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not incapacitated in any manner. He could face the Lord Siva himself and
win his grace through intense 'tapas'. How can anyone say that he was an
idiot who could not understand things? Even such a hero could be in a state
of sorrow when he began to confront facts. And this sorrow is a spiritual
condition of inward search, not the melancholy mood of a psychological
complex.
We have to understand the difference between the ordinary griefs of
mankind and the sorrow that is described as the part of the Yoga of the
Bhagavadgita. This sorrow is a highly elevated state. It is not the usual
drooping condition of an involved soul. It is a step that the soul takes above
the ordinary phenomenon of Samsara, or the phenomenal life of the world.
But the first step is the beginning of Yoga. When we withdraw ourselves
from contact with the externals, we arc actually supposed to be in the First
Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. The withdrawal, the 'pratyahara' as it is called,
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does not immediately take us to the consciousness of true Yoga. There is a
darkness immediately precedent to the higher ascent that will follow
afterwards.
The knowledge that we have in this world is sensory, and even
intellectual or rational knowledge is sensory, ultimately, because it is a
refined form of sensory perceptions, and, so, there is a gulf of difference in
quality between spiritual perception or intuition and sensory contact which
we call knowledge in ordinary language. When we withdraw all the faculties
of sense and intellect, there is an absence of ordinary knowledge. The vision
of the world ceases. One cannot see an object in front of oneself. When the
senses are drawn away, weaned from the objects which are their
counterparts, naturally there cannot be any perception. The senses are
brought back from the objects; and then, how can the senses conceive or
perceive objects? There is no seeing of anything. Everything is darkness.
This darkness which is the outcome of withdrawal from objects of sense-
contact is a very advanced state which is immediately precedent to the
condition described in the Second Chapter of the Gita, where God himself
comes, as it were, and takes us by the hand and leads us along the higher
regions. The First Chapter of the Bhagavadgita is, thus, a necessary state in
Yoga, though it is called Vishada-Yoga, or the Yoga of grief. It is the
condition in which the soul that is seeking finds itself when it has withdrawn
itself from external contacts and severs relation with outer phenomena.
There is, then, the commencement of a new type of interpretation of values,
wherein situated, the soul begins to visualise everything in the context of the
relation of everything to the total and not in its localised capacity.
The difference between the kind of knowledge with which one interprets
things in this stage and the knowledge we have ordinarily today is this: while
we look at an object or visualise anything, when we see a person or judge
things, we forget the relationship of that person, that object or thing with the
whole to which everything really belongs. We always commit the mistake of
individual judgment, isolated valuation, as 'this person is good, or bad', 'this,
or that is beautiful, or ugly', and so on. This is a wrong judgment, no doubt,
because it is not possible for us, as individual, isolated observers to read the
context of the relevance which that object has in its internal connection with
the total to which it belongs. Thus, all judgments are erroneous, ultimately.
There cannot be a really correct judgment if the judgment is made by an
isolated individual and the object also is an isolated something. In the state
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of Yoga, the way of evaluation changes. Everything is judged from the
universal point of view.
The vision of the Absolute really commences from the first chapter of
the Gita, though it is just an initial indication of this grand vision. Gradually,
there is an increase in the intensity of perception, and this intensity is
described in various ways through the verses of the different chapters of the
Bhagavadgita, until we are taken to the conclusion of the Sixth Chapter,
where there is a complete overhauling of the individual personality, and a
highly concentrated state is reached by the individual. That concentrated
condition in which the individual focuses itself for the purpose of the task on
hand is the Dhyana-Yoga of the Sixth Chapter, wherein fixed we arc an
integrated personality and not a dissipated individual.
But even the Sixth Chapter is not the complete Yoga. It is only the
completion of the integration of the personality, necessary for the higher
ascent, which commences from the Seventh Chapter, wherein, like Hanuman
flying across the ocean to Lanka, the individual attempts to cross the sea of
existence and enter the ocean of the Absolute. The individuality, which is
the characteristic of the observing individual, gradually loses its essence and
begins to harmonise itself with the Universal, right from the Seventh
Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. While the individual is described in the first
six chapters, the Universal is the theme of the next six chapters; and it is not
enough if we merely describe or outwardly try to visualise the Universal.
There has to be a union of the individual with All-Being. This is the purpose
of the last six chapters. The integration of the individual, the visualisation of
the Universal, and the union of the individual with the Universal Being are
the stages of the Yoga of the Bhagavadgita. We reach the consummation of
it in the last chapter, called Moksha-Sannyasa, the renunciation of every
character of individuality in the liberation of the spirit, which is the riding
together of Arjuna and Krishna in the single chariot of the cosmos, which is
the quintessence of the meaning of the last verse:
Yatra yogesvarah krishno yatra partho dhanur-dharah;
Tatra srir vijayo bhutir dhruva-nitir matir mama.
When the Arjuna that is the purified integrated individual is seated in
the same chariot as that of Sri Krishna, the Supreme Absolute, then there is
assured peace, prosperity, victory, plenty and justice everywhere. This is the
justice of 'satya' and 'rita' proclaimed in the Vedas. The gospel of the
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