Heroes

(Veera-Swarga). 3. Yield not to impotence, O Partha! It does not befit thee, Cast off this mean weakness of heart! Stand up, O Parantapa (O scorcher of foes) !

In stinging reproachful words, Krishna is deliberately lashing at the anxiety-state-neurotic in Arjuna. Krishna, who was so far silent, is now bursting forth into an eloquence, in which every word is a chosen missile, a pounding hammer-stroke that can flatten any victim. The word 'Klaibyam' means, the mental attitude of one who is neither masculine enough to feel a passionate courage and daring, nor womanly enough to feel the soft emotions of hesitation and despair. In modern parlance, sometimes friends wonder at the impotency of another friend and express their surprise with such an exclamation as, "Is he a man or a woman?" --- meaning that from his behaviour it is not very easy to decide which characteristic is predominant in him. Emotionally, therefore, Arjuna is behaving now as a contradiction; effeminately-manly and masculinely-effeminate, just as a eunuch of the Indian royal courts --- looks like a man but dresses as a woman, talks like a man but feels like a woman, physically strong but mentally weak! So far Krishna was silent and the silence had a deep meaning. Arjuna, overwhelmed with compassion, had taken the decision not to fight and was all along mustering arguments in support of it. As a diplomat, Krishna knew that it would have been useless to contradict his friend earlier when he was inspired to argue eloquently in support of his own wrong estimate of things. But the tears in the eyes of Arjuna indicated that his inward confusion had reached a climax.

In the tradition of religious devotion, it is very truly said and firmly believed all over the world, that the Lord, in His high seat, keeps mum and is almost deaf so long as we are arguing and asserting our maturity as intellectual beings. But when we come down to live and act as emotional beings, when tears of desperation trickle down the cheeks of true devotees, then, unasked, the LORD OF COMPASSION rushes forward to reach the lost souls and guides them out of their inward darkness to the resplendent LIGHT OF WISDOM. A soul, identifying with the intellect, can seek and discover itself; but, when it is identifying with the mind, it needs the help and guidance of the Lord. The touch of the Lord's grace, when it descends upon His devotees, is invariably felt by the seekers more as an avalanche than as a refreshing shower of Divine Mercy. Spiritual Grace must necessarily re-orientate the heart and burn away its negativities before the Spirit can radiate its sway upon matter. True to this great principle observed everywhere and experienced by every true seeker, in the Geeta too, we find that, when the silent Lord, from the Charioteer's seat, started speaking, His words gleamed and landed like lightning on Arjuna to burn his wrong mental tendencies in the fire of shame. Soft words of sympathy could not have revived Arjuna's drooping mind to vigour. Thus Krishna rightly lashed his friend with these stinging arrows of ridicule, dipped in the acid of satire!! Krishna ends his "word-treatment" with an appeal to Arjuna to "Get up and act."

Arjuna said: 4. How, O Madhusudana, shall I, in battle, fight with arrows against Bhishma and Drona, who are fit to be worshipped, O destroyer of enemies!

The motive-hunting cowardice in Arjuna has come to pick up a great argument, seemingly quite convincing to the undiscriminating. On the other hand, to one who has not lost his balance and who knows perfectly the art of evaluating such a situation, this is no problem at all, and Arjuna's arguments are quite hollow. The war that is imminent is not between individuals due to any personal rivalry. Arjuna has no personality apart from the Pandava-forces, and the pair, Drona and Bhishma, are also not mere individual entities; in their identification, they are the Kaurava-forces. The two forces are arrayed to fight for certain principles. The Kauravas are fighting for their policy-of-Adharma. The Pandavas are fighting for the principles-of-Dharma as enunciated in the ancient lore of the Hindus. So glorious being the cause, when the two armies representing the will of the People have marshalled themselves, Arjuna, the hero, had no individual right to accept any personal honour or dishonour, or to insist on any respect or disrespect, in meeting the individuals who were champions of the wrong side. Without taking this total view-point of the situation, Arjuna made the mistake of arrogating to himself an individual ego and observed the problems through the glasses of his ego. He recognised himself to be the disciple of Drona and the grandson of Bhishma. The very same teacher and grandsire were also seeing Arjuna in the opposite camp, but they felt no compunction, because they had no such egoistic misconceptions. They drowned their individuality in the cause they were championing. In short, Arjuna's egoism was the cause for his terrible moral confusions and misconceptions. I have often discussed this portion with some of the best men of our country and I have found all of them justifying Arjuna's argument. That is to say, this is a very subtle point to be decided and, perhaps, Vyasa thought of solving this riddle for the society with the very principles of Hinduism for the guidance of future generations. The more we identify ourselves with the little 'I' in us, the more will be our problems and confusions in life. When we expand ourselves through our larger identifications --- with an army, a cause or a principle, or a nation or an age --- we shall find our moral confusions dwindling into almost nothingness. Perfect morality can be declared and lived only by him who has sought to live and discover his real identity with the Self which is ONE WITHOUT A SECOND, EVERYWHERE, IN ALL BEINGS AND FORMS. Later on, we shall find Krishna advising this TRUTH as a philosophical treatment for Arjuna's mental rehabilitation.

5. Better indeed, in this world, is to eat even the bread of 'beggary' than to slay the most noble of teachers. But, if I kill them, even in this world, all my enjoyments of wealth and desires will be stained with blood.

Continuing his high sounding but futile arguments, due to his false estimate of himself and his problem, Arjuna poses here as a martyr of his own morality and ethical goodness. His gurus, meaning both Drona and Bhishma, are characterised here as Mahanubhavah --- men who were the ideals of their age, symbolising the best in our culture, who, in their broad-mindedness and courage of conviction, had themselves offered many a sacrifice at the altars of the Sanatana Dharma, the Hindu science of perfect living. Such noble men, who formed the very touch-stones of our culture in that era, were not to be eliminated from life, merely for the fulfilment of an individual's appetite for power and position. Not only in their own age, but for millenarian, the world would be impoverished by the heartless squandering of such precious lives. Thus, Arjuna says that it would be nobler for himself and the Pandava-brothers to live upon the bread of beggary than to gain kingship after destroying all the glorious flowers in the garden of our culture. After annihilating them all, elders and teachers, even supposing the Pandavas actually got their kingdom back, Arjuna points out how his noble Aryan-heart would not be able to enjoy either the kingdom or its wealth; for everything would be smeared by the bitter memories of the precious blood that would have been spilt in the war. Once we misread a situation, sentiments cloud our understanding and then we too act in life as Arjuna did in his. This is clearly indicated here in the detailed narration of the incident by Vyasa.

6. I can scarcely say which will be better, that we should conquer them or that they should conquer us. Even the sons of Dhritarashtra, after slaying whom we do not wish to live, stand facing us. The two earlier stanzas from Arjuna, no doubt, indicate to us the state of perplexity and confusion in his 'objective- mind.' That the state of hysteria within has now developed to attack even his intellectual composure is indicated in this stanza. The stimuli coming from the array of the enemy-lines, as they touched his 'objective-mind,' created therein a problem, to solve which, he needed the guidance of the rational capacities of his intellect --- the 'subjective-mind.' Split as he was within, his mental personality, divorced from his intellect, could not easily come to any definite decision. His egoistic self-evaluation and the ego-created intense anxieties for the fruits of the great war, stood, as it were, between his mind and intellect, separating them and creating between them, an almost unbridgeable gulf; hence, Arjuna's confusions here.

The mind, generally functioning as an efficient "receiving- and-despastching-clerk," receives the information of the perceptions conveyed to it by the sense-organs, and after arranging these perceptions in order, conveys them to the intellect for its judgement. The intellect, with reference to its own stored-up memories of similar experiences in the past, comes to final decisions which are conveyed to the mind for execution; and the mind in its turn issues the necessary orders for the organs-of-action to act upon. All these are happening at every moment, all through our waking-state, in our intelligent existence in the midst of the objects of the world. Where these equipments are not functioning co- operatively, with perfect team spirit, the personality of the individual is shattered and he becomes inefficient in meeting life as a victorious mortal. The rehabilitation of that individual is the re-adjustment and re-education of his inner world and where his personality is once again tuned up and adjusted, he comes to exhibit better efficiency in life. Poor Arjuna, victimised not so much by the external world as by his own mental condition, is seen here as being incapable of judging whether he should conquer his enemy or, by an ignoble retreat, allow them to conquer him. In this stanza, Vyasa is indicating to us that the hysteria in Arjuna was not only mental, but also at the level of the intellect.

7. My heart is overpowered by the taint of pity; my mind is confused as to duty. I ask Thee. Tell me decisively what is good for me. I am Thy disciple. Instruct me, who have taken refuge in

Thee. In this stanza, when Arjuna has completely realised the helpless impotency in himself to come to any decision, he surrenders totally to Krishna. He, in his own words, admits the psychological shattering felt and lived by him in his bosom. He has instinctively diagnosed, correctly, even the cause of it to be "an uncontrollable amount of over-whelming pity." Of course, Arjuna does not realise that it is his misplaced compassion; but, whatever it be, the patient is now under the mental stress of extreme confusion and bewilderment. Arjuna confesses that his intellect (Chetas) has gone behind a cloud of confusions regarding what Dharma and Adharma are at that moment for him. The problem --- whether to fight and conquer the enemies or not to fight and allow the enemies to conquer him --- which needed an urgent solution, could not be rationally judged with the depleted mental capacities of Arjuna. We have already explained Dharma and found that the Dharma of a thing 'is the law of its being.' A thing cannot remain itself without faithfully maintaining its own nature, and 'THAT NATURE, WHICH MAKES A THING WHAT IT IS' is called Dharma. Hinduism insists on the Manava Dharma, meaning, it insists that men should be true to their own essential nature, which is godly and divine, and, therefore, all efforts in life should be directed towards maintaining themselves in the dignity of the Soul and not plod on through life like helpless animals. Here Arjuna indicates that he is quite ready to follow all the instructions of the Lord and maintain perfect faith in the wisdom of his Divine Charioteer. The Pandava must also be considered to have indicated that, if he, in his foolishness, were to raise doubts, even for the thousandth time, Krishna should have the large-heartedness, compassion and kindness patiently to explain them again to his disciple. All through the Geeta we come across many occasions when Arjuna punctuates Krishna's message with his own doubts. Never does Krishna, even once, grow impatient with his disciple. On the other hand, each question, as it were, is seen to have added more enthusiasm and interest to the discourses on the battle- field.

8. I do not see that it would remove this sorrow that burns up my senses, even if I should attain prosperous and unrivalled dominion on earth, or even Lordship over the gods.

Arjuna is indicating here to Krishna the urgency for guidance but for which he would be left to suffer the voiceless agonies of an inward pain. The patient is unable to explain or even to indicate vaguely, the source from which the pain is rising in him.

This mental sorrow in Arjuna is "blasting" even his sense organs! Under the heavy burden of his sorrows he finds it very difficult even to see or hear things properly. Even his Indriyas (sense-organs), are being blasted by the overheated sorrows within him. It is natural for any reasonable human being to feel an intellectual impastience to solve a problem of the mind and thereby make it quiet and peaceful. Poor Arjuna also has tried his best to bring some consolation to himself through his own intellectual discrimination. The sorrow that he felt was not for the acquisition and possession of any sensuous object in the outer world, because, as his own words indicate, he has already thought over them and found that even an empire comprising the whole earth, flourishing under his kingship --- nay, a lordship over the gods even --- would not have wiped off his sense of sorrow. The urgency felt by Arjuna, as is evident from his own words, may be considered as amounting to his burning aspiration for liberating himself from the limitations of a mortal. All that he needed to make himself perfect was right discrimination (Viveka) which the 'LORD OF THE SENSES' (Hrishikesha) gives him throughout the DIVINE SONG.

Sanjaya said: 9. Having spoken thus to Hrishikesha, Gudakesha, the destroyer of foes, said to Govinda: "I will not fight" ; and became silent.

This stanza and the following, together constitute the running commentary of Sanjaya the faithful reporter of the Geeta. He says that, after surrendering himself to Krishna, seeking the Lord's guidance, Arjuna, the great CONQUEROR OF SLEEP and the SCORCHER OF HIS FOES, declared to Krishna, the Lord of the senses, that he would not fight, and became silent. No single individual alive at that period had the authority to call back the armies from the field of Kurukshetra except the blind old uncle of the Pandavas. He had the status and the weight of opinion necessary for ordering a truce even at a time when it looked as though the time had slipped through the fingers. Sanjaya hoped that Dhritarashtra would understand the futility of their fighting against Arjuna, who would certainly conquer the Kaurava forces, since the "Knotted-haired" warrior (Gudakesha) had surrendered himself to the Lord of the senses (Hrishikesha), the Winner of the World (Govinda). But, Dhritarashtra was born-blind, and had grown deaf to the words of warning uttered by the good, due to his infinite attachment to his children.

10. To him who was despondent in the midst of the two armies, Hrishikesha, as if smiling, O Bharata, spoke these words.

Thus standing between the two forces, the good and the bad, arrayed for a battle to death, Arjuna (the jeeva) surrenders completely, to the Lord (the subtler discriminative intellect), his charioteer, who holds the five horses (the five senses) yoked to his chariot (body), under perfect control. When the stunned and confused ego --- Arjuna --- totally surrenders to Krishna, the Lord, with a smile, reassures the Jeeva of its final victory, and declares the entire message of spiritual redemption, the Geeta. In this sense we analyse the picture painted in Sanjaya's words, borrowing our sanction from the Upanishads. Once we agree to read this Upanishad-sense in the picture painted here by the words of Sanjaya, we can discover in it an Eternal Truth. When the ego (Arjuna) in its dejection sits back in the body (chariot), throwing down all instruments of ego-centric activities (Gandiva), and when the sense-organs (the white-horses) are held back, well under control, by the pulled-reins (the mind), then the charioteer (the Pure Intellect) shall lend the ego a divine strength, and guide it to the ultimate victory over the forces of Adharma with the help of the dynamism of Dharma, even though the former may seem much stronger in force than the simple-looking dynamism in the latter.

The Blessed Lord said: 11. You have grieved for those that should not be grieved for; yet, you speak words of wisdom. The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

When we rightly diagnose Arjuna's dejection, it is not very difficult for us to realise that, though its immediate cause is the challenge of the war, his condition of mental torture is only a symptom of a deeper disease. Just as a true doctor will try to eradicate a disease, not by curing the symptoms but by removing the CAUSE of the disease, so too here, Lord Krishna is trying to remove the very source of Arjuna's delusion. The ego rises when the PURE SELF is not recognised; this deep-seated ignorance in man not only veils his Divine Nature from himself, but also projects on the REALITY a positive misconception. The 'ego-centric-idea,' that he is conditioned by his own body, mind and intellect, is the true seed of Arjuna's delusory attachments with his own relations and the consequent deep compassion that has risen in his bosom to make him so impotent and helpless. Grief and dejection are the price that delusion demands from its victim. To rediscover ourselves to be really something higher than our own ego, is to end all the sorrows that have come to us, through our false identifications. Thus, the ETERNAL SPIRIT in man, asserting its false relationships with his body, comes to feel bound by a thousand relationships with the world of things and beings. The same PERFECT-PRINCIPLE-IN-LIFE, playing on the field of the mind, comes to experience the imperfections of the emotional world as its own. Again, the DIVINE-SPARK-OF-LIFE, assuming, as it often does, a false identity with the intellect, comes to sob and suffer for its hopes and desires, its ambitions and ideologies, which are the characteristic pre-occupastions of the intellect.

The SELF, thus getting reflected in the intellect, the body, and the senses, is the ego, which is the victim of the world of objects, feelings and ideas. To this ego, belong all the sad destinies of life as well as its fleeting thrills of acquisition and possession. The ego in Arjuna suffered neurosis, goaded by its own delusions and the consequent misapprehensions. Krishna, in his INFINITE WISDOM, knew that MIS-APPREHENSION OF REALITY can take place only because of a pitiable NON-APPREHENSION OF REALITY. Therefore, in order to cure the very source of Arjuna's delusion, Krishna is here teaching him the cream of knowledge, as declared in the immortal books of the Hindus, the Upanishads. A re-education of the mind through metaphysical and psychic methods is the last word in psycho-therapy, which the East gave to the world, many thousand years ago. Krishna starts his entire Geeta lesson with this attempt at the re-education of Arjuna. True to that traditional cultural concept of education, here, the Great Master, Krishna, starts his instructions to Arjuna with a direct discourse upon the ETERNAL REALITY. The inner equipments of both Bhishma and Drona allowed through them a glorious expression of the LIFE PRINCIPLE or the Soul in them, and these great men were incomparable due to this Divine shine that beamed out through them. In this clashing of weapons, to consider that the cultural soul of Bhishma will be wounded, or that the life of Drona, the master-archer and military genius, will be ended, is a delusory concept of an uninitiated intellect. By this statement Krishna has indicated to Arjuna a greater Self than the ego in every embodiment. At every level of our personality, we view Life and come to our own conclusions about things. Thus, we have a PHYSICAL ESTIMATE of the world from the body level, quite distinct from the EMOTIONAL PICTURE of life from the mental level, and also an INTELLECTUAL CONCEPT of life from the level of the intellect. Physically, what I see as a woman, is mentally my mother and intellectually, the same sacred feminine form is a bundle of cells, each having in its protoplasmic content, a nucleus that presides over all its functions. The imperfections that I see in a physical object will fail to give me misery, if I successfully gild it with my emotional appreciation. Similarly, an object which is physically abhorrent and mentally shameful will still fail to provide me with any sorrow, if I can appreciate it from my intellectual level. So, that which gives me despondency and dejection at the physical, mental and intellectual levels can yield a thrilling inspiration if I re-view it from the spiritual level. Krishna is advising Arjuna to renounce his physical, emotional and intellectual estimates of his teacher and his grandsire, and those of the whole battle-field problem, and to re-evaluate the situation through his spiritual understanding. This great and transcendental Truth has been so suddenly expounded here that it has, on Arjuna, the stunning effect of a sudden unexpected blast. We shall, later on, understand how this subtle, psycho-physical shock- therapy did immeasurable good to the hysterical condition of Arjuna.

"WHY DO THEY DESERVE NO GRIEF? BECAUSE THEY ARE ETERNAL. HOW?" THE LORD SAYS:

12. It is not that at any time (in the past) , indeed, was I not, nor were you, nor these rulers of men. Nor, verily, shall we all ever cease to be hereafter.

Krishna here declares, in unequivocal terms, that the embodied Self in every one is set on a great pilgrimage in which It comes to identify itself with varied forms, temporarily to gain a limited but determined, set of experiences. He says that neither He Himself nor Arjuna nor the great kings of the age that have assembled in both the armies, are mere accidental happenings. They do not come from nowhere and, at their death, do not become mere non-existent nothingness. Correct philosophical thinking guides man's intellect to the apprehension of a continuity from the past --- through the present --- to the endless future. The Spirit remaining the same, It gets seemingly conditioned by different body-equipments and comes to live through its self-ordained environments. It is this conclusion of the Hindu philosophers that has given them the most satisfactory THEORY OF REINCARNATION. The most powerful opponents of this idea do not seem to have studiously followed their own scriptures. Christ Himself has, if not directly, at least indirectly, proclaimed this doctrine when He told His disciples: "John, the Baptist, was Elijah." Origen, the most learned of the Christian Fathers, has clearly declared:

"Every man received a body for himself according to his deserts in former lives." There was no great thinker in the past who had not, nor any in the present who has not accepted, expressly or tacitly, these logical conclusions about the DOCTRINE OF REINCARNATION. Buddha constantly made references to his previous births. Virgil and Ovid regarded the doctrine as perfectly self-evident. Josephus observed that the belief in reincarnation was widely accepted among the Jews of his age. Solomon's BOOK OF WISDOM says: "To be born in sound body with sound limbs is a reward of the virtues of the past lives." And who does not remember the famous saying of the learned son of Islam who declared, "I died out of the stone and I became a plant; I died out of the plant and became an animal; I died out of the animal and became a man.

Why then should I fear to die? When did I grow less by dying? I shall die out of man and shall become an angel!!" In later times, this most intelligent philosophical belief has been accepted as a doctrine by the German philosophers Goethe, Fichte, Schelling and Lessing. Among the recent philosophers, Hume, Spencer, Max Mueller, have all recognised this doctrine as incontrovertible. Among the poets of the West also, we find many burnished intellects soaring into the cloudless sky of imagination and within their poetic flights they too have intuitively felt the sanction behind this immortal doctrine-Browning, Rossetti, Tennyson and Wordsworth, to mention but a few names. The REINCARNATION THEORY is not a mere dream of the philosophers, and the day is not far far off when, with the fast-developing science of Psychology, the West will come to rewrite its Scripture under the sheer weight of observed phenomena. An uncompromising intellectual quest for understanding life cannot satisfy itself if it is thwarted at every corner by "observed irregularities." We cannot, for long, ignore them all as mere 'chances.' The prodigy Mozart is a spectacular instance which cannot be explained away; to be logical we must accept the idea of the continuity of the embodied souls. This genius. wrote Sonatas at the age of four, played in public at the age of five, composed his first Opera at the age of seven! Without the REINCARNATION THEORY, we will have to label this wondrous incident as an accident and throw it into the dust-bin of chance and bury it there!! Examples are often noticed, but rarely recorded as evidences, to prove this great THEORY OF REINCARNATION. The modern world, as I said, has yet to discover this great and self-evident LAW OF LIFE. Therefore, to an uninitiated student, this theory may seem too staggering for quiet appreciation. When Krishna declared that none of them, including himself, Arjuna and the great kings, even after their deaths on the battle-field

"shall cease to exist in future," Arjuna, a typical man-of-the world could not grasp it as a self-evident fact. His questioning eyes made the Lord explain again the idea through an example in the following stanza.

"WHY DO THEY DESERVE NO GRIEF? FOR THEY ARE ETERNAL IN ESSENCE. HOW?"... THE LORD SAYS:

13. Just as in this body the embodied (soul) passes into childhood, youth and old age, so also does he pass into another body; the firm man does not grieve at it.

It is the law of memory that the experiencer and the memoriser must both be the same entity; then alone can memory power function. I cannot remember any of YOUR experiences nor can YOU remember any of MY experiences; I can remember my experiences as readily and easily as you can remember your experiences.

In old age, everyone of us can remember the main incidents of his own childhood and youth. In the progress of growth, childhood dies away and youth appears, and youth dies before old age can assert itself. In the old man, it is self-evident that neither his childhood nor his youth is with him, and yet, he can remember his own early days. Applying the principle of memory, it becomes quite clear then that 'SOMETHING' in us is common in all the different stages of our growth so that the same entity remembers the experiences gained by it in the past through the childish body, and later, through the youthful structure. Thus, youthfulness may be considered as a birth, when childhood has met with its death. So too, old age is born when youth is dead. And yet, none of us is the least disturbed by these changes; on the other hand, we feel, in fact, happier due to the wealth of experiences we have gained as the status of the body rose from innocent childhood to matured old age. Using this subjective experience of every one in the world as a standard of comparison, Krishna is trying to bring home to Arjuna that wise men do not worry when they leave one body for the purpose of taking another one. This stanza is again asserting, in unequivocal terms, the truth behind the Reincarnation Theory. And thus viewed, death can no more be a threat to a wise man. We do not moan at the death of childhood following which alone can we come to experience youth; we are confident in our knowledge that though youth is entered into and childhood has ended, there is a continuity of existence of the same one only, so, a child has now become a youth. So too, at the moment of death, there is no extinction of the individuality, but the embodied-ego of the dead-body leaves its previous structure, and according to the vasanas (mental impressions) that it had gathered during its embodiment, it gets identified with a physical equipment, where it can express itself completely, and seek its perfect fulfilment.

14. The contacts of senses with objects, O son of Kunti, which cause heat and cold, pleasure and pain, have a beginning and an end; they are impermanent; endure them bravely, O descendant of Bharata.

According to the accepted theory of perception in Vedanta, an object is perceived not BY the sense-organs but THROUGH them. The Indriyas are instruments through which the perceiving-ego gathers the knowledge of the various objects. If the perceiver is not actually contacting the objects through the sense-organs, the objects, as such, cannot bring any perception to him. That the same objects can give two different types of experiences to two different individuals is very well- known. The object remaining the same, if it can give different experiences, it is evident that it is because of the difference in the mental composition of the individuals. It is also observed that, objects of one's intense fancy during a certain stage in one's life, become a nuisance to the same individual after a time; for, as time passes on, the mental constitution of the individual also changes. In short, it is very clear that the external objects can convey their stimuli and give us an experience only when our minds come in contact with the objects through the sense-organs. He who can understand that the objects of the world are in a state of flux, are constantly coming into existence and perishing --- he will not allow himself to be tossed about by the existence or non-existence of the finite things of the world. In the flood of time, things and incidents, circumstances and environments flow up to our present from the unknown FUTURE, to give us vivid experiences of varied intensity, and they, in their very nature, cannot remain permanently, but must, of necessity, pass on to become one with the entire PAST. Nothing can remain the same, even for a short period, in the world-of-objects where change alone is the changeless law. Having understood this finite nature of the changeable objects-of-the-world, wherein everyone of them has a beginning and an end, on no occasion need a wise man despair the least, of things THAT ARE, or of things THAT ARE NOT. Heat and cold, success or failure, pain or joy --- none of them can be permanent. Since every situation, of its own nature, must keep on changing, it would be foolish to get ourselves upset at every change noticed. It is wisdom to suffer them meekly with the comfort and consolation of the knowledge of their finite nature. It is the attitude of the wise to go through life, both in joy and sorrow, in success and failure, in pain and joy, with the constant awareness:

"Even this will pass away." The external world of challenges is finite inasmuch as it has a beginning and an end. Not only that, Krishna adds,

"they are impermanent by their very nature." By the term 'impermanent' used here, the Lord means that the same object which gives pleasure at one moment starts yielding, at another moment, pain to the experiencer. This inconsistency is indicated by the term 'anitya' in the stanza. WHAT GOOD WILL ACCRUE TO HIM WHO IS INDIFFERENT TO HEAT AND COLD AND THE LIKE? - -- LISTEN:

15. That firm man whom, surely, these afflict not, O chief among men, to whom pleasure and pain are the same, is fit for realising the Immortality of the Self.

Calm endurance, both in pleasure and pain, is a condition necessary for right knowledge of the true Self; this is the technique of Self-realisation, as explained in the Upanishadic lore. Based upon that fact, here Lord Krishna explains that one who has found in himself a mental equipoise, wherein he is not afflicted or disturbed by circumstances of pain and pleasure, he alone "IS FIT FOR ATTAINING IMMORTALITY." When the TRANSCENDENTAL TRUTH or the ETERNAL PERFECTION has been indicated by the term Immortality, the term is not used in its limited sense of 'deathlessness' of the body. Here the term 'death' not only indicates the destruction of the physical embodiment but also includes and incorporates within its significance, the entire range of finite experiences, where, in each one of them, there is an extinction-experience. No experience gained through either the body, or the mind, or the intellect is permanent. In other words, each experience is born to live with us for a short period and then to die away in us. These chains of finite experiences stretch out in front of us as the paths of sorrow and pain in our life. The term 'Immortality,' used by the Rishi to indicate the 'Supermanhood,' indicates a state wherein one, walking the path of endless sorrows, as the individual ego, transcends that state to attain the Infinite experience of THE ETERNAL AND THE PERMANENT. Through the Geeta, our poet-seer Vyasa is making Lord Krishna declare that the purpose of life for every one is the attainment of PERFECTION, and to evolve oneself to it one must make use of every little chance in one's allotted span of life. To endure meekly, with magnanimous joy, the little pin-pricks of life --- heat and cold, success and failure, pain and joy --- is the highest training that life can provide to all of us. An incompetent idler's hapless endurance of life, is not in itself what is indicated here. It is especially said that the equipoise of the mind, both in pleasure and sorrow, entertain by a "wise man" (Dheerah) makes him fit for the highest cultural self-development. That is to say, the equanimity should not flow from the dark caves of one's stupidity and inertia, but it must gurgle forth from the open sunny fields of wisdom and understanding. When one understands the essential nature of the objects-of-the- world to be finite, out of that realised knowledge one gains enough balance for calm endurance and does not feel exalted in pleasure nor dejected in pain. So long as we live in the body, as the body, we are not able to ignore or calmly endure the sorrows of the body. But, when we are fired by a sentiment of love or hatred, we invariably make ready sacrifices of bodily pleasures. Because of my love for my son, I am ready to make any sacrifice of my physical needs, so that I may give him a good education, etc. When, intellectually, one gets fired by some idea or ideology, for the satisfaction of it, one readily ignores and overlooks the comforts and pleasures of one's body and mind. The martyrs and revolutionaries in the world could, with pleasure, face physical persecutions and mental agonies for the satisfaction of their intellectual lives and for the fulfilment of their ideals and ideologies.

FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS ALSO, IT IS PROPER THAT YOU SHOULD ABANDON YOUR GRIEF AND DISTRESSING DELUSION AND SHOULD CALMLY ENDURE HEAT AND COLD, ETC. FOR:

16. The unreal has no being; there is no non-being of the Real; the truth about both these has been seen by the Knowers of the Truth (or the Seers of the Essence) .

In Vedantic literature, the Real and the Un-real are very scientifically distinguished. These two categories are not considered as indefinables in our ancient scriptures; though they do not declare these to be definables. The Rishis have clearly indicated what constitutes the REAL and what are the features of the UN-REAL. "That which was not in the past and which will not be in the future, but, that which seemingly exists only in the present is called the un-Real." In the language of the Karika, "That which is non-existent in the beginning and in the end, is necessarily non-existent in the intermediate stages also; objects, we see, are illusory, still they are regarded as real." Naturally, the Real is "that which defies all changes and remains the same in all the periods of time: past, present and future." Thus, in an ordinary example, when one misunderstands a post in the dark to be a ghost, the ghost- vision is considered unreal as compared to the post; because, the hallucination cannot be permanent and it does not remain after the re-discovery of the post. Similarly, on waking up from our dream, we do not get anxious to provide for our dream-children; because, as soon as we wake up, we realise that the dream was unreal. Before we went to bed, the dream-children were not with us, and after waking up, our dream-children are no more with us; thus we understand and realise that our dream- children, whom we loved and tended as real during our dream, are, in fact, unreal. By significance, therefore, the Real is that which exists at all times: in the past, the present and the future. The post is relatively real --- it was, it is and it will be. The life in our matter envelopments, we know, is finite, inasmuch as every little experience, at all the three levels of our existence --- among the objects, with our sentiments, in the company of our ideas --- in finite. The body changes at every moment; the mind evolves and the intellect grows. All changes, evolutionary movements and growths, are indicated by a constant-death of their previous state, in order that the thing concerned may change, evolve or grow. The body, the mind and the intellect are ever-changing in us, and all of them, therefore, according to our definition, cannot be Real. But is there a Real entity behind it all? In order that change may take place, no doubt, a changeless substratum is necessary. For the waters of the river to flow, a motionless river-bed must exist. Similarly, in order to hold together the millions of experiences at the levels of our body, mind and intellect, and to give us the experience of a synchronised whole --- which we call life --- we must, necessarily, have some substratum, changeless and real, which is common to all three. Something in us remains, as it were, unchanged all through our changes, holding the vivid experiences together as a thread holds the beads in a necklace. On closer analysis, it becomes clear that it can be nothing other than the Self in us, the Pure Awareness. Experiences that have come under one's awareness do not constitute any vital aspect of one's own Self; life is the sum total of experiences that have been devised by the touch of one's illuminating Consciousness. In childhood, I was conscious of my childhood-life; in my youth, I was conscious of my youthful life; and in my old age, I am again conscious of my present experiences. The Consciousness remaining the same, endless experiences came under it, got illumined and died away. This Awareness by which I become conscious of things in my life --- because of which I am considered as alive, but for which I will have no more existence in this given embodiment --- "That" Spiritual Entity, Eternal and All-Pervading, Unborn and Undying, the One Changeless Factor, is the Infinite in me. And this Atman is the Real. Men of knowledge and wisdom have known the essence, the meaning and the implication of both these: the Self and the non-Self, the Real and the Unreal, which in their mysterious combination constitute the strange phenomenon called the world.

WHAT THEN IS THAT WHICH IS EVER REAL? LISTEN:

17. Know That to be Indestructible by which all this is pervaded. None can cause the destruction of That --- the Imperishable.

The REAL is that which envelops everything that exists, and which is the very stuff and substance of all the worlds of perceptions, which we experience. Different mud-pots, each different in form, shape and colour, may have different names according to the things they contain or according to the purpose for which they are used. Though each of them has thus a different name, yet, all of them are, we may say, enveloped by --- or permeated with one and the same stuff, the mud, without which none of the pots can exist. From mud they came; in mud they exist; and when they are destroyed, their names and forms shall merge back to become mud. All the mud-pots are enveloped by mud which is the Reality holding the world of mud-pots together. Similarly, the world of finite changes is entirely permeated through and through and enveloped by the REAL, the Changeless. And Bhagawan adds that there is no possibility of this REAL, even for a moment, ever getting destroyed, even by a fraction. WHAT THEN IS THE UNREAL (ASAT) WHOSE EXISTENCE IS NOT CONSTANT? LISTEN:

18. They have an end, it is said, these bodies of the embodied- Self. The Self is Eternal, Indestructible, Incomprehensible. Therefore, fight, O Bharata.

The physical forms, constituted of matter envelopments, are all perishable equipments for the indwelling-Self, which is the Eternal Factor, ever in Its nature, changeless, indestructible, and incomprehensible. By the term EVER CHANGELESS, the Supreme is indicated as Eternal because the non-eternals, by their nature, must be ever- changing, change being the insignia of the finite. Here, by using the two terms: Eternal (Nityah) and Indestructible (Anashinah), the Lord is indicating that neither a total nor a partial destruction is possible in the Supreme. By qualifying the Eternal as UNKNOWABLE it is not, in any sense, intended to indicate that the Supreme is 'unknown.' Here, the term 'unknowable' is only meant to express that it is not knowable through the usual organs- of-perception. The sense-organs are the instruments through which the Consciousness beams out and in ITS awareness, objects get illumined. These instruments of cognition, whether they be sense-organs, or the mind or the intellect, are in themselves, inert and can have their knowledge of perception only when they are dynamised by the Consciousness, the Spark-of-Life. As such, these organs cannot make the Consciousness an object of their apprehension. Therefore, in terms of our most common source of knowledge --- direct perception --- the Shastra says here that the Supreme is 'unknowable,' It being self- determined (Swatah siddhah). THEREFORE, FIGHT, O DESCENDANT OF BHARATA - -- This is, really, not a command to fight. A religion that is built upon the concept of extreme forgiveness and large- hearted tolerance, as envisaged in the principle of "non- violence," could not have raised a slogan of chaos or revolutionary blood-thirstiness in its very scripture. Such an interpretation is the unintentioned mischief of a commentator, who does not read the Geeta in the context of the Mahabharata. The words "Fight, O Son of India," means that it is a religious call to every Hindu to discard his defeatist mentality and face, whole-heartedly and sincerely, the situations, in every given field of his life, at every given moment of his existence. Active resistance to evil is the Krishna-creed in the Geeta. THE LORD NOW QUOTES TWO VEDIC MANTRAS TO CONFIRM THE VIEW THAT GEETA SHASTRA IS INTENDED TO REMOVE THE CAUSE OF SAMSARA, SUCH AS GRIEF AND DELUSION. "IT IS ONLY A FALSE NOTION OF YOURS," SAYS THE LORD, "THAT YOU THINK THUS: 'BHISHMA AND OTHERS, WILL BE KILLED BY ME IN THE BATTLE; I WILL BE THEIR SLAYER'..." HOW?

19. He who takes the Self to be the slayer and he who thinks He is slain, neither of these knows. He slays not, nor in He slain.

The Self, being Immutable, It is neither slain nor can It be the slayer. Those who think that they have been slain when the body is slain and those who feel that they are the slayers, both of them know not the Real Nature of the Self and hence they but prattle meaningless assertions. That which is killed is the perishable body and the delusory arrogation, "I am slain" belongs to the ego-centre. The Self is that which is beyond the body and the ego, since the Pure Consciousness is the Illuminator of both, the body and the ego. In short, being Immutable, the Self can neither be the agent nor the object of the action-of- slaying. HOW IS THE SELF IMMUTABLE? THIS IS ANSWERED IN THE NEXT VERSE.

20. He is not born, nor does He ever die; after having been, He again ceases not to be; Unborn, Eternal, Changeless and Ancient, He is not killed when the body is killed.

This stanza labours to deny in the Self all the symptoms of mutability that are recognised and experienced by the body. The body is prone to different changes and these modifications are the sources of all sorrows in every embodiment. These six changes are common to all, and they may be enumerated as: birth, existence, growth, decay, disease and death. These changes are the common womb of all pains in a mortal's life. All these are denied in the Self, in this stanza, to prove the immutability of the Self. Unlike the physical body, the Self is not born, It being the Eternal Factor that exists at all times. Waves are born and they die away but the ocean is not born with the waves; nor does it die away when the waves disappear. Since there is no birth, there is no death; things that have a beginning alone can end; the rising waves alone can moan their dying conditions. Again, it is explained that like the birth of a child, who was not existing before and who has come to exist after the birth, the Atman is not something that has come to be born due to or because of the body. Thus, the Self is unborn and eternal --- birthless and deathless (Ajah, Nityah). HAVING THUS STATED THE PROPOSITION THAT THE SELF IS NEITHER AN AGENT NOR AN OBJECT OF THE ACTION OF SLAYING, AND HAVING ESTABLISHED, BY ARGUMENTS, THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE SELF, LORD KRISHNA HERE CONCLUDES THE PROPOSITION AS FOLLOWS:

21. Whosoever knows Him to be Indestructible, Eternal, Unborn, and Inexhaustible, how can that man slay, O Partha, or cause others to be slain?

Summarising what is said so far, as the Law of Being (Dharma) of the Self, which indicated rather than defined the Eternal, Immutable Reality, in this stanza, we have, in the form of an interrogation, an assertion that those who know this shall have thereafter, no dejection or sorrow in facing life's realities. Having known the Self to be Indestructible, Eternal, Unborn and Inexhaustible, Krishna asks Arjuna, "How can one arrogate to oneself the stupid idea of agency?" The Lord says that neither can such an individual cause someone to slay nor himself be a slayer. In the context of the given situation, Krishna advises thus. It is interesting to note that He means both Himself and Arjuna by His words. If this knowledge of the Reality has come to the intellectual appreciation and acceptance of Arjuna, he will have no more justification to feel himself to be the killer of the Unborn. IN WHAT WAY IS THE SELF INDESTRUCTIBLE? HERE, IN THE FOLLOWING, IS AN EXPLANATORY EXAMPLE:

22. Just as a man casts off his worn out clothes and puts on new ones, so also the embodied-Self casts off its worn out bodies and enters others which are new.

This is one of the oft-quoted famous stanzas in the Geeta which, by a very striking example, explains to us how the ego-centric entity in an individual readily leaves its associations with one set of equipments, and arrogates to itself another conducive envelopment for living a new set of its required experiences. The example that Vyasa uses is so universal that from the Lord's own mouth it rings with a note of irresistible appeal. Just as an individual changes his clothes to suit the convenience of the occasion, so too the ego-centre discards one physical form and takes to another, which will be most suited for it to gain the next required type of experiences. No one will plan to go to his office in his night-gown, nor will he, in his stiff-collar, feel happy while playing tennis in the evening. He changes his dress according to the field where he is intending to work for the time being. Similar is the why and wherefore of death and thereafter. This striking example, which comes within the comprehension of every one, is made use of by the Lord so that, not only Arjuna, but even those who are over- hearing these eighteen discourses, even at this distant time, may come to understand the idea clearly. Changing of our clothes that have become worn out, cannot be a pain to anyone of us, especially when it is for the purpose of putting on a new set of clothes. Similarly, when a mind-intellect-equipment finds that its embodiment in a given form can no longer help it to earn, from its available environments, experiences that would facilitate its evolutionary pilgrimage, it feels that this particular form is worn out (Jeerna). This "worn out" condition of a body is to be decided neither by its age nor by its biological condition. Nor can anybody other than its wearer, the ego, decide it. Critics rise up in hosts, however, against the truth of this stanza and their main platform of arguments is built upon the observed facts of young people dying away in the bloom of their life. In the observers' opinion, the individual was young and his body was not worn out (Jeerna), but from the standpoint of the evolutionary necessity of the ego concerned, that body was already useless for it. A rich man feels like changing his house or vehicle almost every year, and he invariably finds ready purchasers. As far as the rich owner is concerned, the thing has become useless for him while for the purchaser it is "as good as new." Similarly, here nobody else can decide, whether a given body is worn out or not, except its

"wearer." In short, the stanza emphasizes the doctrine of reincarnation which we have already explained in an earlier stanza. On the whole, it must have definitely conveyed to Arjuna the idea that death grins only at those who have no understanding, and that it has no pain for those who understand its implications and working. Just as changing the dress is no pain to the body, so too, when the dweller in the body leaves the envelopment there is no pain possible; again, undressing does not mean that thereafter we will ever live naked, so too, the embodied Self, ere long, discovers an appropriate equipment from which to function so as to earn for itself new sets of experiences. Evolution and change are all for the mind-and-intellect and not for the Self. The Self is perfect and changeless, and needs no evolution. WHY IS THE SELF CHANGELESS? THE LORD SAYS:

23. Weapons cleave It not, fire burns It not, water moistens It not, wind dries It not.

The unseen is always explained in terms of the seen, and thereby the unknown becomes fully indicated, rather than defined; for, any unknown thing merely defined in itself remains as unknown as before. Similarly, here the Changeless, Immutable, Self is being described by Lord Krishna in terms of the mutable and everchanging world which is very familiar to Arjuna and all people like us. In the world-of-change, objects come to their annihilation through instruments of death or they are consumed by fire or destroyed by water or dried up by air. These are the various cosmic means and methods by which the objects of the world come to their destruction. All these means are declared as impotent in bringing about the destruction of the Self. WEAPONS CLEAVE IT NOT --- It is very well-known that with an axe one can cut down a thing, and with a bullet one can shoot some other object, but neither can one wound water, fire, air or space with a sword, however sharp it might be. The principle is that no instrument can hit or destroy an element subtler than itself. Naturally, therefore, Atman, the Self, the very cause of the subtlest element, space, and necessarily therefore, subtler than space, cannot be cut asunder by the gross instruments. FIRE CANNOT BURN IT --- Fire generally can burn things other than the fire, but it cannot burn itself. The burning capacity in fire is the very Essence, the Truth in it, and therefore, fire cannot burn its own Essence, viz., its fiery nature. Wherever there is fire, it can consume things only in space and yet, space is never consumed by fire. Things are consumed by fire in space. If space itself cannot be consumed by fire, how impotent it must feel when it tries to consume the cause of space, the Self? WATER CANNOT MOISTEN IT --- Things get soaked only when they have got inter-space in themselves. A piece of bread can be soaked in water or milk, but, a piece of iron cannot be soaked, as iron has no inter-space in it. When the substance is one homogeneous mass containing nothing other than itself to condition it, water cannot enter the substance and, therefore, cannot soak it. Another method of destruction observed is either through the quick effects of water, that is drowning, etc., or through the slow effects of moisture, such as corroding, etc. Even these cannot destroy the Truth. WIND DRIES IT NOT --- Dehydration is possible only when there are some traces of water in the substance dehydrated. Every crystal has its own water of crystallisation, which, when removed, causes the crystals to lose their distinct shapes and forms and get pulverised into a fine powder. These are days when vegetables and food materials are dehydrated for purposes of preservation. This is possible because these substances contain moisture-molecules within them. The Supreme Consciousness contains nothing other than Itself and therefore, annihilation through the process of dehydration is not possible. Apart from this direct word-meaning, on the whole, the stanza indicates deeper significances which are better brought out in the next stanza, where Lord Krishna gives out how and why the truth is Eternal. FOR WHAT REASON? WHY AND HOW CAN WE RECOGNISE THE SELF TO BE ETERNAL?

24. This Self cannot be cut, nor burnt, nor moistened, nor dried up. It is eternal, all-pervading, stable immovable and ancient.

It is amply clear that if a thing cannot be annihilated by any of the known methods of destruction of nature, or those invented and perfected by man, then that given object must be everlasting. Here, in the second line, we have a series of qualities listed, indicating the Truth; they are not a haphazard collection of terms picked up at random and used in haste.

Each word is chosen as a sequence to the previous one. That which has indestructibility, as indicated in the first line, should necessarily be everlasting (Nityah). That which is thus Eternal must be necessarily All-Pervading

(Sarvagatah).

"ALL-PERVADING" is a short term of inconceivable depth of significance. ALL-PERVADING is that which pervades everywhere and, therefore, there is nothing that is not pervaded by the "ALL-PERVASIVE." The Eternal truth envelops all, and the ALL-PERVADING has no shape, since that which has a shape is conditioned all along its outline by something other than itself. A man with a head, a trunk and limbs has a shape, because all around him, along his outline, is space, which is something other than the carbon-material of his skull and bones. A thing conditioned should necessarily have a form of its own. By the term "ALL-PERVADING," it is meant that it has only Itself all round It and at all places, and that It is unconditioned by anything other than Itself. A truth that is thus Eternal (Nityah), Homogeneous and All-Pervading (Sarvagatah) must necessarily be "Stable" (Sthanuh) because no change can ever take place in it. That which is thus Stable must be "Firm" (Achalah); for, it cannot shake or move, since movement implies the transfer of a thing from one set of time and place to another set of time and place where it was not. Since the Self is All-pervading, there is no spot in space, or period in time, where It is not already, and therefore --- just as I cannot move myself in myself --- the Self cannot move anywhere. A motionless thing is indeed "Firm" (Achalah). Here the two terms "Stable" (Sthanuh) and "Firm" (Achalah) may seem to be a tautology: both having almost the same meaning. But the former means stability at the base, as in the case of a banyan-tree. At the base of the trunk it is stable and yet at the top it is moving. Truth is 'stable' at the 'base' and 'firm' at the 'top'. In Its Infinite glory, It has no movement anywhere. Sanatanah --- that which is ancient. The implication of this term can fall under two categories: the obvious and the suggestive. The OBVIOUS meaning indicates that the Self is not new (Nutanah) but it is ancient and, therefore, we, as students of Brahma-Vidya, need not hesitate to accept it, as we necessarily would if the theory were a modern ideology which was yet to be verified by observed experimental data. In its suggestiveness, the term Sanatanah implies that the Self is unconditioned by time and place. Perfection gained, whether it be in India, or at the North Pole, in the present generation, or in the chaste periods of the Vedic culture, in all places and at all times, by all seers, in all the religions of the world, the Self- experience at the time of God-realisation, can only be one and the same. MOREOVER, BHAGAWAN ADDS:

25. This (Self) is said to be Unmanifest, Unthinkable and Unchangeable. Therefore, knowing This to be such, you should not grieve.

This Eternal, All-Pervading Self is certainly Unmanifest, Unthinkable, and Unchangeable, and therefore, having known this truth in Its essential nature, Krishna argues that it is neither possible to kill nor to get really killed. Each of these terms is quite expressive of certain logical truths. UNMANIFEST --- The five Great Elements that we know, when they become subtler, they lose their capacity to impinge themselves upon our sense perceptions: considered from 'Earth' to 'Air,' we find the elements progressively getting subtler for our perceptions and finally 'Ether' or 'Space,' by itself, cannot be perceived directly by our senses at all. However, the five Great Elements can, to some extent, be perceived through our sense-organs. But the CAUSE of 'Ether, ' the subtlest of the Five Elements, is too subtle for our perception, and therefore we will have to assume that it is Unmanifest. A thing is called manifest when we can perceive it through one or the other of our sense-organs. That which is beyond all five sense-organs is called Unmanifest. I cannot see, smell, hear, taste or touch a full-grown mango tree in a mango seed, and yet, I know that the seed is the cause for the tree. Under the circumstances, the tree is said to be in an 'unmanifest' condition in the seed. Similarly, when they say that truth is Unmanifest, they only mean that It cannot be perceived through any of our sense- organs. In the

Upanishads, we have exhaustive explanations of why our senses cannot have the Eternal as an object of sense-perceptions. It is the very subject because of which the sense-organs can perceive. UNTHINKABLE --- After denying the sense-organs any play in the field of Truth, we are told that the human mind also cannot think, nor can the human intellect ruminate over and comprehend the Infinite. The Self being the very life that energises the mind and the intellect, which by themselves are inert and insentient, it becomes obvious that the mind and intellect cannot make the Self an object of their comprehension. A telescope-gazer cannot see himself with his telescope; he cannot be at once the seer and the seen. Thus here, the Lord's word "Unthinkable" is to be understood as meaning 'Incomprehensible' by the mind and the intellect of the seeker. UNCHANGEABLE --- This term indicates that the Self is without parts because things that have parts in themselves are things which have "form," and those that have "form" must necessarily come under the category of the FINITE and exhibit in themselves various modifications and changes. By these terms, Truth is declared as Immutable, Unmanifest, Unthinkable and Unchangeable.

Krishna thus advises Arjuna to end his grief. He who understands the Eternal nature of the Self can have neither the occasion to perceive himself as the slayer nor recognise others as the slain. GRANTING THAT THE SELF IS NOT EVER-LASTING, THE LORD PROCEEDS TO GIVE THE MATERIALISTS' POINT-OF-VIEW:

26. But even if you think of Him as being constantly born and constantly dying, even then, O mighty-armed, you should not grieve. This and the following stanzas are arguments in which the materialists' point-of-view has been, for the purpose of argument, presented here by Krishna. According to them, direct perception alone is an authority for belief. With this standard for their knowledge, when they try to measure life, they have to accept it as a constant flux of infinite- births and infinite-deaths. Things are born; and they die away. This whirl-of-birth-and-death is constant. And "this constant change" is life to them. Krishna argues that, if life is but a constant repetition of births and deaths, then also, the hero (Mahabahu) that you are, you do not deserve to grieve on this occasion. ACCORDINGLY:

27. Indeed, certain is death for the born, and certain is birth for the dead; therefore, over the inevitable, you should not grieve.

That which is born must die and after death things are born again. Here, Krishna continues to view the whole situation from the materialist angle. The materialists take life to be a constant flood of appearances of forms, arising from nowhere, and disappearing into nowhere. The theists believe that the embodiments are taken up by the individual-ego in order that it may eke out its experiences and learn to grow in its understanding of life and ultimately realise the Truth behind it all. Thus, this is a comon meeting point of both the theists and the atheists; that both of them believe life to be a continuous chain of birth and death. Thus, if life, be, in its very nature, a stream of births and deaths, against this inevitable arrangement, no intelligent man should moan. Standing out in the blazing summer sun, one must, indeed, be stupid to complain against its heat and glare. Similarly, having come to life, to complain against the very nature of life is, indeed, an inexcusable stupidity. On this score also, to weep is to admit one's own ignorance. Krishna's life, is, on the whole, a message of cheer and joy. His doctrine of life is an insistence upon, "to weep is folly and to smile is wisdom." "Keep smiling" seems to be Krishna's philosophy put in two words, and that is why, seeing his dear friend weeping in life, the Lord gets whipped up, as it were, to an enthusiasm to save Arjuna from his delusions, and bring him back to the true purpose of life.

THE FOLLOWING TEN VERSES GIVE THE COMMON- MAN'S VIEW. SHANKARA SAYS, "NEITHER IS IT PROPER TO GRIEVE OVER BEINGS WHICH ARE MERE COMBINATIONS OF (MATERIAL) CAUSES AND EFFECTS; FOR":

28. Beings unmanifest in the beginning, and unmanifest again in their end seem to be manifest in the middle, O Bharata. What then is there to grieve about?

From this stanza onwards we have a beautiful presentation of the whole problem of Arjuna from the stand-point of the man-of-the-world. In these ten verses Krishna explains the problem as viewed through the goggles of a common man of the world and valued by his intellectual judgement. The material world of objects strictly follows the law of causation. The world of "effects" rises from the world of

"causes." In a majority of cases, the effects are manifest and the causes are unmanifest. 'To project from the unmanifest to the manifest' is the programme of creation of a thing, strictly following the Law of Causation. Thus, the manifest-world of today was unmanifest before its creation; and now for the time being, it is available for cognition as fully manifest, only to fade away soon into the unmanifest again. It amounts to saying that the present came from the UNKNOWN and shall return to the UNKNOWN. Even if viewed thus, why should one moan; for, the spokes of a wheel that turns eternally must COME DOWN only to RISE UP again. Again, the dream-children, unmanifest before, and which came to manifestation during the dream, become unmanifest again on waking up. Why moan, you bachelor, for a wife whom you had never married, who had disappeared with your dream, the children unborn, who dissolved away with your dream? If there be, as Krishna says, an Infinite, Eternal, Truth which is Changeless and Deathless, in which alone this drama of change occurs, this whirl-of-birth-and-death spins, how is it that we are not able to realise It even though it is explained to us repeatedly? According to Shankara, Lord Krishna here feels that He should not blame Arjuna for his incapacity to understand the Self. SHANKARA SAYS, "THE SELF JUST SPOKEN OF IS VERY DIFFICULT TO REALISE. WHY SHOULD I BLAME YOU ALONE, WHILE THE CAUSE, IGNORANCE, IS COMMON TO ALL?" ONE MAY ASK: HOW IS IT THAT THE SELF IS SO DIFFICULT TO REALISE? THE LORD SAYS:

29. One sees This as a wonder; another speaks of This as a wonder; another hears of This as a wonder; yet, having heard none understands This at all!

The Eternal Absolute is explained to us as Infinite, All- knowing and All-blissful. Our experience of ourselves is that we are finite, ignorant and miserable. Thus, between the Reality, which is our Self, and what we experience ourselves to be, there seems to be as much difference as between heat and cold, light and darkness. Why is it that we are not able to recognise the Self, which is our Real Nature? In our ignorance, when we try to perceive the Truth, it seems to be a goal to be reached at some distant place, in a distant period of time. But in fact, if we are to believe the Lord's words, the Self being our essential nature, we are never far from It. A mortal is as far away from Immortality --- the sinner is as far removed from a Saint --- the imperfect is as far removed from Perfection --- as a dreamer is from the waker. Man awakened to the Self's Glory is God; God forgetful of His own glory is the deluded man! To the ego, the very existence of the subtler Self beyond the body, mind and intellect is an idea that cannot even be conceived of, and, when a mortal, through the techniques of self-perfection, comes to recognise himself to be the Self, he is struck with a wondrous ecstasy of that supra- sensuous experience. The emotion of wonder, when it rises in the mind, has the capacity to black-out, for the time being, all cognitions, and the individual who has been struck with wonder, forgets himself and becomes, for the moment, one with the very emotion. As an experiment, try to completely surprise somebody, and quietly watch his attitude. With mouth open and his unseeing eyes protruding out, every nerve in him stretched to the highest tension, the victim- of-wonderment stands fixed to the spot as a statue carved in moist, cold, flesh. The same is the thrilled hush of lived joy in the Temple of Experience, when the Self, all alone with the Self, comes to live as the Self. And, therefore, the great Rishis of old borrowed the term 'wonderment' to indicate to the student what exactly would be the condition of his personality layers at the moment when his ego drops off from the resplendent Infinite Form of the Self. True knowledge makes a man realise that he is "The Soul with a body," but now in his ignorance, he thinks that he is a "body with a soul." Those who LISTEN well are encouraged to REFLECT on what they have heard and to MEDITATE until they realise the Self. The unintelligent listeners also feel encouraged, by the very same statement expressing the rarity of this knowledge, to make repeated attempts at listening (shravana), continuous reflection (manana) and long contemplation (nididhyasana). HERE THE LORD CONCLUDES THE SUBJECT OF THIS SECTION, THUS:

30. This, the Indweller in the body of everyone is ever indestructible, O Bharata; and, therefore, you should not grieve for any creature.

The subtle Reality in each body, the indwelling Spirit in every creature is Eternal and Indestructible. All that is destroyed is only the container, the finite matter envelopment. Therefore, Arjuna has been advised that he should not grieve at facing his enemies and in the great battle, even killing them, if need be. To bring out this idea, the entire earlier section has been used by Krishna wherein he argued so well to establish the Eternal nature of the soul and the finite nature of the bodies. Shankara rightly concludes that this stanza winds up the entire section opened in verse 11. HERE IN THIS VERSE, IT HAS BEEN SHOWN THAT FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH, THERE IS NO OCCASION FOR GRIEF AND ATTACHMENT. NOT ONLY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH, BUT ALSO:

31. Further, looking at thine own duty thou oughtest not to waver, for there is nothing higher for a KSHATRIYA than a righteous war.

Arjuna's personal call-of-character (Swadharma) is that of a leader of his generation (Kshatriya) and as such, when his generation is called upon to answer a challenge of an organised un-Aryan force (Adharma), it is his duty not to waver but to fight and defend his sacred national culture. To the leaders of people, there can be nothing nobler than to get a glorious chance to fight for a righteous cause. Here Arjuna has been called upon to fight a righteous war wherein his enemies are the true aggressors. Therefore, it is said that such a chance comes, indeed, only to a lucky few. That a king must fight on such an occasion is vividly brought out in the Mahabharata. AND REGARDING OTHER REASONS WHY THE BATTLE SHOULD BE FOUGHT, THE LORD SAYS:

32. Happy indeed are the KSHATRIYAS, O Partha, who are called to fight in such a battle, that comes of itself as an open- door to heaven.

As used here, Kshatriya is not the name of a caste. It merely indicates a certain quality of the mental vasanas in the individual. Those who have an ever-bubbling enthusiasm to defend the weak and the poor, besides their own national culture from all threats of aggression, are called Kshatriyas. Such leaders of men are not allowed to be tyrants and aggressors themselves, according to the code of morality of the Hindus. But, at the same time, a cold, feminine and cowardly non-resistance is not the spirit of the Hindu tradition. In all cases where the Hindu nation is forced to wage a war on principles of righteousness (Upapannam) the leaders of India are ordered to fight in defence of their culture and to consider themselves fortunate to get the chance to serve the country. Such battle-fields are the wide-open gates to Heaven for the defending heroes who fight diligently on the side of Dharma. It is interesting to note how Lord Krishna, in the scheme of his exhortations, comes down slowly from the highest pinnacles of Vedantic ideologies to the lower plane of material philosophy, and still lower down to the point-of- view of an average worldly man. From all these different levels, he views the problem and presents Arjuna with the same logical conclusion that the war must be fought. IT IS INDEED A FACT THAT IT IS YOUR DUTY, AND NOW IN CASE YOU RENOUNCE IT AND RUN AWAY FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD, THEN:

33. But, if you will not fight this righteous war, then, having abandoned your own duty and fame, you shall incur sin.

In case you refuse to engage yourself in this glorious war, then not only will you be renouncing your own "personal call-of-character" (Swadharma) and honour, in not having fulfilled your noble duty, but also incur positive sin. Not to face this army of un-Aryan forces is as much sinful as to murder and kill those who deserve not such a treatment.

Dharma, we have already explained, is the 'law of being.' Every living creature has taken up its form and has come into the world of objects for one great purpose, which is to gain an exhaustion of its existing mental impressions. The bundle of vasanas with which an individual has arrived into a particular incarnation is called his, "personal call-of- character" (Swadharma). When classified thus, Arjuna falls under the group of the 'kingly' (Kshatriya), who are characterised by adventurous heroism and an insatiable thirst for honour and fame. Not to make use of the evolutionary chances provided by life is to reject and refuse the chances provided for a vasana CATHARSIS. By not exhausting the old vasanas, one will be living under a high vasana-pressure when the existing tendencies are crowded out by the influx of new tendencies. Not fighting the war, Arjuna may run away from the field, but he will certainly come to regret his lost chances, since his mind is so composed that he can find complete relief and solace only by living the intensely dangerous life of the battle-field. A boy with tendencies for art cannot be successfully trained to become a businessman, or an economist, since these are contrary to his nature. If an over-anxious parent, in the name of love, projects upon a growing child, his own intentions and plans, we invariably find that the young boy will have a crushed personality. Examples of this type are seen everywhere in the world, especially so in the spiritual field. There are many seekers with over-enthusiasm for spiritual development, who, at the mere appearance of a misery, or at the threat of a sorrow, decide to run away into the jungles 'seeking God,' and they, invariably, end in a life-long tragic disaster. They have in them sensuous vasanas which can be satisfied only in the embrace of a family under the roof of their own tenement, but rejecting them all, they reach the Himalayan caves and then, all the day through, they can neither meditate upon the Lord, nor find a field for sensuous enjoyment. Naturally, they entertain more and more agitations in their minds, otherwise called sin (papa). Sin in Hinduism is "a mistake of the mind in which it acts contrary to its essential nature as the Self." Any act of sensuousness which the mind pants for in the world-of- objects, hoping to get thereby a joy and satisfaction, creates necessarily within itself more and more agitations and this type of a mistake of the mind is called a sin. CONTINUING, NOT ONLY WILL YOU HAVE GIVEN UP YOUR DUTY AND FAME BUT ALSO:

34. People too, will recount your everlasting dishonour; and to one who has been honoured, dishonour is more than death.

To a famous hero, dishonour is worse than death. This is another argument that Krishna brings forth, to persuade his friend to give up his hesitation in fighting the great war. The general import is that, if Arjuna were to abandon the fight, he could do so only because of his cowardice, since, the cause of the war is righteous. Certainly, there is an under-current of sympathy in Krishna's words: he realises that, however great a hero Arjuna might be, even he could be weakened by wrong emotionalism. MOREOVER:

35. The great battalion commanders will think that you have withdrawn from the battle through fear; and you will be looked down upon by them who had thought much of you and your heroism in the past.

Continuing the common-man's-point-of-view arguments, Krishna says here that not only will the world blame him and history recount his infamy, but immediately also, the great warriors and battalion commanders (Maharathas) in the enemy lines will start ridiculing him. They will laugh and say that the great archer Arjuna ran away from the battle-front because of sheer cowardice. They will interpret his conscientious objections against the fratricidal war as an act of cowardice of a hero during a weak moment in his life. No soldier can stand such a dishonour, especially when it comes from one's own equals among enemy lines. MOREOVER:

36. And many unspeakable words will your enemies speak cavilling about your powers. What can be more painful than this? Finding that Arjuna is conspicuously reacting well to these arguments, Krishna drives home to him the folly of running away from the battle-front. It will be intolerable when his enemies scandalize his glorious name and his chivalry in foul language, too indecent even for words. Not only will history record for all times his cowardly retreat but even while he lives, he will be pointed out and laughed at as a 'hero' who ran away from the battle-field.

37. Slain, you will obtain heaven; victorious you will enjoy the earth; therefore, stand up, O son of Kunti, determined to fight.

In case he has to give up his life on the war-front, fighting for such a noble cause, he shall, certainly, enter the 'Heaven of the Heroes' (Veera-swarga) to stay and to enjoy there for aeons. In case he wins, he shall certainly come to rule over the kingdom and enjoy in the world, and thereafter also he shall go to Heaven to enjoy there the status of a mighty hero who fought championing the cause of Dharma. Either way he will gain because he was on the side of the good --- the war aims of the Pandavas being stoutly righteous. Therefore --- meaning, for all the reasons so far enumerated, "Arise, resolved to fight." Earlier, Arjuna, after expressing his feelings of grief and despair had sat inert and motionless throwing down his weapons. Krishna asks his friend to come out of this moodiness and dejection, "determined to fight" the noble war. The call to war is justified because of the particular situation in the Mahabharata where the Geeta was given out. Generalising the call of Krishna, we may say that it is a divine call to Man to discard his melancholy dejections in the face of life's challenges and to come forward to play as best as he can "the game of life" with a firm determination to strive and to win. In this line, we have the universality of the Geeta explicitly brought out for those who understand it and find its vast application to the community of man. NOW LISTEN TO THE ADVICE I OFFER YOU ON YOUR INNER ATTITUDE WHILE YOU FIGHT THE BATTLE:

38. Having made --- pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat --- the same, engage in battle for the sake of battle; thus you shall not incur sin.

From this stanza onwards we have a slight hint about the technique of Karma Yoga as explained in the Geeta. In the introduction we have stated that the second chapter is almost a summary of the whole Geeta; later on, we shall see how the Path of Devotion also is, in brief, indicated in this very chapter.

In this stanza we have Krishna's first direct statement on the technique of Self-Perfection and, as such, a very careful study of it will be extremely fruitful to all students of the Geeta. The three pairs of opposites mentioned here are distinct experiences at the three levels of our mortal existence. PAIN AND PLEASURE are the "intellectual" awareness of experiences unfavourable and favourable; GAIN AND LOSS conceptions indicate the "mental" zone where we feel the joys of meeting and the sorrows of parting; and CONQUEST AND DEFEAT indicate the "physical" fields wherein at the level of the body, we ourselves win or let others win. The advice that Krishna gives is that one must learn to keep oneself in equilibrium in all these different vicissitudes at the respective levels of existence. If one were to enter the sea for a bath, one must know the art of sea-bathing or else the incessant waves will play rough on the person, and may even sweep him off his feet and drag him to a watery grave. But he who knows the art of saving himself --- by ducking beneath the mighty waves, or by riding over the lesser ones --- he alone can enjoy a sea-bath. To hope all the waves to end, or to expect the waves not to trouble one while one is in the sea is to order the sea to be something other than itself for one's convenience! This is exactly what a foolish man does in life. He expects life to be without waves --- but life is ever full of waves. Pain and pleasure, gain and loss, conquest and defeat must arise in the waters of life or else it is complete stagnation --- it is almost death. If life be thus a tossing stormy sea at all times, and it should be so, then we, who have entered life, must know the art of living it, unaffected either by the rising crests, or by the sinking hollows in it. To identify ourselves with any of them is to be tossed about on the surface, and not to stand astride like a light-house, which has its foundations built on the bed-rock of the very sea. Here Krishna advises Arjuna, while inviting him to fight, that he should enter the contest and keep himself unaffected by the usual dissipasting mental tendencies that come to everyone, while in activity. This equanimity of the mind alone can bring out the beam of inspiration, and give to one's achievements the glow of a real success. It is very well-known that in all activities, inspired work gathers to itself a texture of divine perfection which cannot be imitated or oft-repeated. Be he a poet, or an artist, a doctor or a speaker, irrespective of his profession, whenever an individual is at his best, his master-piece is always accepted by all as a 'work of inspiration.' When we thus work with the thrilled ecstasy of an unknown mood called 'inspiration,' the ideas, thoughts and activity that come out of us have a ringing beauty of their own, which cannot be otherwise mechanically repeated by us. Thus, Da Vinci could not repeat for a second time and copy on another piece of canvas the enigmatic smile of his Mona Lisa; Keats' pen could no more re-capture for a second time the song of the Nightingale in its flight; Beethoven could never again beat out of his faithful piano a second Moonlight Sonata; Lord Krishna himself, after the war, when requested by Arjuna to repeat the Geeta, admitted his inability to do so!! To the Western mind and understanding, 'inspiration' is an accidental and mysterious happening over which the mortal has no control at all, while to the eastern Rishis, inspired living is the real godly destiny of man, when he lives in perfect unison with the Self within him. A balanced life, wherein we live as unaffected witnesses of even our own mind and intellect, is the realm of self- forgetfulness, where, instead of becoming inefficient, our profession gathers the scintillating glow of a new dawn. This extra aura in any achievement is that which raises an ordinary success to an 'inspired achievement. ' The Yogis of ancient Hindu-lore discovered a technique, whereby the mind and intellect could be consciously brought to a steadiness and poise, and this technique is called Yoga. The Hindus of the Vedic period knew it, practised it, lived it; and with their incomparable achievements, they provided, for their country, the golden era of the Hindus. The philosophy of a country like India, in the Vedic period, must necessarily be Theistic, but it has its applications in all walks of life. If it fails in its all-round application, it cannot be a philosophy. A theory of life which has no universal application, can at best, be appreciated as the noble opinion of an individual, which may have its own limited application, but it can never be accepted as a philosophy. In the entire scheme of Bhagawan's arguments so far, he has provided Arjuna with all the necessary reasons which a healthy intellect should discover for itself, before it comes to a reliable and dependable judgement upon the outer happenings. A mere spiritual consideration should not be the last word in the evaluation of all material situations. Every challenge should be estimated from the spiritual stand-point, as well as from the intellectual stand-point of reason, from the emotional level of ethics and morality, and from the physical level of tradition and custom. If all these considerations, without any contradiction, indicate a solitary truth, then that is surely the Divine Path that one should, at all costs, pursue. Arjuna came to the delusory mis-calculation of the situation because he evaluated the war only from the level of his sentiments. The opposing forces were teeming with his own relations and to kill and exterminate them was indeed against the ethical point-of-view. But, this emotionalism overpowered him, and at this moment of his total inward chaos, he completely lost sight of the other considerations that would have helped him to regain his balance. He surrendered, as a mind should, to Krishna, the inner discriminative capacity. Therefore, the Lord, having undertaken to guide Arjuna, provides him with all the available data gathered from different points of view. Throughout the Geeta, Krishna plays the part of the "discriminative intellect" in an individual, a true charioteer in the Upanishad-sense of the term. After thus placing all the possible points of view upon the problem --- the spiritual, the intellectual, the ethical and the traditional for Arjuna's consideration --- Krishna concludes in the earlier stanza that Arjuna must fight. In this stanza Krishna tries to explain how he should conduct himself in this undertaking. It has been said that he should fight the war with perfect detachment from all anxieties which generally come to an individual, when he identifies himself with the non-Self (Anatma) --- at the level of his intellect with the concept of pain and pleasure, at the level of his mind with the fears of gain and loss and at his body- level with the restlessness of conquest and defeat. Equanimity in all such mental challenges is a factor that ensures true success in life. We have explained earlier how the human mind is to be kept open, while working in its given field of life, so that, while living in the midst of life's battle, it can exhaust the vasanas that are already in it. This purgation --- catharsis of the Soul --- is the compelling purpose for which every living creature has arrived on the platform of manifested life. Viewed thus, each individual living creature --- plant, animal or man --- is but a bundle of vasanas.

The equanimity in the face of all situations, advised here, is the secret method of keeping the mind ever open for its outflow. When it gets clouded by the ego-sense and the egoistic desires, then the out-flow is choked, and new tendencies start flooding in. The ego is born when an individual starts getting upset at all these pairs-of- opposites (Dwandwas) such as joy and sorrow, etc. The attempt to keep equanimous is successful, only if action is detached from the ego. Thus, mental purification --- vasana-catharsis --- is the benign result of real living and right action: and this is Yoga. This is explained, in the next chapter of the Geeta, in all detail as Karma Yoga. The philosophical theory of truth was described in the very opening of the Lord's message, and, in order to drive home those conclusions into the practical-mind of a man- of-action, Arjuna, Lord Krishna gave arguments from the stand-point of the common man. Ultimately, he concluded that Arjuna must fight and explained in what attitude he should fight. Practical religion consists in living the philosophy one has understood. HEREAFTER, THE SCHEME OF THE GEETA IN THE CHAPTER IS TO EXPLAIN THE TECHNIQUES OF LIVING THE VEDANTIC PHILOSOPHY, IN AND THROUGH KARMA YOGA. HENCE SAYS THE LORD:

39. This, which has been taught to thee, is wisdom concerning SANKHYA. Now listen to the wisdom concerning YOGA, having known which, O Partha, you shall cast off the bonds-of- action. What is so far taught consists of the "Sankhya," meaning,

"the logic of reasoning by which the true nature of the Absolute Reality is comprehended," which can end for you all sorrows arising from grief, attachment and the like. Krishna promises that hereafter he will try to explain the technique of attaining the wisdom (Buddhi), which is otherwise called Buddhi yoga --- "devotion through work." FRUITS OF ACTION (Karma-phala) --- The Law-of-Karma, which is often misunderstood as the Law-of-Destiny, forms a cardinal creed of the Hindus and a right understanding of it is absolutely essential to all students of the Hindu Way-of-Life. If I am, now, justly punished, in Delhi, for a crime committed last year by Sri Ramana Rao in Madras then, certainly there must be something common between the criminal Ramana Rao THEN in Madras and the saintly Chinmaya NOW in Delhi! The long arm of the law of the country discovering the identity of Ramana Rao in Chinmaya must have slowly crept from Madras to Delhi and ultimately booked the "Swami" for the crime of Rao, that he was!! Similarly, nature's justice is always perfect and, therefore, if the Hindu philosophers accept that each of us individually suffers because of our crimes committed in another form, and in a different locality, at a different period of time in the past, certainly, there must be some identity between the SINNER IN THE PAST and the SUFFERER IN THE PRESENT. This identity, the Shastra says, is the mind-and-intellect-equipment in each one of us. Each act, willfully performed, leaves an impression upon the mind of the actor according to the texture of the motive entertained. In order to work out and remove these impressions --- vasanas-catharsis --- each individual arrives at his specific field of activity in life. Sin- impressions in the mind can be wiped away only with the waters of tears, acting upon the mind, in an atmosphere of sobs and sighs. Thus, every one gets his quota of chances to weep, which, in many cases, comes to be discovered, later on, as not so sorrowful, after all. A mind which has thus been completely purified, fails to see a situation really worth weeping for. Weeping, in fact, is not ordered by the circumstances, but by the "papa-tendencies" in the mind of the miserable. Merely because there is a record in my gramophone box, I will have no music. Even when it is placed on its disc and revolved at the required speed, it will not and cannot sing. Music can come out of it only when the needle is in contact with it. The unmanifest music in the disc can be brought to expression only through the sound-box. Similarly, here, the mental impressions cannot in themselves bring either disaster or reward unless they are connected with the external world through the needle- point of our ego-centric self-assertion.

One who lives, as we found in the earlier verse, in perfect equanimity in all conditions, must necessarily come to live in a realm of his own, away from the pleasure and pain of the INTELLECT, the sobs of success and failure of the MIND, and the fears of loss and gain in the FLESH. To the degree an individual detaches himself from his own body, mind and intellect, to that degree his ego is dead, and, therefore, since the "sufferer" is no longer available, there cannot be any more "fruits-of-action" for him to suffer. Rightly understood, we shall realise, during our discussions on this chapter, how this Theory of Krishna has not the novelty of an original idea. The more intimately we understand it, the more we shall realise that Krishna has but given a new vesture to an ancient idea. But due to this re-statement in the Geeta, of a cardinal truth of ancient Hinduism, a religion that was dying revived itself. And from the days of its origin, five thousand years before Christ was born, it is beckoning us today, even two thousand years after the Nazarene's death. MOREOVER:

40. In this there is no loss of effort, nor is there any harm (production of contrary results) . Even a little of this knowledge, even a little practice of the YOGA, protects one from the great fear.

Unfinished ritualistic acts will yield no fruits just as ploughing and sowing are not fulfilled, if the sequence of actions --- as ploughing, watering, sowing, weeding, guarding, harvesting, etc., are not kept up exactly in that order. Similarly, some ritualistic acts, when they are not performed faithfully, following all the strict injunctions, the chances are that the very same meritorious acts might result in sins, accrued through the non-performance, or imperfect performance, of enjoined acts. This sin is called, in the language of ritualistic literature, a 'Pratyavaya.' In the material world also, we can find corresponding instances wherein a medicine misused may bring about a calamitous end for the patient. These two are the dangers in the field of activities by which we are cheated of all our expected results. Krishna here, as a pukka publicity agent for his own philosophy, vigorously asserts that his "Technique of Action," Karma Yoga, guarantees safety from these two main dangers. THE WISDOM CONCERNING SANKHYA AND YOGA THUS FAR DESCRIBED IS OF THE FOLLOWING NATURE:

41. Here, O Joy of the Kurus, Kurunandana, there is but a single-pointed determination; many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the irresolute.

In Karma Yoga, which the Lord is now explaining, even the highest achievement of Self-realisation is possible because, there, the man works with one resolute determination, with a single-pointed mind. Those who perform actions, labouring under endless desires for results, get their inner personality disintegrated, and with a shattered, thousand- pronged mind, they are not able, consistently, to apply themselves to any line of action; therefore, their endeavours invariably end in disastrous failure. In this stanza lies the secret of Hindu success --- briefly hinted at in hasty words herein. With a single-pointed mind, if an individual can entertain any single resolute- determination and act consistently towards its success, achievement must certainly result. But invariably, man, victimised by his ego, entertains hundreds of desires, often mutually contradictory, and therefore, comes to play upon these fields with an impoverished and exhausted mental strength. This is, psychologically, what we call

"self-cancellation of thoughts." When this comes to plague the mental zone, it exhausts all the potentialities of man and loots away all his chances of success.

42. Flowery speech is uttered by the unwise, taking pleasure in the eulogising words of VEDAS, O Partha, saying, "There is nothing else. "

43. Full of desires, having heaven as their goal, they utter flowery words, which promise new birth as the reward of their actions, and prescribe various specific actions for the attainment of pleasure and Lordship.

44. For, those who cling to joy and Lordship, whose minds are drawn away by such teaching, are neither determinate and resolute nor are they fit for steady meditation and SAMADHI.

Vyasa was one of the first daring revolutionaries in Hinduism who ever came up to win back the Hindu culture from the decadence it had fallen into, in his time. The Bible of the Revolution that he created was the Geeta. His vigorous criticism is reflected in the words of Krishna when he characterises the ritualistic portion of the Vedas as

"the flowery words of the unwise." We have to live mentally in the orthodox atmosphere of that age to appreciate the daring with which Vyasa then had put up this criticism so strongly. The ritualistic sections of the Vedas address those who are deeply attached to pleasure and power, whose discriminative power --- the capacity to distinguish the Real from the Unreal --- is stolen away from them, for they are concerned about the results and rewards of Karma. They were involved in the ritualism as such; not concerned with the Higher, to reach which these are but the means. These Karmas, which promised the performer a POST- MORTEM heavenly existence, with supra-sensuous carnal pleasures, are to be undertaken and laboriously pursued. In all these activities man's inner personality has no time or chance to get integrated and evolved, and, therefore, from the spiritual stand-point, Vyasa feels that they are methods of impotent religion. The ritualist gets involved in the means, without aspiring for the Real Goal! Thus, as an expounder of the TRANSCENDENTAL and the INFINITE, Krishna is here laughing at those who mistake the means for the end; the ritualistic portion is the means and the Vedantic portion dealing with realisation through meditation is the end. The Karma Kanda prepares the mind to a single-pointedness, when it is pursued without specific desires (Nishkama), and such a prepared mind alone is fit for steady contemplation over the Upanishadic declarations. The passage is concluded with the declaration that such persons, tossed about by their desires, shall never discover and experience of tranquillity in their inner life. THE LORD NOW SPEAKS OF THE RESULT ACCRUING TO THOSE LUSTFUL PERSONS WHO ARE THUS WANTING IN DISCRIMINATION:

45. The VEDAS deal with the three attributes; be you above these three attributes (GUNAS) , O Arjuna, free yourself from the pairs-of-opposites, and ever remain in the SATTWA (goodness) , freed from all thoughts of acquisition and preservation, and be established in the Self.

The three inseparable gunas always remain in the inner constitution of every living creature, in varying proportions. The mind and intellect are constituted of this triple-stuff. To go beyond these three temperaments is literally to go beyond the mind. If there is an alloy constituted of copper, zinc, and tin, and a pot is made of that alloy, then to remove all tin, zinc and copper from the pot is to destroy the pot completely. Tea is made of hot water, tea leaves, sugar and milk; and from a cup of tea if you are asked to remove these four components of tea, it amounts to saying 'empty the cup.' In the direct language of the Upanishads, man has been advised to transcend the mind and intellect, and they promise that the individual shall thereby re-discover himself to be God. This direct explanation came to frighten away the Hindu folk out of the Aryan-fold, and so the CALL OF THE RENAISSANCE here, though meaning the same, puts it in different words when it says: "Arjuna, transcend the gunas." If a doctor were to prescribe a medicine which is nowhere in the catalogue of any pharmaceutical company in the world, and, naturally, therefore, not available in any bazaar, that prescription is certainly useless. Similarly, it may be a great prescription for Self-perfection when the Lord advises: "Be free from the triad of the gunas," but it is useless unless a student, practical-minded and adventurous enough to try to live this advice, can be instructed as to how he can go beyond these instinctive temperaments in man, viz., unactivity (Sattwa), activity (Rajas) and inactivity (Tamas). The second line in the stanza gives us a very practical and direct method of transporting ourselves from the realm of imperfection to the boundless regions of Bliss and Beatitude. Earlier, Krishna had indicated how Arjuna should enter the field and wage the war. The same mental equanimity is being advised here in a different language. Pairs-of-opposites are the experiences in our life such as joy and sorrow, health and disease, success and failure, heat and cold, etc. Each one of them can be experienced and known only with reference to and as a contrast to its opposite. Therefore the term 'pairs-of-opposites' (Dwandwas) envisages, in its comprehensive meaning, all the experiences of man in life. Krishna advises Arjuna to be free from all pairs-of-opposites (Dwandwas). NITYA-SATTWA-STHAH --- "Ever established in purity." The purity, Sattwa, the subtlest of the three gunas, often becomes impure by its contact with attachments and the consequent agitations (Rajas) that attack the intellect with delusion and grief, and veil it from the right cognition of the Real Nature of things (Tamas). To be established in purity (Sattwa) would, therefore, mean keeping ourselves least agitated, and so, least deluded in our perceptions of things and beings, and in our estimation of their true nature. Yoga and Kshema in their meaning include all the activities of every living being in the universe. These are the two urges which goad every one in all one's activities. 'Yoga' means 'to acquire' for purposes of possessing; and 'Kshema' means 'all efforts at preserving the acquired.'

Thus the two terms Yoga and Kshema encompass all our ego-centric activities motivated by selfish desires to acquire and, compelled by equally selfish wishes, to hoard and preserve what has been acquired. To renounce these two temperaments is to get away immediately from the two main fields that yield the poisonous harvest of extreme restlessness and sorrow in life. It is very easy for a spiritual master to advise an aspirant to be "free from the pairs-of-opposites, and remain ever pure and free from the natural appetites for acquisition, and the usual greed for preservation." But the philosophy will be practical only when the seeker is advised as to HOW he can do so. This 'how' of it all has been indicated by the last word in the stanza: Atmavan --- "be established in the Self." The persecutions of the pairs-of-opposites, the instinct to be impure, the desire to possess and the anxiety to preserve, all belong to the ego-centre, which is born when the Self identifies with the body, mind and intellect, and when the consequent ego suffers the pangs of anxieties, pains and sorrows. To detach ourselves from these by keeping a constant sense of awareness of our pure Divine Nature is the Path shown in the Geeta. Established in the Self, the individual- ego, ever pure and free from all anxieties, finds itself beyond the experiences of the world. Necessarily, he will be trans-gunas. One who is beyond the gunas has no more use for the Veda Text Books --- he is the Master, thereafter, to amend the Vedas or to add to them; he is the Master who shall give the Divine sanction for the very Vedic declarations. IF ALL THOSE ENDLESS PROFITS WHICH ARE SAID TO RESULT FROM THE VEDIC RITUALS ARE NOT TO BE SOUGHT AFTER, THEN TO WHAT END ARE THEY TO BE PERFORMED AND DEDICATED TO ISWARA? LISTEN TO WHAT FOLLOWS:

46. To the BRAHMANA who has known the Self, all the VEDAS are of so much use, as is a reservoir of water in a place where there is flood everywhere.

It is a wonderful simile that is used here, fully applicable in the context in which it is used. So long as there is no flood, everyone from the vicinity will have to reach the well to collect drinking water, although everywhere there is a vein of water running under our feet, but separated from us by the crust of the earth. For the seeker, the Veda is the only source of True Knowledge, and every one must necessarily go to the Sacred Book for Knowledge. But when the area is flooded and the wells and the tanks have disappeared in the spread of the flood, at that time the reservoir of water, which used to be of service, becomes merged in the spread of water that lies all round. Similarly, the Vedas, meaning here "the ritualistic portion," which promises fulfilment of the various desires, can be useful only so long as the individual is riddled with delusory desires for sensuous satisfactions. But, to a sincere student and seeker (Brahmana) who has "come to experience the Self" (Vijanatah) these ritualistic portions of the Vedas become useless inasmuch as the benefits that they can give are comprehended in the perfection that he has come to live. The Karma Kanda only prescribes rituals for the satisfaction of desires whereby the individuals can gain some finite joy, maybe here, or in the hereafter. Thus, on discovering the Self in oneself, the seeker comes to experience the infinite bliss of the Divine, and all the pleasures derived from the performance of work enjoined in the Vedas are comprehended in the Bliss, which the realised soul experiences as the very Essence of his own Self. Everyone must admit that all those limited "satisfactions" are comprehended in the Infinite Bliss of the experience of the Self. This does not mean that Vyasa is ignoring or ridiculing the Karma Kanda of the Vedas as such. The whip of the Cowherd Boy is descending upon the bare backs of the unintelligent, who have mistaken the means for the goal, and who consider that through ritualism and its promised joys, the Supreme or the Infinite can be gained. Karma, when undertaken with no anxiety for the results, integrates the personality; when a heart is thus purified, a clearer discriminative power comes to play through it, and in its light, Truth becomes self-evident. Having once realised the Infinite-Self spreading out all round without dimensions or frontiers, thereafter, the limited satisfaction promised by ritualism has no more any charm for the man-of-Knowledge, the Self-realised. The Knowledge the Veda indicates is comprehended in Pure Knowledge, which is the nature of the Self. So long as the ego exists it craves for the blessings of the Vedas; when the ego has ended, the Self, in Its Infinite Divinity is capable of blessing even the Veda. A student of mathematics, having successfully passed his post- graduate course, need not read the arithmetic table, since his greater knowledge comprehends this elementary study. AND AS FOR YOU:

47. Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let not the fruit-of-action be thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction. The traditional belief of Hinduism has not at all been shaken in the Geeta-theory that single-pointed, divine- dedicated Karma, without desire for the fruits, shall bring about inner purification, which is a condition precedent to spiritual awakening. The Geeta only gives an exhaustive exposition of this idea to incorporate in it ALL activities in the social and personal life; while in the Vedas, Karma meant only the religious and the ritualistic activities. Philosophy is not a subject that can be rightly understood by hasty students. The stanza now under review, when not properly understood, would seem to indicate an impossible method. At best, it would look as if it was a religious sanction for the poor to continue to be poor and a sacred permission for the rich to continue tyrannising over the poor! To act in life "WITHOUT ANY EXPECTATION OF RESULTS" would seem to be almost impossible to one who is only trying to understand the stanza mentally. But when the same individual, after his studies, walks out into the open fields of life and tries to practise it there, he shall discover that this alone is the very secret of all real achievements. Earlier, we have indicated how Krishna, through his Karma Yoga, was showing "the art of living and acting" in a spirit of Divine inspiration. Here also we shall find, as we tussle with this idea in our attempt to digest it, that Krishna is advising Arjuna on the secret-art of living an inspired life. Wrong imaginations are the banes of life, and all failures in life can be directly traced to have risen from an impoverished mental equanimity, generally created by unintelligent entertainment of fears regarding possible failures. Almost all of us refuse to undertake great activities, being afraid of failures, and even those who dare to undertake noble endeavours, invariably become nervous ere they finish them, again, due to their inward dissipastion. To avoid such wasteful expenditure of mental energy and work with the best that is in us, dedicated to the noble cause of the work undertaken, is the secret prescription for the noblest creative inspiration; and, such work must always end in a brilliant success. This is the eternal law-of-activity in the world. The future is always carved out in the present. Tomorrow's harvest depends upon today's ploughing and sowing. But, in the fear of possible dangers to the crops, if a farmer wastes his present chances of thoroughly ploughing, and carefully sowing at the right time, it is guaranteed that he shall not have any harvest at all. The present moments are to be invested intelligently and well, so that we may reap a better time in the future. The past is dead; the future is not yet born. If one becomes unhealthy and inefficient in the present, certainly he has no reason to hope for a greater future. This fundamental truth, very well-known and easily comprehended by all, is, in the language of the Geeta, a simple statement: "If success you seek, then never strive with a mind dissipasted with anxieties and fears for the fruits." In this connection it is very interesting to dissect carefully and discover exactly what the Shastra means when it says: "Fruits-of-action." In fact, the reward of an action, when we understand it properly, is not anything different from the action itself. An action in the PRESENT itself, when conditioned by a FUTURE-time, appears as the fruit-of-the-action. In fact, the action ends, or fulfils itself, only in its reaction, and the reaction is not anything different from the action; an action in the present, defined in terms of a future moment, is its reaction. Therefore, to worry over and get ourselves pre-occupied with the anxieties for the rewards-of-actions is to escape from the dynamic PRESENT and to live in a FUTURE that is not yet born! In short, the Lord's advice here is a call to man not to waste his present moment in fruitless dreams and fears, but to bring his best --- all the best in him --- to the PRESENT and vitally live every moment, the promise being, that the future shall take care of itself, and shall provide the Karma Yogin with the achievements divine and accomplishments supreme. In effect, therefore, Arjuna is advised: "All that is given to you now is to act and, having known the cause of action to be a noble one, to bring into the activity all that is best in you and forget yourself in the activity. Such inspired action is sure to bear fruit, and again, it has its own reward-spiritual." The stanza gives the four injunctions guiding us to be true workers. A real Karma Yogin is one who understands: (a) that his concern is with action alone; (b) that he has no concern with results; (c) that he should not entertain the motive of gaining a fixed fruit for a given action; and (d) that these ideas do not mean that he should sit back courting inaction. In short, the advice is to make the worker release himself from all his mental pre- occupastions, and thus through work make him live in the joy and ecstasy of inspired self-forgetfulness. The work itself is his reward; he gets himself drunk with the joy and satisfaction of a noble work done. The work is the means; the Higher Self-experience alone is the Goal-Divine. By thus re-acting readily to all external challenges, with his devoted attention upon Him, one can find peace easily, and a bosom thus purged of its existing vasana-bondages is, to that extent, considered better purified for the purposes of meditation and the final Vedantic-realisation of the Infinite glory of the Self. IF A MAN SHOULD NOT PERFORM WORK PROMPTED BY DESIRES FOR THEIR RESULT, HOW THEN SHOULD HE PERFORM IT? THE REPLY FOLLOWS:

48. Perform action, O Dhananjaya, abandoning attachment, being steadfast in YOGA, and balanced in success and failure. Evenness of mind is called YOGA.

From this stanza onwards we have an exhaustive discussion of the technique of Karma Yoga as conceived by Krishna in his Doctrine of Action and expounded in Vyasa's Geeta. A complete technique of how one can live the life of a truly inspired worker is explained here, and, to any careful student, who understands all the implications of the terms, it must be clear that a complete effacement of the ego and its vanities is to be achieved to succeed in this Path; and this is gained by practising the equipoise mentioned in the previous stanzas.

In this stanza, for the first time, the term Yoga has been used in the sense of the "evenness of mind" through work, and before it concludes, we also get an exhaustive definition of the term Yoga as used in the stanza.

"Evenness of mind," the tranquillity of mental composure, in facing all pairs-of-opposites is defined here as Yoga. Defined thus, the term Yoga, indicates a special condition of the mind in which it comes to a neutral equilibrium in all the ebb and flow of life's tides. The instructions in the stanza advise us that desireless action can be performed only when one gets completely established in Yoga; here the terms precisely paint what Vyasa's definition means. Not only is it sufficient that a true worker should act in the world, established in equipoise and equanimity, but he should, amidst the changes of the world, also reinforce this poise, through a renunciation of his "attachment" (Sanga) to the immediate fruits of his actions. We shall try to enquire into the "attachment," mentioned here, which a seeker should renounce, so that he may become more efficient in performing inspired activities. To all sincere students, who have so far followed the Lord's words, it should be clear that "attachment" here means all factors against which Krishna has already warned us in the earlier stanzas and insisted that we must renounce them all --- viz., wrong imaginations, false expectations, day-dreams about the fruits of actions, anxieties for the results, and fears for future calamities that have not yet appeared to threaten our lives. When it is put thus as a list of mistakes to be avoided, any true Karma Yogin, striving upon the Path of Yoga, will find it impossible to practise it. But when we analyse this further with our understanding of the Upanishads, we can easily solve the riddle. All the above nerve-racking mistakes belong to the delusory ego-centre. When we analyse closely the stuff of which the ego is made we can easily find that it is a bundle of 'MEMORIES OF THE PAST AND HOPES AND EXPECTATIONS FOR THE FUTURE.' The dead moments, that are no more, constitute the past. The future is unborn, and does not yet belong to us. To live in the ego, therefore, is to live either in the burial grounds of dead moments, or in the womb of time where the unborn future now rests. In all these pre-occupastions, we lose the immediate moments given to us to act, to strive, to earn, and to achieve. It is this unintelligent squandering of the wealth of present chances, through our broodings and imaginations, that is hinted at here by the genius of Vyasa when he says,

"Act, established in equanimity, abandoning attachment." Thus, in complete self-forgetfulness, to get intoxicated with the activities undertaken in the present, is to live vitally, fully and entirely with all the best that is in us. To dissolve ourselves thus --- our past, our future, our hopes, our fears --- into the fiery contents of the PRESENT is to work in inspiration. And inspired work ever promises the greatest returns.

An artist, who is at work, forgetting himself in the very ecstasy of his work, is an example. One need not, for that matter, be a great artist even. One who is working interestedly with all his mind and intellect on any piece of work will not be aware, immediately, of any chance intruder. It will take time for the artist to come down from the realms of his joyous mood to the crystallisation of the ego in him to recognise the intruder, understand his enquiry and give him an intelligent answer. In all inspired activity, the worker forgets himself in the work that he is doing. In all such activities, when the worker has gained almost a self-forgetfulness, he will not care for the success or failure of his activity because, to worry for the results is to worry for the future, and to live in the future is not to live in the present. Inspiration is the joyous content of thrilled ecstasy of each immediate moment. It is said that this content of a moment in itself is "the entire Infinite Bliss."

"Established thus in equanimity, renouncing all ego- centric-attachments, forgetting to worry over the results of success or failure in the activities, act on," --- says, in effect, Krishna to Arjuna; and he adds that the great Yoga is to work thus with equipoise in all situations. IN COMPARISON WITH ACTION THUS PERFORMED WITH EVENNESS OF MIND, KRISHNA DECLARES:

49. Far lower than the YOGA -of-wisdom is action, O Dhananjaya. Seek thou refuge in wisdom; wretched are they whose motive is the "fruit. "

Work done with a mind undisturbed by anxieties for the results is indeed superior to the work done by a dissipasted mind, ever worrying over the results. Here the term, "Buddhi yoga" has tickled some commentators to discover in it a special Yoga advised by the Geeta. I personally think that it is too much of a laboured theory. Buddhi as defined in the Upanishads, is the determining factor in the "inner-equipment"; Nishchyatmika is 'intellect'; Samshayatmika is 'mind'. Thus, when the thoughtflow is in a state of flux and agitated, it is called the 'mind'; and when it is single-pointed, calm and serene in its own determination, it is called the 'intellect.' Thus, Buddhi yoga means "to be established in the devotion to the intellect." Steady in your conviction, your mind perfectly under the control of your discriminative intellect, to live thus as a master of your inner and outer world is called Buddhi yoga. In Buddhi yoga we pursue our duties in life, without ever losing sight of our ultimate Goal in Life. Analysing the meaning of the stanza in terms of what we have already seen regarding the split-personality and its cure through Vasana-purgation, we may interpret Buddhi yoga as an individual's attempt to live and act from the zone of the intellect which freely controls the mind's functions, and readily receives faithful obedience from the mind. The attempt of the mind to work in union with the intellect --- the "objective-mind" working under the control and the order of the "subjective-mind" --- is called Buddhi yoga. By so doing, instead of incurring more and more liabilities of new Vasana-bondages, the individual gains a release from the mental congestion created by the existing Vasanas. Thus, when an individual completely surrenders his ego, he is said to be "Established in Buddhi yoga." Hence it is said "SEEK REFUGE IN Buddhi," meaning: "let your mind be perfectly under the control and direction of the intellect." There is a solid reason why we should live under the control of the intellect. Those who live in the mental zone, tossed about by the mind's tribulations, get agitated by anxiety for the fruits-of-actions. Such people are termed here as 'wretched. ' It is a powerful statement by which Vyasa condemns such thoughtless, unintelligent people:

"WRETCHED ARE THEY WHO ACT FOR THE RESULTS." Understood properly, this is a wonderful guidance by following which we can totally eliminate all failures in life. Efficient activity in the present alone can order great results. They are "wretched" because they will be, in their desire- prompted activities, incurring new Vasanas and thus will be thickening the veil of ignorance of their own glorious Divinity. Unselfish work, performed in a spirit of dedication and ego-less surrender, is the secret method of exhausting our Vasana-store. Such a mind alone, purged clean, can reflect the Self clearly and come to discover the Eternal God-hood. NOW, LEARN WHAT RESULTS HE GAINS WHO PERFORMS HIS DUTY WITH EVENNESS-OF-MIND:

50. Endowed with the Wisdom of evenness-of-mind, one casts off in this life both good deeds and evil deeds; therefore, devote yourself to YOGA, Skill in action is YOGA.

One who has an evenness of temper accomplished by his perfect withdrawal from the realm of sentiments and emotions, and who is established in his resolute intellect, gets himself transported from the arena of both the good and the bad, merit and de-merit. The conception of good and bad is essentially of the mind, and the reactions of merit and de-merit are left on the mental composition in the form of Vasanas or samskaras. He, who is not identifying with the stormy sea of the mind, will not be thrown up or sunk down by the huge waves of Vasanas. This idea is explained here by the term Buddhi yuktah: one whose actions are all guided by his clear vision of his higher and diviner Goal. The Geeta, throughout this section, is sincerely calling upon man not to live on the outskirts of his personality, which are constituted of the worlds of sense-objects, the physical body and the mind, but to enter into the realm of the intellect, and from there to assert his natural manliness. Man is the supreme creature in the kingdom of the living, because of the rational capacities of his discriminative intellect. As long as man does not utilise this special equipment in him, so long he cannot claim his heritage as man. Arjuna was asked by Krishna not to be a vain and hysterical person, but to be a he-man and, therefore, ever a master of all his external situations. The great hero, Arjuna, became so frail and weak because he started living in delusory identification with the sense of his own physical security and with his various emotional attachments. He who lives constantly asserting his full evolutionary status as man, becomes free from the chains and bondages of all his past impressions (vasanas), which he must have gathered in his pilgrimage through his different embodiments.

"Therefore, apply yourself," advises Krishna, "to the devotion of action, Yoga." In this context, again, Vyasa is giving a definition of Yoga, as he means it here. Earlier, he had already explained that "Evenness of mind is Yoga." Now he re-writes the same definition more comprehensively and says, "Yoga is dexterity in action." In a science-book, if the very same term is defined differently in every chapter, it would bring about confusion in its understanding. How is it then that in the Science of Religion, we find different definitions of the same term? This riddle solves itself as soon as we carefully attempt an intimate understanding of the definition. The earlier definition is being incorporated in the latter one, because, otherwise, "evenness of mind is Yoga" may be misunderstood as a mere 'evenness of mind' producing inaction and slothfulness. In this definition such a misunderstanding is completely removed, and thus Karma Yoga, as indicated in the all-comprehensive meaning implied herein, indicates the art of working with perfect mental equilibrium in all the different conditions indicated by the term "pairs-of-opposites" (Dwandwas). After dissecting this stanza thus, we come to understand what exactly is the Lord's intention. When Yoga, "the art of working without desire," is pursued, the Karma Yogin becomes detached from all the existing vasanas in himself, both good and bad. The vasana-pressure in the individual causes restlessness within. The inner-equipment that has become peaceful and serene is called the pure Antah- Karana, which is an unavoidable prerequisite for consistent, discriminative self-application in meditation. Thus all actions, when properly pursued, become means for the ultimate end of realising the Self through meditation, with a pure mind. We have here yet another example of Vyasa using the frightening word Yoga in a tamer context in order to make his society then feel at ease with it.

WHY SHOULD WE CULTIVATE THIS EVENNESS OF MIND AND CONSEQUENTLY AN EXTRA DEXTERITY IN ACTION?

51. The wise, possessed of knowledge, having abandoned the fruits of their actions, freed from the fetters of birth, go to the State which is beyond all evil.

Being a man of action, extremely intelligent, and having not yet developed any blind faith in Lord Krishna's divine potentialities, Arjuna still questions mentally, and the Lord, anticipasting his doubt, explains here why a man of true devotion to work should act, and with perfect evenness of mind strive to achieve. The wise, meaning those who know the art of true living, undertake all work, maintaining in themselves the full evenness of mind, and thus abandon all anxieties for the fruits of their actions. These two conditions, under which the wise work, bring out fully the picture of an individual who acts renouncing both ego and ego-motivated desires. By identifying with the agitations of the mind, the ego is born, and, the ego so born gets riddled with desires as it gets anxious for the fruits-of-its actions. When one works with neither ego nor desires, one achieves vasana- purgation; this is possible only when one always has the Higher Goal in view.

52. When your intellect crosses beyond the mire of delusion, then you shall attain to indifference as to what has been heard and what is yet to be heard.

When the intellect crosses over the morass of delusion, when it sloughs off its delusions, the stanza here assures Arjuna, that it will develop a disgust, "FOR ALL THAT IS ACTUALLY HEARD AND THAT IS YET TO BE HEARD." Here the term "WHAT IS YET TO BE HEARD" must be understood as a representative term standing for all "sense experiences that are yet to be experienced." Naturally so; when the intellect becomes purer then it loses all its erstwhile charm for sense experiences --- what it had before, and what it may gain in the future. Essentially Godly and Divine, Spiritual Consciousness seems to fall under a self-delusion, which, when analysed, becomes perfectly evident as to its effects. This cause of delusion is conceived of as the indescribable power called Maya. Like unmanifested electricity, Maya, as such, is not perceptible except in its different manifestations. It is a phenomenon that can be fully estimated and accounted for through its varied expressions. Observing and analysing the effects of Maya within the constitution of all individualised and embodied souls, the Vedantic masters have beautifully concluded that it comes to play in two distinct modes of expression, at two different layers of the human personality. Thus, at the intellectual level it expresses itself as a film of doubt and hesitation in its understanding, or experiencing, of the Self in us. This expression Maya is termed by the Masters as the "Veiling-Power" (Avarana-Shakti). Due to this mist of ignorance, that envelops the intellect, when it is unconscious of the Spiritual Reality behind it, the mind starts projecting forth the world of the not-Self and superimposes upon it two firm ideas that: (a) "it is true" (Satyattwa), and (b) that "I am nothing other than the projected world" (Atmabuddhi). This is Maya's expression as "Projecting-Power" (Vikshepa-Shakti). In this stanza it is said that, once the intellect in us is purified through the art of steady-work, called 'Devotion through Work,' it becomes possible for it to peep over the veil of ignorance that separates it from the splendour of the Spiritual Entity. When the intellect sloughs off its delusions, it goes beyond its attachment for the charms of the sensuous world. But before this happens, the intellect, ignorant of its spiritual destiny, pants to fulfil itself and surges forward seeking satisfaction amongst the finite sense-objects of the world. But, when the intellect discovers in itself a capacity to pierce through the dreary veil of ignorance, it comes to live its own Real Nature of Bliss Infinite. Each fleeting joy in the sense-world only sharpens its appetite for the Infinite Bliss which is Its Real Nature. To the extent the clouds have moved and the sun has emerged, to that extent he who is warming himself at the fireside moves away from the fire-place and walks into the open, to bask in the all-enveloping warmth of the blazing sun. Similarly, to the extent the illusion of ignorance melts away in an integrated intellect, to that extent its wanderings in the sensuous-world are curtailed. The sense-world is beautifully indicated by two representative terms "what has been heard (Shrutam)," and

"what is yet to be heard (Shrotavyam)." We must include in them 'the seen and the unseen,' 'the smelt and the unsmelt,' 'the tasted and the not-tasted,' and 'the touched and not-yet-touched.' The intellect of such a purified Karma-Yogin does not relive its memory of the sensuous joys it had experienced in the past and also does not remember that it has to experience still more joys in the future through the sense-organs, in the world of sense- objects. If we take the word meaning of these terms literally we get the usual interpretation of the commentators: "When the seeker's mind is not tossed about by the seemingly different and often opposing conclusions of philosophers, when they do not upset him any more, then he is established in inward purity." SHANKARA CONNECTS THIS STANZA WITH THE FOLLOWING: "YOU MAY NOW ASK, 'WHEN SHALL I ATTAIN TRUE CONVICTION OF THE SELF, AFTER CROSSING BEYOND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE, AND

OBTAIN WISDOM THROUGH THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE SELF AND THE NOT-SELF? ' LISTEN:"

53. When your intellect, though perplexed by what you have heard, shall stand immovable and steady in the Self, then you shall attain Self-realisation.

When one's intellect comes to a steady equipoise, UNDISTURBED by any of the experiences that reach one through the five great arch-ways of knowledge, then one is considered as having attained Yoga. The mind gets agitated mainly due to the flooding-in of the ever-new rush of stimuli from the outer world. Sense- organs are the antennae through which the world's tickling signals creep in and disturb the mental-pool. One is considered as having attained Yoga only when one, even in the midst of enjoying sensuous pleasures, and even while the sense-organs are letting in a flood of stimuli, does not get at all disturbed in one's inner serenity and equipoise This idea is better developed and exhaustively dealt with later in the chapter, where Krishna enumerates the visible qualities and the perceptible signs of one established in Wisdom (Sthita-Prajna). The discussion so far, makes Arjuna so interested that he is now no more under the influence of his hysteria. He has come to forget his dejection and sorrow, and is now taking an active interest in Krishna's exposition. He could not control himself from expressing his sincere enquiry as to what exactly is the nature of such a perfected one who is beyond the storms of sensuousness. The question evidently shows that though Arjuna's intellect had somehow come to appreciate Krishna's theory, something in him was not quite ready to accept it fully. LINKING UP THIS STANZA WITH THE NEXT, SHANKARA SAYS:

"ANXIOUS TO KNOW THE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF ONE WHOSE INTELLECT HAS COME TO AN EQUIPOISE, HE ASKS THIS QUESTION, AS SOON AS HE GETS A CHANCE TO INTERROGATE":

Arjuna said: 54. What, O Keshava, is the description of him who has steady Wisdom and who is merged in the Superconscious state? How does one of steady Wisdom speak, how does he sit, how does he walk?

In the last two stanzas the discussion naturally turned towards the Ultimate Goal which a Karma Yogin reaches when he has, with evenness-of-mind, perfected the

"technique of work." The idea seems to be quite appealing and the theory, indeed, logical. There is a ring of conviction in it, when the theory comes from the mouth of Lord Krishna. Arjuna has such a mental constitution that Karma Yoga appeals to him the most.

The grief-sticken hero of the first chapter has forgotten his hysteria and has now come to take an active interest in the discussion. As a practical man, he is afraid as to whether, after gaining this great Goal of Life through Buddhi yoga, he will be able to live so vigorously in the world outside. Looking from the Vedic usage of the term, one is apt to misunderstand that the perfected Yogin, who has come to rediscover the Self, lives exclusively in a world of his own. The description of the Upanishads can give a novitiate the notion that a Perfected Sage is ill-fitted to live in the world. Arjuna, as a child of the age of hatred and diplomacy, was curious to know fully the condition of the Perfected Master before he actually accepted the theory and tried to live it. His anxiety to know the entire Truth is clearly shown here in his very questions upon such non-essentials as, 'How does he speak,' 'how will he sit,' 'how will he walk,' etc. These questions must be considered quite appropriate and dramatic, when they come from one who had been, till then, a patient of hysteria. Again, the first-half of the stanza demands a description of a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom while in Samadhi, that is, with regard to his inner life, and the second half is asking for a description of how such a Master will act in the world outside. Arjuna is asking a forked question: (a) a description of the state of mind in a man-of-realisation merged in Self- experience and, (b) an explanation as to how that experience will influence his actions in the outer world, when he emerges from that Transcendental experience. In this stanza and the following section, "Man-of-Steady- Wisdom" (Sthita-Prajna), means one who has, through direct realisation, come to experience and live his Godly Self. THE LORD NOW POINTS OUT THOSE CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDES IN A REALISED SAINT, WHICH, SINCE ATTAINABLE BY ALL THROUGH RIGHT EFFORT, CONSTITUTE THE MEANS AS SUCH:

The Blessed Lord said: 55. When a man completely casts off, O Partha, all the desires of the mind, and is satisfied in the Self by the Self, then is he said to be one of steady Wisdom.

By narrating thus the inner and outer life of the 'man-of- Self-realisation,' Geeta helps us to detect for ourselves, the right type of Masters from the charlatans who, though wolves, wear a goat-skin and enter the fold of the faithful. Apart from this, these passages have a direct appeal to all sincere Sadhakas inasmuch as this section gives them an easy thumb-rule as to what types of values and mental attitudes they should develop, during their practice, in order to realise the ever-effulgent Divinity in them --- the Pure Awareness.

This very opening stanza in this section, is a brilliant summary of all that we should know of the mental condition of the Perfect. The words used in this stanza can be understood fully, only when we remember the significant fragrance of these words as they stand dancing among the hosts of other blossoms in the Garden of the Upanishads. He is considered a Man-of-Wisdom who has completely cast away ALL DESIRES from his mind. Reading this stanza in conjunction with what Krishna has so far said, we can truly come to enjoy the Upanishadic fragrance in these inspired words of Vyasa. An intellect, contaminated by ignorance becomes the breeding-ground of desires, and he who has relieved himself of this 'Ignorance' through 'Right-Knowledge' gained in Perception, naturally, becomes 'desireless.' By explaining here the absence of the EFFECT, the Lord is negating the existence of the CAUSE: where desires are not, there "ignorance" has ended, and "Knowledge" has already come to shine forth. If this alone were the distinguishing factor of the Man-of- Steady-Wisdom, then any modern man would condemn the Hindu Man-of-Wisdom as a rank lunatic; a Hindu wise-man would then become one who had not even the initiative to desire. Desire means a capacity of the mind to see ahead of itself, a scheme or a pasttern, in which he who desires will probably be more happy. "The wise-man seems to lose even this capacity, as he goes beyond his intellect and experiences the Self," --- this is a criticism that is generally heard from the materialists. This stanza cannot thus be condemned since it adds in its second line that the Perfect-One is "blissful" in his own experience of the Self. A Perfect man is defined here, therefore, not only as one who has no desires, but also as one who has positively come to enjoy the Bliss of the Self! When one is an infant, one has one's own playmates, and as one grows from childhood to boyhood, one leaves one's toys and runs after a new set of things; again, as the boy grows to youthfulness, he loses his desires for the fancy- things of his boyhood and craves for yet a newer set of things; again, in old age, the same entity casts away all objects that were till then great joys to him and comes to demand a totally different set of objects. This is an observed phenomenon. As we grow, our demands also grow. With reference to the new scheme of things demanded, the old sets of ideas come to be cast away. In one's ignorance, when one conceives oneself as the ego, one has a burning desire for sense-objects, a binding attachment with emotions, and a jealous preference for one's pet ideas. But when the ego is transcended, when the ignorance, like a mist, has lifted itself, and when the finite ego stands face to face with the Divine Reality in him, it melts away to become one with the Infinite. In the Self, the Man-of-Steady-Wisdom, 'SELF-SATISFIED IN THE SELF,' can no more entertain any desire, or have any appetite, for the paltry objects of the body, or of the mind, or of the intellect. He becomes the very Source of all Bliss. Such a one is defined here by Vyasa as the 'Man-of- Steady-Wisdom' (Sthita-Prajna), and as the words come out from the mouth of Krishna they gather the divine ring of an incontrovertible Truth. MOREOVER:

56. He whose mind is not shaken by adversity, and who in prosperity does not hanker after pleasures, who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a Sage-of-Steady-Wisdom.

In describing the attributes of a Perfect Sage, having explained that he is one who has come to sacrifice all his petty desires, in his self-discovered self-satisfaction in the Self, Krishna explains that, another characteristic by which we can recognise a sage, is his EQUANIMITY IN PLEASURE AND PAIN. If, in the last stanza, Krishna considered the man as an "actor," herein he is considering him as an "experiencer," A BEARER OF BODY- AFFLICTIONS. One who is a stable being, whose heart is undisturbed in sorrow or in joy, unattached, fearless, and sans-anger, is described here as a Muni --- a silent sage. Of the emotions that must be absent in an individual, who is a master in all situations, we are here pointedly told only of these: (a) attachment (Raga), (b) fear (Bhaya) and (c) anger (Krodha).

In fact, when we read the biographies of perfected-ones, in the entire history of man, we find in almost all of them an antithesis of the ordinary man. The hundred emotions common to the ordinary man are not at all seen in a Perfect-one, and therefore, we feel surprised, when the absence of only these three qualities is asserted so emphatically here. Naturally a careful student gets suspicious. Has Vyasa overlooked all other features? Can this be a complete statement? But on a closer study we shall discover that, he has not committed "the crime of inappropriate emphasis upon the non-essentials," as critics have been tempted to point out. In the previous stanza we were told that "he is Perfect who has forsaken all cravings that bubble up in his mind," and this stanza asserts the mental stability of such a one. In the world outside, in our intercourse with the sense- objects, we can very easily realise that our attachments with things create in us the pains of the perplexing fear- phobia. When an individual develops a desire strong enough to make a deep attachment, instinctively, he starts entertaining a sense-of-fear for the non-winning of the object so deeply desired; and, if it has been secured, then again he fears for the security of the same acquired object. Similarly, when an object has charmed one to a point of deep attachment, and when fear itself has started coming up in waves to disturb the individual, then, such an individual's attitude towards those that come between him and the object of his attachment, is called ANGER.

Anger is thus nothing but a feeling that rises in us, because of our attachment to an object, towards an obstacle between ourselves and the object of our attachment; the anger thus arising in a bosom is directly proportional to the amount of fear one entertains on the score of the obstacle holding one back from winning one's object-of-love. Anger, therefore, is only our Raga for an object, expressed at an obstacle that has come between us and the object of our desire. Shankara says that a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom is not distressed by calamities (a) such as those that may arise from the disorders of the body (Adhyatmika); (b) those arising from external objects, such as tigers, etc. (Adhibhautika); and (c) those arising from unseen causes such as the cosmic forces causing rains, storms, etc. (Adhidaivika). Fire increases when fuel is added. But the 'fire of desire' in a Perfect One does not increase when more pleasures are attained. Such a person is called a man-of-steady-Knowledge, a silent, serene sage. MOREOVER:

57. He who is everywhere without attachment, on meeting with anything good or bad, who neither rejoices nor hates, his Wisdom is fixed.

An inspired artist, trying to express his idea on the canvas in the language of colour, will off and on stand back from his easel, and will again, with growing tenderness and love, approach the product of his art, to place a few more strokes with his brush; here Krishna, inspired by his own theme, is again and again choosing right words to add more light and shade to the picture-of-the-Perfect, the one which he was painting upon the heart-slab of his listener - -- Arjuna. He who, without attachment, squarely meets life with all equanimity and poise, is one who is "established in Wisdom." Here also we have to understand the entire stanza as a whole, or else, there will be the danger of misinterpreting its true meaning. Mere detachment from the things of life is NOT the sign of perfection, nor of true discriminative understanding. But many unintelligent enthusiasts actually desert their duties in life and run away, hoping that, since they have developed perfect detachment from the sensuous world, they will gain their

"goal" in the quietude of the jungle. Arjuna himself had earlier stated that he would renounce the call of duty and the field of activity. By thus retiring into quietude, the Pandava-hero hoped to reach Perfection and Peace. To dissuade Arjuna from taking this calamitous step, Krishna started his discourse with a serious note in the second chapter. Detachment from suicidal affections and unintelligent tenderness cannot by itself take man to the higher realms of Divinity. Detachment from the world outside must equally be accompanied by a growing balance in ourselves to face all challenges in life --- ' auspicious'

(Shubha) and 'inauspicious' (Ashubha) --- in perfect equipoise without either any uncontrolled rejoicing at the Shubha, or any aversion for the Ashubha experiences. A mere detachment in itself is not the way of perfect life, inasmuch as it is only a negative existence of constantly escaping from life. To live in ATTACHMENT is to live in slavery to the things of the world. But the Perfect One is he, who, with divine freedom, lives in the world, dexterously meeting both joys and sorrows which life may provide for him. In winter, to be out in the sun and lie basking in its rays is to enjoy its warmth and at the same time to suffer its glare. To complain of the glare is to bring sorrow into the very enjoyment of the warmth. One who is intelligent will either try to ignore the glare and enjoy the warmth fully, or shade off the glare and bask in the enjoyable warmth. Similarly, life, by its very nature, is a mixture of both good and bad, and to live ever adjusting ourselves --- avoiding the bad and striving to linger in the experience of the good --- is to live unintelligently. The Perfect-One experiences the best and the worst in life with equal detachment because he is ever established in THE TRUE AND THE ETERNAL, which is the very Self. In his question, Arjuna had enquired of Krishna, how a Perfect Master would speak. This stanza may be considered as an answer to it. Since the Perfect man-of- Wisdom neither feels any aversion to the sorrows nor rejoices in the joys of life, he neither compliments anything in the world, nor does he condemn anything. To him everything is wonderful. He sees things AS THEY ARE, uncoloured by his mental moods. Such a Perfect One is beyond all the known principles of behaviourism of Western psychology. MOREOVER:

58. When, like the tortoise which withdraws its limbs from all sides, he withdraws his senses from the sense-objects then his Wisdom becomes steady.

After explaining that a Perfect-One is: (a) ever satisfied in the Self, (b) that he lives in perfect equanimity in pleasure and pain, and (c) that there is, in him, a complete absence of attachment to rejoicing or any aversion, it is here mentioned that a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom has the special knack of withdrawing his senses from all the disturbing 'fields of objects.' The simile used here is very appropriate. Just as a tortoise can, even at the most distant suggestions of danger, instinctively withdraw all its limbs into itself, and feel safe within, a man-of-Perfection can consciously withdraw all his antennae that peep out through his five arches-of-knowledge, called the sense-organs. In the theory of perception in Vedanta, the mind, bearing the consciousness, goes out through the sense-organs to the sense-objects, and, there it takes, as it were, the shape of the sense-objects, and so comes to gain the "knowledge" of the objects perceived. This idea is figuratively put in the Upanishad --- the Light of Consciousness, as it were, beams out through the seven holes in the cranium, each special 'beam' of awareness illuminating only one specific type of 'object.' Thus, the 'Light' that passes through the eyes is capable of illumining only the FORMS and COLOURS, while that which emerges through the ears illumines SOUNDS. In the material world, we can take the example of the electric-light that expresses through an ordinary bulb illuminating the objects in the room, while the electricity, as light, emerging from the X-ray tube penetrates through the form and illumines things that are ordinarily not visible to the naked eye. Thus, in each individual, five distinct beams of the same Awareness protrude like antennae and give him complete

"knowledge" of the eternal world. These five avenues-of- knowledge bring to him the innumerable stimuli from the outer world, which, reaching the mind, provide all the disturbances that man feels in his life of contacts with the outer world. If I am blind, the beauty that is passing by cannot disturb my mind; if I am deaf, I cannot over-hear criticism against myself, and naturally, it cannot reach me to agitate my bosom! The untasted or the unsmelt or the unfelt sense-objects can never bring any pang of sorrow into the bosom. Here Krishna re-assures Arjuna that a Man-of-Steady-Wisdom is he, who has the ready capacity to fold back his senses, from any or all the fields of their activity.

This capacity in an individual to withdraw his senses at will from the fields-of-objects is called in Yoga Shastra as Pratyahara, which the Yogin accomplishes through the control-of-breath (Pranayama). To a devotee this comes naturally, because he has eyes and ears only for the form and stories of his beloved Lord. To a Vedantin, again, this (Uparati) comes from his well-developed and sharpened discriminative faculty, with which his intellect makes his mind understand the futility, of licking the crumbs of joy and happiness in the wayside ditches of sensuousness, while he, in his Real Nature, is the Lord of the very store of Bliss Infinite. THE SENSES OF A MAN WHO IS ILL, AND CONSEQUENTLY NOT ABLE TO PARTAKE OF THE SENSUOUS OBJECTS, ARE SEEMINGLY UNDER CONTROL, BUT THE TASTE FOR THEM DOES NOT THEREBY CEASE TO EXIST. HOW DOES EVEN THE TASTE FOR SENSE-OBJECTS FINALLY END? LISTEN:

59. The objects of the senses turn away from the abstinent man leaving the longing (behind) ; but his longing also leaves him on seeing the Supreme.

Without Pratyahara (or Uparati), we can observe cases wherein an individual comes to maintain sense- withdrawal from the sense-objects due to some physical incapacity or due to some special mental mood of temporary sorrow or misery. In all those cases, though the sense-organs come to feel an aversion for the respective objects, their inclination for these objects merely remains dormant for the time being. Similarly, Arjuna doubts that, even in a Yogin, the capacity to withdraw from the temptations of the sense-world, may be temporary and that, under favourable or sufficiently tempting circumstances, they may again raise their hoods to hiss and to poison. His doubt is answered here. If you observe the flight of the objects of sensuousness from the shops to their customers, you can understand this point very clearly. They always reach only those who are courting them and are panting to possess them. The wine-cellars get emptied when the bottle "walkout" to replenish the side-boards of the drunkards! Ploughs made by the smithy are not purchased by artists and poets, doctors and advocates, but they must necessarily reach the homes of the farmers. Similarly, all sense-objects ultimately reach those who are courting them with burning desires. From one who is completely abstinent, sense-objects must necessarily get repelled. But even though the sense-objects may, temporarily, seem to turn away from him who is abstinent, the deep taste for them, ingrained in his mind, is very difficult to erase completely. Here Krishna, in his Supreme Wisdom, assures the seeker that these mental impressions of sensuous lives, lived in the past by the ego, from the beginning of creation to date, will all be totally erased, or at least made ineffective --- as roasted seeds --- when the seeker transcends the ego and comes to experience the Self. This is not very difficult to understand, since we know that the objects of sorrow and occasions of tragedy in one plane-of-consciousness are not available in another. The kingship that I enjoy in my dream, does not add even a jot to my dignity when I wake up to realise my insignificant existence; so too, my meagre existence in the waking-state will not debar me from the full kingly glory in my dream- kingdom!! Similarly, the ego, existing now through the waking, dream and deep-sleep states, has gathered to itself a dung- heap of impressions, all purely sensuous. But these cannot be effective when the same ego, transcending these three planes, comes to experience the plane of God- consciousness. HE, WHO WOULD ACQUIRE STEADINESS OF RIGHT KNOWLEDGE (Prajna) SHOULD FIRST BRING HIS SENSES UNDER CONTROL. FOR, IF NOT CONTROLLED, THEY WILL DO HARM. SO, THE LORD SAYS:

60. The turbulent senses, O son of Kunti, do violently carry away the mind of a wise-man, though he be striving (to control them) .

In his discourse so far, the Lord has emphasized that a perfect-Master is one who has complete control over his sense-appetites. In India, a mere philosophical idea, in itself, is not considered anything more than a poetic ideology, and it is not accepted as a spiritual thesis unless it is followed by a complete technique by which the seeker can come to live it, in his own subjective experience. True to this traditional Aryan faith, in the Geeta too, the Lord indicates to Arjuna the practical method, by which he should struggle hard, in order to reach the eminence of perfection in all men-of-steady-Wisdom. The ignorance of the Spiritual Reality functions in any individual in three distinct aspects: "Unactivity" (Sattwa)

"Activity" (Rajas); and "Inactivity" (Tamas). When the Sattwa aspect in us is molested by the "veiling of the intellect" (Avarana) and the "lack of tranquillity" of the mind (Vikshepa), then we come to the sorrows caused by their endless roamings through the sense-organs. Unless these are well-controlled, they will drag the mind to the field of the sense-objects, and thus create a chaotic condition within, which is experienced as sorrow. That this happens even to a highly evolved seeker, is here accepted by the statement of the Lord. With this assertion, he is warning the seeker in Arjuna, that he should not on any score let his "objective-mind" take hold of, and enslave his "subjective-intellect." This warning is quite appropriate and timely in the scheme of thought in this chapter.

Invariably, among those who are practising religion, the common cause by which very many true seekers fall away from the Path, is the same all over the world. After a few years of practice, they, no doubt, come to live a certain inexplicable inward joy, and over-confident, and often even vainful of their progress, they relax in their Tapas. Once they come back to the field of the senses, "the turbulent senses do violently snatch the mind away" from the poise of perfect meditation!

61. Having restrained them all, he should sit steadfast, intent on Me; his Wisdom is steady, whose senses are under control.

Since the sense-organs are thus the saboteurs in the Kingdom of the Spirit that bring the disastrous downfall of the Empire of the Soul, Arjuna is warned here that, as a seeker of Self-perfection, he should constantly struggle to control his sense-organs and their mad lustful wanderings in their respective fields. Modern psychology would certainly look down with a squint-eye upon this Geeta theory, because, according to Freud and others, sensuousness is instinctive in man, and to curb it would lead to an unnatural suppression. According to the West, TO CONTROL is TO SUPPRESS, and no science of mental life can accept that suppression is psychologically healthy. But the Vedic theory is not pointing to any mental suppression at all. It is only advising an inward blossoming, an inner growth and development, by which one's earlier fields of enjoyments through the senses, drop out to make room for the perception of a newer field of ampler joys and more satisfying Bliss. This idea is very well brought out here, when Lord Krishna, as though in the very same breath, repeats both the negative and the positive aspects of the technique of Self-development. He advises not only a withdrawal from the unhealthy gutters of sensuousness, but he also gives the healthy method of doing so by explaining the positive technique of Self-perfection. Through a constant attempt at focussing our attention "ON ME, THE SUPREME," he advises the disciples to be steady. In this simple-looking statement of half-a-verse, the Geeta explains the entire technique of Self-development. Immoral impulses and unethical instincts, that bring a man down to the level of a mere brute, are the result of endless lives spent among sensuous objects, during the infinite number of different manifestations, through which the embodied soul, the ego in each one of us, had previously passed. It is humanly impossible for an individual to erase and transcend in his life-time, the thick coating of mental impressions gathered along his journey from life to life, from embodiment to embodiment. Naturally, this is the despair of all the promoters of ethics, the teachers of morality and the masters of spirituality.

The Rishis of old, in their lived experience, discovered for themselves a technique, by which, all these mental tendencies could be eradicated. To expose the mind to the quiet atmosphere of meditation upon the All-perfect Being, is to heal its ulcers. By this process, one who has come to gain a complete mastery over his sense-organs, is considered as one who is 'steadfast-in-Wisdom.' The concealed suggestion in the stanza now becomes quite obvious; no one, who, with excessive force controls his Indriyas, by sheer strength of will and sense of abstinence, has any chance of flowering into a full-blown spiritual beauty. He who has all his sense-organs, of their own accord, lying tamely surrendered at his feet, who has come to re-discover the Infinite Perfection in himself, is called a man-of-Perfection. Neither has he ruined his instruments-of-cognition, nor has he closed down the arches-of-knowledge in him. A Perfect One is he whose sway over the animal in him is so complete that the inner Satan has become, for the Sage in him, a tame Caliban to run errands and serve faithfully. NOW THE LORD PROCEEDS TO POINT OUT THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL IN THE CASE OF THE UNSUCCESSFUL:

62. When a man thinks of objects, "attachment" for them arises; from attachment "desire" is born; from desire arises "anger" . . .

63. From anger comes "delusion" ; from delusion "loss of memory" ; from loss of memory the "destruction of discrimination" ; from destruction of discrimination, he "perishes. "

From this verse onwards, Lord Krishna explains in five noble stanzas, the Hindu psychological theory of the fall of man from Godhood. This is only to bring home to Arjuna that he, the mighty-armed, must try to conquer all his Indriyas from all sides. Such a man, concludes Krishna, is a-man-of-Perfection as conceived in and contemplated upon, as explained in and glorified by the scriptural books of the Hindus. This section also gives us a clear pasttern of the autobiography of all seekers who have, after long periods of practice, come to wreck themselves upon the rocks of failure and disappointment. To a true seeker in Vedanta, no fall is ever possible. Instances of unsuccessful seekers are not few, and in all of them the mistake that we notice is that they ultimately fell back to be victims of sense- entanglement; and in all those cases we also notice that the fallen one drank the very dregs of it; there is no half-way house for such victims --- a slip for them means total destruction!! The ladder-of-fall is very beautifully described here. The path of destruction for a seeker is so elaborately detailed in these stanzas that, fallen as we are, we shall know how to get back to our pristine glory and inward perfection.

Like a tree emerges from a seed, the source of all evil starts from our own wrong thinking, or false imaginations. Thought is creative; it can make us, or mar us. If rightly harnessed, it can be used for constructive purposes; if misused, it can totally destroy us. When we constantly think upon a sense-object, the CONSISTENCY OF THOUGHT creates in us an ATTACHMENT for the object of our thought; and, when more and more thoughts flow towards an object of attachment, they crystallize to form a BURNING DESIRE for the possession and enjoyment of the object-of-attachment. The same force of the motion, when directed towards obstacles that threaten the non-fulfilment of our desires, is called anger (Krodha). An intellect fumed with anger (Krodha) comes to experience DELUSION and, the deluded intellect has no power of discrimination, because it loses all MEMORIES- OF-THE-PAST. Any one filled with anger is capable of doing acts totally forgetting himself and his relationship with all others. Sri Shankaracharya says in this connection that a deluded fool, in this mental condition, might even fight with his own teachers or parents, forgetting his indebtedness to these revered persons. Thus, when an individual, through wrong channels of thinking, becomes ATTACHED to an object, the attachment matures into a burning DESIRE to posses that object. Then, when an obstruction to possess that object- of-desire shoots him up into a fit of ANGER, the mental disturbance caused by the emotion DELUDES the intellect and makes the individual FORGET his sense of proportion and his sense of relationship with things and beings around him. When thus, a deluded intellect forgets its dignity of culture, it loses its discriminative capacity, which is called, in common parlance, as 'conscience' (Buddhi). Conscience is that knowledge enjoyed for differentiating the good from the evil, which often forms a standard in ourselves, and, whenever it can, warns the mind against its lustful sensuousness and animalism. Once this 'conscience' is dulled, the man becomes a two- legged-animal with no sense of proportion, and with no ears for any subtler call in him, than the howling urgent hungers of the flesh. Thereby, he is guaranteeing for himself a complete destruction inasmuch as such a bosom cannot come to perceive, or strive for, the Higher, the Nobler and the Diviner. THE CONTEMPLATION OF SENSE-OBJECTS HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS THE SOURCE OF ALL EVILS. NOW THE MEANS OF DELIVERANCE (MOKSHA) IS DESCRIBED AS FOLLOWS:

64. But the self-controlled man, moving among objects, with his senses under restraint, and free from both attraction and repulsion, attains peace.

He alone --- who, with perfect self-control, goes through life among the infinite number of sense-objects, each impinging upon him and trying to bind him with its charm, and approaches them with neither love nor hatred

--- comes to enjoy PEACE. By running away from the sense-objects, nobody can assure for himself any inner peace; because, the inner disturbance depends not upon the presence or the absence of the sense-objects in the outer-world, but essentially upon the mind's agitations for procuring the desirable objects, or for getting rid of the undesirable objects. But a Master-of-Wisdom, with perfect self-control, moves among the objects of the world with neither any special love, nor any particular aversion, for them. Wherever I go, my shadow must play all around me according to the position of the light; but the shadow can neither entangle me with love, nor can destroy me with hatred! The outer- world-of-objects is able to whip that man who lends the power to the objects to smother him!! Supposing there is a lunatic who is whipping himself and weeping in pain; his sorrows can be ended only when he is persuaded not to take the whip in his hand. He could be advised, even if he kept the whip in his hand, not to swing his arms in the fashion in which he is doing! Similarly, here, the mind woos the objects and gets beaten. It is told, as an advice, that an individual who lives in self-control, will no longer lend his own life's dynamism to an object to persecute him --- through his own sentimental aversion to, or love for, that object. When the lunatic is taught not to wield the whip and strike himself, he is immediately saved from the sorrows of the whip. Similarly, when a mind is trained in these two aspects: (a) to live in self-control, and (b) to move among the sense-objects, with neither an attachment for, nor an aversion to them, the disturbances and agitations in the mind caused by the sense-enchantments are all immediately brought under control. This condition of the mind is called tranquillity or peace (Prasada). This is symbolically represented in the sweet-distribution after every Puja in all religions, and is called among the Hindus as Prasada (or Bhog), meaning that, one who has, during the ritual, practised perfect self-control and God- contemplation, comes to enjoy, as a result of his action, a tranquillity in the mind which is termed as Spiritual Grace, or Divine Peace (Ishwara Prasada). Here, as far as a Vedantin is concerned, Prasada is mental purification. That mind is considered as pure, which feels in itself the least sense-disturbances. One who has learnt to live in self-control and has trained himself to live among the sense-objects in a spirit of the least attachment to, or aversion for them, has the least disturbance, because of the ineffectiveness of the sense-objects upon him. Thereby, his mind automatically becomes more and more calm and tranquil, and is considered as pure (Prasada) for purposes of the spiritual life. WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN PEACE IS ATTAINED? LISTEN:

65. In that peace all pains are destroyed; for, the intellect of the tranquil-minded soon becomes steady.

It is natural for an Arjuna-mentality of uncompromising intellectualism to ask Krishna: "Then what?" And as an answer, the Lord explains why he should develop and maintain tranquillity of the mind in himself. "IN TRANQUILLITY ALL SORROWS ARE DESTROYED." This sentence is obviously commented upon as a definition of happiness. A peaceful mind is significant of happiness. PEACE IS HAPPINESS; HAPPINESS IS PEACE. The least-agitated mind is proof against all sorrows inasmuch as sorrow is nothing but a state of agitation in the mind. This explanation does not satisfy us completely since Krishna's assertion is that 'sorrows will be destroyed' (hanih). In order to bring out clearly the meaning implied in the phrase 'destruction of sorrows,' we will have to understand it as the "elimination of vasanas." Earlier, in the introduction, we have said that the vasana granulations, giving a thick coating to the subjective mind, are the cause for its delusion which creates all sorrows for the imperfect; while the Perfect transcends the vasanas through the Buddhi yoga explained earlier. It is very well-known that all the vasanas existing in an individual who is facing life constantly, cannot be fully eradicated by him. The secret of doing so has been explained here by the Lord. Keeping the mind exposed to an atmosphere of tranquillity (Prasada), consciously brought about through an intelligent life of self-control, is the secret whereby all the vasanas can get eliminated. THIS TRANQUILLITY IS EXTOLLED HERE BY LORD KRISHNA:

66. There is no knowledge (of the Self) to the unsteady; and to the unsteady no meditation; and to the unmeditative no peace; to the peaceless, how can there be happiness?

Here is an explanation why quietude of the mind is so often and so insistently emphasised in the literature explaining the Hindu-technique of Self-perfection. Unless the mind be quiet, the individual will not have the intellectual leisure for cultural self-development, nor the inner energy for consistently living spiritual perfections, that a truly developed man yearns for. Unless there is tranquillity, there cannot be steadiness of intellectual application to the problems of life, and without this self- evaluation of life and true observation with a clear discriminative analysis, we cannot have in us the required amount of "Devotion to Self-knowledge" (Bhavana). Without such a glorious Goal before us, constantly beckoning us unto itself, like a pole star, our life shall be a lost ship in an ocean, going nowhere, reaching nowhere, and ultimately foundering upon some treacherous rock. One who has no philosophical goal in life to strive and yearn for, will not know what peace of mind is, and to one who is thus restless, "where is happiness?" To live in balance, and sail safely upon the uncertain waves of the ocean of life, through both its smiling weather and stormy days, we must have a constant perception of the Real. Without a drummer, the dancers' foot-work cannot be rhythmic and cannot keep perfect time. WHY IS THERE NO KNOWLEDGE FOR THE UNSTEADY? LISTEN:

67. For, the mind, which follows in the wake of the wandering senses, carries away his discrimination, as the wind carries away a boat on the waters.

As a ship with sails up and helmsman dead would be completely at the mercy of the fitful storms and reckless waves, and will not reach any definite harbour, but is destroyed by the very tossings of the waves, so too, life gets capsized and the individual drowned, if his mind is unanchored and left to be carried hither and thither by the uncertain buffets of passionate sense-storms. Therefore, the senses are to be controlled if man is to live a better and more purposeful life, designed and planned for enduring success. HAVING EXPLAINED THE PROPOSITION ENUNCIATED EARLIER, THE LORD CONCLUDES BY RE-AFFIRMING HIS STATEMENT:

68. Therefore, O Mighty-armed, his knowledge is steady whose senses are completely restrained from sense-objects.

It is natural, in conversation, that we do not directly give our wise conclusions upon "the do's and dont's" of life, without giving the logic of our thoughts leading to our conclusions. Without preparing our friend's mind to perceive the logic of these conclusions, we dare not declare to him any truth, however divinely acceptable the declarations are. Arjuna has been told earlier all the necessary arguments, and here in the stanza, Krishna re- asserts the same proposition: "Life in self-control alone is life worth living, if we demand from it anything more than tears, sobs, sighs and groans." He alone is a man of Wisdom, rooted in joy and bliss, who has completely restrained all his senses from their wild roamings among their sense-objects.

"BY DESTROYING THE SENSE ORGANS ROAMING IN THE SENSE-OBJECTS," it does not mean that a man of Self-development should destroy his capacities for perception of the world outside; nor does it mean that he is one who has been rendered incapable of enjoying life. Sense-debility is no sign of better-knowledge. It is only meant here that the sense-objects filtering through the five archways of knowledge will not, in a Perfect man, flood his mind to bring chaos and destruction of his established inner peace and tranquillity.

The ordinary individual, in his ego-centric existence, becomes victimized by the sense-organs, while he who has conquered the ego and has transcended his matter- identifications, comes to live in freedom and perfect control over the tyrannical sense organs. IN ORDER TO MAKE IT CLEAR, THE LORD PROCEEDS:

69. That which is night to all beings, in that the self-controlled man keeps awake; where all beings are awake, that is the night for the Sage (MUNI) who sees.

In order to bring home to Arjuna the idea that the world, as experienced by an individual through the goggles of the mind-intellect-body, is different from what is perceived through the open windows of spirituality, this stanza is given. The metaphorical language of this verse is so complete in detail that the data-mongering modern intellect is not capable of entering into its poetic beauty. Of all the peoples of the world, the Aryans alone are capable of bringing about a combination of poetry and science, and when the poet-philosopher Vyasa takes up his pen, to pour out his art on to the ancient palmyra- leaves to express the Bliss of Perfection, in the ecstasy, he could not have used a better medium in the Geeta, than his poetry. Here, two points-of-view --- of the ignorant and of the wise --- are contrasted. The ignorant person never perceives the world as it is; he always throws his own mental colour on to the objects and understands the imperfections in his mind to be a part and parcel of the objects perceived. The world, viewed through a coloured glass-pane, must look coloured. When this colouring medium is removed, the world appears AS IT IS. The Consciousness in us is today capable of recognizing the world only through the media of the body, mind, and intellect. Naturally, we see the world imperfect, not because the world is so, but because of the ugliness of the media through which we perceive it. A Master-mind is he who, rooted in his Wisdom, opens up the windows-of-his-perception and looks at the world through the eye-of-Wisdom. When an electrical engineer comes to a city, and when at dusk, the whole city smiles forth with its lights, he immediately enquires: "Is it A. C. or D. C. current?"; while the same vision, to an illiterate villager, is a wondrous sight and he only exclaims: "I have seen lights that need no wick or oil!" From the stand-point of the villager, there is no electricity and no problem of A. C. or D. C. currents. The world the engineer sees among the very same lamps, is not realised or known by the unperceiving intellect of the villager. Nor is the engineer awake to the world of strange wonderment which the villager enjoys.

Here, we are told that the ego-centric, finite, mortal is asleep to the World-of-Perception enjoyed and lived by the Man-of-Steady-Wisdom; and that the Perfect One cannot see and feel the thrills and sobs which the ego experiences in its selfish life of finite-experience. THE LORD PROCEEDS TO TEACH BY AN ILLUSTRATION THAT A WISE DEVOTEE ALONE, WHO HAS ABANDONED DESIRES AND WHOSE WISDOM IS STEADY, CAN ATTAIN MOKSHA, AND NOT HE WHO, WITHOUT RENOUNCING, CHERISHES DESIRES:

70. He attains Peace into whom all desires enter as waters enter the ocean, which, filled from all sides, remains unmoved; but not the "desirer of desires. "

It is very well-known that although millions of gallons of water reach the ocean through the various rivers, yet the level of water in the ocean does not change even by a fraction. Similarly, even though the infinite number of sense-objects may pour in their stimuli, and reach the mental zone of the Perfect Man through his five sense- channels, they do not create any commotion or flux, in his bosom. Such an individual, who always finds his own level in spite of the fact that he is living amidst the sense-objects, and with his sense-organs unavoidably ever in contact with the objects, is called a Man-of-Perfection, a true Saint.

And Krishna asserts that such an individual alone can truly discover peace and happiness in himself. The Lord, in the Geeta, not satisfied with this negative assertion, positively denies any true peace or joy to those who are

"desirers of desires." This idea is totally in opposition with the modern belief in the material world. The materialists believe that by fanning up their desires, and satisfying as many of them as possible, one is helped to live a life of joy and happiness. Modern civilisation, based upon industrialisation and large-scale production, is attempting to whip up desires, and this attempt has now succeeded to such an extent that the average man has a million times more desires today than his fore-father ever entertained, a century ago. The financiers and the industrialists, with the aid of modern scientific knowledge, struggle hard to discover and to satisfy new desires, and to the extent an individual has come to fulfil his newly-created desires, he is taught by the day's civilisation that he is more happy than ever before. On the other hand, the great thinkers of the past in India, perhaps through their experience, or through their more careful and exhaustive thinking, discovered that the joy created through satisfaction of desires can never be complete. They discovered that joy or happiness, at any given time, is a quotient when the "number of desires fulfilled" is divided by the "total number of desires entertained" by the same individual at that time. This mathematical truth has been accepted by the modern preachers of secularism also; but in their practical application, the old Rishis and the modern politicians seem to differ to a large extent. In the modern world, the attempt is to increase the numerator, which is represented by the "number of the desires fulfilled." The Scriptural Masters of India also were living in a world peopled by a society of men, and their philosophical contemplations were upon man as a social being, and their aim too was to bring more happiness in their society. Unlike the present prophets of profit, these Rishis of Religion did not conceive that an attempt to increase the NUMERATOR without a corresponding attention upon the rate of increase of the DENOMINATOR, could produce any palpable increase in joy. On the other hand, today, we are struggling hard to increase the "number of desires fulfilled" without at the same time, trying to control the "number of desires entertained." That this state of affairs cannot produce any palpable increase in the QUOTIENT OF HAPPINESS is the scriptural verdict which seems to be an easily understandable scientific truth. Herein, the Geeta is only repeating what the Upanishadic Rishis never get tired of emphasising in the Scriptures of India. The "desirer of desires" can never come to perfect peace (Shanti). Only he who has, in his spirit of detachment, gained a complete control over his mind, so that the sense-objects of the outer world cannot create in him an infinite number of yearnings or desires, is the Man-of-Peace-and-Joy. The objects in the outer world cannot themselves tease a man by their existence, or by their non-existence. The outer world can borrow its capacity to ill-treat man only when he exposes himself unguarded, and gets wounded and crushed by his own attachments to a wrong valuation of the sense-objects. In this stanza Bhagawan is only giving a more elaborate and complete commentary upon the opening line of this section where He started the description of a Man-of- Steady-Wisdom. There He explained that, "When a man completely casts off all the desires in his mind, then he is said to be one of Steady-Knowledge." BECAUSE IT IS SO, THEREFORE:

71. That man attains peace who, abandoning all desires, moves about without longing, without the sense of 'l-ness' and 'my- ness. ' There are commentators who believe that this and the following stanza explain the Path of Renunciation, which is, in fact, not altogether ignored in the text of the Geeta. Since, as we said earlier, the second chapter is almost a summary of the entire Divine Song, it has to indicate even this Samnyasa Yoga, which will be later on explained at length and hinted at different places during the entire length of the Geeta.

This stanza seems to ring clearly the significant advice given earlier by Krishna, almost at the very opening of his philosophical discussions, in this chapter. He had advised therein:

"HAVING CONQUERED THE MENTAL AGITATIONS CREATED BY THE PAIRS-OF- OPPOSITES, FIGHT THE BATTLE OF LIFE." The same idea seems to be resounding here at the close of the chapter. The first line of the stanza explains the mental condition of one who comes to discover Real Peace in himself. Such an individual, it says, renounces all desires and has no attachments or longings. The second line describes the condition of such an individual's intellect and it asserts that it is without any sense of 'I-ness' or 'my-ness.' The ego is the cause for the sense-attachments and longings. Where the ego is not perceptible, as in sleep, there are no longings or desires in the individual or, at least, they are dormant. Thus, if the first line of the stanza is describing a negation of the effects of "ignorance," the second line asserts the absence of the very cause from which desires and the agitations arise. Earlier, in the introduction, we explained that the split in the personality of Arjuna was caused by the intervention of the sense of his ego and his egoistic-desires, which broke up the subjective and objective aspects of his mind into two independent islands with a vast ocean of surging waves of desires between them. With a soft suggestion, after explaining all the logic of thought, Krishna is carefully placing his finger on the very ulcer in the Pandava's mind. The stanza, in its sum-total suggestions, advises us that all our sufferings in the world are caused by our own ego- centric misconception and the consequent arrogance characterised by our ever-multiplying demands for wealth and our endless desires. Samnyasa means sacrifice, and to live in a spirit of sacrifice after renouncing completely one's ego and its desires is true Samnyasa, wherein an individual comes to live in constant awareness of his fuller and ampler Divinity. The general misunderstanding that to run away from life is Samnyasa, or to colour the cloth is to become a true monk, has cast an irreparable slur on the philosophy of the Upanishads. Hinduism considers him alone to be a Samnyasin "who has learnt the art of living his life in constant inspiration, which is gained through an intelligent renunciation of his ego-centric misconceptions." Shankara beautifully explains this point of view in his commentary on the stanza.

"THAT MAN OF RENUNCIATION, WHO, ENTIRELY ABANDONING ALL DESIRES, GOES THROUGH LIFE CONTENTED WITH THE BARE NECESSITIES OF LIFE, WHO REGARDS NOT AS HIS, EVEN THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE NEEDED FOR MERE BODILY EXISTENCE, WHO IS NOT VAIN OF HIS KNOWLEDGE, --- SUCH A MAN- OF-STEADY-KNOWLEDGE, WHO KNOWS BRAHMAN,

ATTAINS PEACE (NIRVANA), THE END OF ALL THE MISERY OF MUNDANE EXISTENCE (SAMSARA). IN SHORT, HE BECOMES BRAHMAN. THIS DEVOTION TO KNOWLEDGE IS EXTOLLED AS FOLLOWS:

72. This is the BRAHMIC -state, O Son of Pritha. Attaining this, none is deluded. Being established therein, even at the end of life, one attains to oneness with BRAHMAN.

To renounce all desires is to destroy completely the last vestures of one's ego. Renunciation of ego is not a state of dull, meaningless emptiness. Where the delusory ego has ended, the State of Full-Knowledge, or Selfhood, has dawned. To realise the Self in one's own bosom is to realise at once the Self which is All-pervading and Eternal (Brahman). When the ego has ended, the Consciousness is not known to be anything other than the Eternal, and as such the Knower of Truth, in a brilliant experience of the Self, becomes the Self, and therefore, this state is called Self- hood (Brahmi-sthitih). A doubt may still arise that even after this realisation, we may again fall into the delusion of the ego and come to suffer the ego's world of imperfections and sorrows. To deny this tragedy, we have been told how, having realised the Self once, no more can the individual fall back into his ancient delusions. This experience of the Self need not necessarily take place in the very youthful days of one's life. Even in old age --- nay, even in the last moment of this embodiment --- if a seeker can come to experience, even for a moment, this egoless State of Tranquillity and Poise, even a passing glimpse of the Selfhood, it is sufficient to gain this Brahmic-State pointed out in Vedantic literature.

"Negation of the false and assertion of the True" is the Path that has been indicated in the Upanishads. The very same path, in its practical application, is designated here in the Geeta, in Vyasa's original contribution, as Karma Yoga. To work without attachment and desires, egoism and vanity, ever in perfect equilibrium in both success and failure, is to deny the ego its entire field of activity, and unconsciously to assert the greater Truth, the Self. Thus, in technique, the Geeta's Karma Yoga is not at all different from the Vedantic Technique of Meditation. But Arjuna got confused and perplexed because he took Krishna's words too literally, and therefore, in the following chapter, he expresses his mental confusion in the opening lines. The Lord, therefore, explains Karma Yoga exhaustively in the next chapter.

Thus, in the UPANISHADS of the glorious Bhagawad Geeta, in the Science of the Eternal, in the scripture of YOGA, in the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, the second discourse ends entitled: THE YOGA OF KNOWLEDGE

This chapter is named as 'Sankhya Yoga' not in the sense that it is the Sankhyan philosophy here summarised or borrowed by Krishna. Here the word Sankhya is used only in its etymological sense as "the sequence of logic in any line of correct thinking and the logical enumeration of the arguments based on which a certain intellectual conclusion has been arrived at." It is in this sense that the highly philosophical Chapter II of the Geeta is termed as Sankhya Yoga in its epilogue (Sankalpa Vakya). It is true that in the original Mahabharata, the Geeta chapters do not carry this Sankalpa Vakya. Commentators differ in attributing to any single individual the authorship of this Sankalpa Vakya. However, it has been accepted that some scholar, or scholars, analysed the contents of each chapter and gave an appropriate title to each. To all students of the Geeta, it is indeed a great help. Shankara, however, does not comment upon this portion at all.