Bg 6.5
uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānam avasādayet
ātmaiva hy ātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ
Bg 6.6
bandhur ātmātmanas tasya yenātmaivātmanā jitaḥ
anātmanas tu śatrutve vartetātmaiva śatru-vat
Bg 6.7
jitātmanaḥ praśāntasya paramātmā samāhitaḥ
śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu tathā mānāpamānayoḥ
Bg 6.8
jñāna-vijñāna-tṛptātmā kūṭa-stho vijitendriyaḥ
yukta ity ucyate yogī sama-loṣṭrāśma-kāñcanaḥ
Bg 6.9
suhṛn-mitrāry-udāsīna- madhyastha-dveṣya-bandhuṣu
sādhuṣv api ca pāpeṣu sama-buddhir viśiṣyate
Translation
5. Let a man lift himself by his own Self alone, and let him not lower himself; for, this Self alone is the friend of oneself, and this Self is the enemy of oneself.
6. The Self is the friend of the self for him who has conquered himself by the Self, but to the unconquered self, the Self stands in the position of an enemy like the (external) foe.
7. The Supreme Self of him who is self-controlled and peaceful, is balanced in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, as also in honour and dishonour.
8. The YOGI who is satisfied with knowledge and wisdom, who remains unshaken, who has conquered the senses, to whom a lump of earth, a stone and gold are the same, is said to be harmonised (i. e. , is said to have attained NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI) .
9. He who is of the same mind to the good-hearted, friends, enemies, the indifferent, the neutral, the hateful, relatives, the righteous and the unrighteous, he excels.
Commentary Excerpts
"MAN SHOULD UPLIFT HIMSELF BY HIMSELF," is an open statement declared by no less a person than Lord Krishna Himself --- not cooed in a playful mood in the company of the gopis on the Jamuna-banks at a hilarious hour of laughter and play, but roared to Arjuna on the battlefield at a serious moment of His life's fulfilment as an Avatara. Man, if he wants to exalt himself into the greater cultural and spiritual possibilities now lying dormant in him, has to raise the lower in himself to the greater perfection that is the true and eternal core in himself.
Everyone has in himself a picture of the ideal. This intellectual conception of ourselves is always very vivid in each one of us. But unfortunately, this ideal remains only in the realm of thought and is not lived in the world of activity. Intellectually we may have a clear and vivid picture of what we should be, but mentally and physically we behave as though we were the opposites of our own ideal concepts. The gulf between the 'IDEAL-ME' and the 'ACTUAL-ME' is the measure of man's fall from his perfection.
Most of us are generally unconscious of this duality in ourselves. We mistakes ourselves to be the ideal and are generally blind to our own ACTUAL imperfections. Thus we find a notoriously selfish man in society warmly and sincerely criticising the slightest traces of selfishness in his neighbour! In a world of no mirrors, it is possible that a squint-eyed man may laugh at another squint-eyed person because the one who laughs knows not the angle in which his own eye-balls are facing each other!!
As long as the individual has not realised the existence of this dual personality in himself, there cannot be any religion for him. If an individual has discovered that there is "enough in him to be divided into two portions," and when he wants to keep the lower as brilliant and chaste as the higher, the technique that he will have to employ to fulfil this aspiration is called RELIGION.
Mind is the saboteur that enchants us away from perfection, to be a slave to the flesh and the external objects of brittle satisfaction. Mind is the conditioning that distorts the ideal and creates the lower Satanic sensuous self in us, which is to be brought into unison with the intellect, the equipment for the higher Self to manifest. In short, when the rational and discriminative capacities of a limited intellect are brought to bear their authority upon the wavering and wandering, sense-mongering-mind, the lower is brought under discipline and made to attune with the nobler and the diviner in us. The processes by which the lower is brought under the direct management and discipline of the higher are all together called the spiritual techniques.
"ALONE TO THE ALONE ALL ALONE" IS THE WAY. No Guru can take the responsibility; no scripture can promise this redemption; no altar can, with its divine blessings, make the lower the higher. The lower must necessarily be trained slowly and steadily to accept and come under the influence of the discipline of the higher. In this process, the teacher, the scripture, and the houses-of-God, have all their proper appointed duties and limited influences. But the actual happening depends upon how far we ourselves learn to haul ourselves out from the gutters of misunderstanding in ourselves.
Realising our own weaknesses, rejecting the false, asserting the better, and trying to live, generally, as best as we can, the higher way-of-life, is the process of introspection. But his is only half the entire process and not the whole of it.
The other half also is insisted upon, here, by Krishna. It is not only sufficient that we look within, come to note our weaknesses, erase them, substitute the opposite good qualities, and develop in ourselves the better, but we must see to it, that, whatever little conquests we might have made out of Satan's province are not again handed back to Satan's dominion. Krishna warns, almost in the same breath, "DO NOT ALLOW THE SELF THEREAFTER TO FALL DOWN AND BE DRAGGED AGAIN" to the old level of the cheaper way of existence.
The second line of the stanza contains a glorious idea shaped into a beauty of expression which almost immortalises Vyasa. We are considered both as our own friend and our own enemy. Any intelligent man observing and analysing life will vouchsafe for the truth of the statement, but here, more is meant philosophically, than meets the eye. Generally, we do not fully understand the import when we say "THE SELF IS THE FRIEND OF THE SELF."
The lower in us can ever raise itself to the attunement of the Higher, but the Higher can influence only when the lower is available for Its influence. To the extent the lesser in us surrenders itself to the influence of the Higher, to that extent, It can serve the lower as a great friend. But if the lower refuses to come under the influence of the Diviner in us, the Divine Presence is accused as an enemy of ourselves, inasmuch as the dynamism of life provides us Its energy both for our "life of higher aspirations" and the "life of low temptations."
Ultimately, it is for the aspirant himself to accept the responsibility for blessing or damning himself. The potentiality for improvement, the chances for self-growth, the strength to haul ourselves out from our own misconceptions, are ever open for employment. But it all depends upon how we make use of them.
NOW IT MAY BE ASKED: "WHAT SORT OF A MAN IS THE FRIEND OF HIMSELF AND WHAT SORT OF A MAN IS THE ENEMY OF HIMSELF?" THE ANSWER FOLLOWS:
The Divine in us becomes a friend when, under its influence, the Satan in us gets converted. To the extent the lower ego withdraws itself from its identifications with the body and the sense-organs, feelings and ideas relating to the extrovert life, to that extent that given ego has come under the salutory influence of the nobler and the Diviner. To such an ego, available for corrective proselytisation, the Self is a friend. But where the little self remains a constant rebel against the Higher, to that unconquered-self, the Diviner Self is as if inimical in Its attitude.
In short, the higher Self becomes a friend to the lower which is available for and which allows itself to be conquered by the higher influence; and the Diviner becomes inimical to the undivine when the lower limited ego remains unconquered by the higher aspirations in us. This stanza is an elucidating annotation on the previous one.
EARLIER, THE STATE OF MENTAL EQUIPOISE, CALLED YOGARUDHAH, WAS EXPLAINED. WHAT EXACTLY IS THE FULFILMENT OF SUCH A STATE IN YOGA IS BEING EXPLAINED NOW:
When a seeker has come in his inner life to the state explained as Yogarudhah, and when in that State of equipoise, the mind is held steadfast in contemplation over the Supreme, the self-controlled one, in all serenity, is capable of maintaining his consistency of meditation in all circumstances, favourable and adverse, at all levels of his personality. In the second line of the stanza it is clearly indicated that no excuse in the world is sufficiently strong to justify a seeker's inability to continue keeping the awareness of his Eternal Nature in himself.
Three pairs-of-opposites are indicated here as: (i) heat and cold; (ii) joy and sorrow; (iii) honour and dishonour. In enumerations of these three pairs of conditions, Krishna is exhausting, through the mention of the types, all possible threats to his equipoise and tranquillity that an individual may get from the outer world.
HEAT AND COLD --- These are stimuli that are felt and experienced by the body, at the body level. Whether in heat or in cold, thoughts, we know, do not expand or shrink, and the ideas cannot shiver or perspire. All these reactions can be only in the body, and therefore, Krishna is indicating by this pair all the vicissitudes that may visit the body, such as health and disease, youth and old-age, etc.
By the second pair-of-opposites indicated here as PLEASURE AND PAIN, the Lord is symbolically indicating all the destinies suffered in the mental zone. Pleasure and pain are experienced not by the body but always by the mind. It includes all the tyrannies of our different emotions which might threaten the mental arena, at one time or another in a man's life. Hatred and love, affection and jealousy, kindness and cruelty... a thousand varieties of emotions may storm the 'within'; but none of them is an excuse, according to Krishna, for the diligent and the sincere to lose hold of himself from the steadfastness in his contemplation.
Similarly also, the last pair-of-opposites indicated as HONOUR AND DISHONOUR shows how no threat of any storm in the intellectual zone is a sufficient plea to sympathise with an individual who has fallen away from the State of Perfection. Honour and dishonour are evaluated and reacted to only by the intellect.
Thus, by these three representative pairs-of-opposites from the three worlds of the body, the mind, and the intellect, Krishna is trying to exhaust all possibilities of obstacles in man's life, and then he adds that in all such conditions, the Supreme Self is to be the object of constant realisation for one who is perfectly self-controlled and serene. He ever remains unruffled in all circumstances --- favourable or unfavourable; in all environments --- good or bad; in all companies --- wise or foolish.
WHAT IS THE GLORY OF SUCH AN INDIVIDUAL? WHAT DOES HE BECOME BY SUCH A PROCESS? WHY SHOULD HE GO THROUGH SUCH A LABORIOUS INWARD TRAINING AND SELF-DISCIPLINE?
Such an individual, self-controlled and serene, who has constantly come to contemplate upon the Nature of the Self as understood from the Shastras, through all his circumstances in life, soon becomes, says Krishna, filled with a divine satisfaction and becomes an unshakable Yogin. Here, the satisfaction is not merely the joy that an intelligent man comes to enjoy when he carefully studies and masters Vedanta, but, according to Krishna, the satisfied contentment which a true Yogin comes to experience and which is much superior to the thrilled joys experienced in all intense studies.
The knowledge gained through study is indicated here by the term Jnana, and the first-hand experience gained by the seeker of the Self in himself is called the Knowledge of direct perception, which is termed here, in the Geeta-vocabulary, as Vijnana.
UNCHANGING, IMMUTABLE (Kootasthah) --- This is the term used for the Eternal Self. Its expressiveness becomes apparent when we understand that the term "koota" in Sanskrit, means the "anvil." The anvil is that upon which the blacksmith places his red-hot-iron-bits and hammers them into the required shapes. In spite of the hammerings, nothing happens to the anvil as the anvil resists all modifications and change, but allows all other things to get changed upon it. Thus, the term "kootasthah" means that which "remains anvil-like" and though itself suffers no change, it makes others change.
He is a saint and has the full-blown fragrance of perfection, who has sought and discovered a perfect contentment which arises out of this subjective experience of what the Shastra says, and has come in contact with the Self that changes not. And such a saint becomes tranquil and a master of equal-vision in all conditions of life. To him, a clod of mud, a precious stone and costly gold are all the same. This equanimity of mind in profit and loss, at the acquisition of precious things or at the presentation of mere filth, is the very test to show that the individual has spiritually evolved and that to him no gain can bring any extra joy, nor any loss --- any sorrow!!
In my dream I earned a lot of wealth, but ere I enjoyed it fully, I woke up to my waking-state, poverty. In my destitution, when I am suffering the pangs of hunger, I will not feel, in any sense of the term, consoled by the thought that I was rich in my dream and that in my dream-bank I had my dream-riches in its dream-vaults! Similarly, to a master who has gained perfection and transcended the world of the mind and intellect, and achieved the true awakening of the Soul, thereafter, a lump of earth, a piece of gold or a precious stone of this world are all equally futile things. They cannot add even a jot of extra joy or pain unto him. He has become the sole proprietor of Bliss Absolute. To Kubera, the treasurer of the heavens, a kingdom on the globe is no profit and has no power to make him dance in ecstasy!!
MOREOVER:
In the previous stanza it was indicated that the man of perfection develops equal-vision as far as things of the world are concerned. The universe is not made of things alone, but is constituted of beings also. Now the doubt arises, what will be the relationship of a perfect man of equipoise with the living kingdom of beings around him? Will he negate the whole lot as unreal? In his preoccupations with the experience of the Eternal and the Immortal, which is the substratum for the entire world of changing phenomenal beings, will he ignore to serve the world and help the living generation? This idea is taken up here for discussion.
Such a man of excellence, says Krishna, regards all relationships with an equal love and consideration, be they "FRIENDS, OR FOES, OR INDIFFERENT OR NEUTRAL, OR HATEFUL, OR NEAREST RELATIONS." In his equal-vision, all of them are equally important and he embraces, in his Infinitude, all of them with the same warmth and ardour.
His love knows no distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the bad. To him a sinner is but an ego living in its misunderstandings, since sin is only a mistake of the soul and not a positive blasphemy against Itself. Rama Tirtha beautifully expresses it when he says that "we are punished BY the sin and not FOR it."
In the right understanding of his own Self and the resulting realisation of his own Self, he becomes the Self everywhere. He discovers a unity in the perceived diversity and a subtle rhythm in the obvious discord in the world outside. To him, who has realised himself to be the Self which is all-pervading, the entire universe becomes his own Self, and therefore, his relationship with every other part of the universe is equal and same. Whether I get wounded in the hand or the leg, on the back or in the front, on the head or on the shoulder, it is the same to me, since I am equally identifying with my head, my trunk, and my legs, as myself.
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānam avasādayet
ātmaiva hy ātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ
Bg 6.6
bandhur ātmātmanas tasya yenātmaivātmanā jitaḥ
anātmanas tu śatrutve vartetātmaiva śatru-vat
Bg 6.7
jitātmanaḥ praśāntasya paramātmā samāhitaḥ
śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkheṣu tathā mānāpamānayoḥ
Bg 6.8
jñāna-vijñāna-tṛptātmā kūṭa-stho vijitendriyaḥ
yukta ity ucyate yogī sama-loṣṭrāśma-kāñcanaḥ
Bg 6.9
suhṛn-mitrāry-udāsīna- madhyastha-dveṣya-bandhuṣu
sādhuṣv api ca pāpeṣu sama-buddhir viśiṣyate
Translation
5. Let a man lift himself by his own Self alone, and let him not lower himself; for, this Self alone is the friend of oneself, and this Self is the enemy of oneself.
6. The Self is the friend of the self for him who has conquered himself by the Self, but to the unconquered self, the Self stands in the position of an enemy like the (external) foe.
7. The Supreme Self of him who is self-controlled and peaceful, is balanced in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, as also in honour and dishonour.
8. The YOGI who is satisfied with knowledge and wisdom, who remains unshaken, who has conquered the senses, to whom a lump of earth, a stone and gold are the same, is said to be harmonised (i. e. , is said to have attained NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI) .
9. He who is of the same mind to the good-hearted, friends, enemies, the indifferent, the neutral, the hateful, relatives, the righteous and the unrighteous, he excels.
Commentary Excerpts
"MAN SHOULD UPLIFT HIMSELF BY HIMSELF," is an open statement declared by no less a person than Lord Krishna Himself --- not cooed in a playful mood in the company of the gopis on the Jamuna-banks at a hilarious hour of laughter and play, but roared to Arjuna on the battlefield at a serious moment of His life's fulfilment as an Avatara. Man, if he wants to exalt himself into the greater cultural and spiritual possibilities now lying dormant in him, has to raise the lower in himself to the greater perfection that is the true and eternal core in himself.
Everyone has in himself a picture of the ideal. This intellectual conception of ourselves is always very vivid in each one of us. But unfortunately, this ideal remains only in the realm of thought and is not lived in the world of activity. Intellectually we may have a clear and vivid picture of what we should be, but mentally and physically we behave as though we were the opposites of our own ideal concepts. The gulf between the 'IDEAL-ME' and the 'ACTUAL-ME' is the measure of man's fall from his perfection.
Most of us are generally unconscious of this duality in ourselves. We mistakes ourselves to be the ideal and are generally blind to our own ACTUAL imperfections. Thus we find a notoriously selfish man in society warmly and sincerely criticising the slightest traces of selfishness in his neighbour! In a world of no mirrors, it is possible that a squint-eyed man may laugh at another squint-eyed person because the one who laughs knows not the angle in which his own eye-balls are facing each other!!
As long as the individual has not realised the existence of this dual personality in himself, there cannot be any religion for him. If an individual has discovered that there is "enough in him to be divided into two portions," and when he wants to keep the lower as brilliant and chaste as the higher, the technique that he will have to employ to fulfil this aspiration is called RELIGION.
Mind is the saboteur that enchants us away from perfection, to be a slave to the flesh and the external objects of brittle satisfaction. Mind is the conditioning that distorts the ideal and creates the lower Satanic sensuous self in us, which is to be brought into unison with the intellect, the equipment for the higher Self to manifest. In short, when the rational and discriminative capacities of a limited intellect are brought to bear their authority upon the wavering and wandering, sense-mongering-mind, the lower is brought under discipline and made to attune with the nobler and the diviner in us. The processes by which the lower is brought under the direct management and discipline of the higher are all together called the spiritual techniques.
"ALONE TO THE ALONE ALL ALONE" IS THE WAY. No Guru can take the responsibility; no scripture can promise this redemption; no altar can, with its divine blessings, make the lower the higher. The lower must necessarily be trained slowly and steadily to accept and come under the influence of the discipline of the higher. In this process, the teacher, the scripture, and the houses-of-God, have all their proper appointed duties and limited influences. But the actual happening depends upon how far we ourselves learn to haul ourselves out from the gutters of misunderstanding in ourselves.
Realising our own weaknesses, rejecting the false, asserting the better, and trying to live, generally, as best as we can, the higher way-of-life, is the process of introspection. But his is only half the entire process and not the whole of it.
The other half also is insisted upon, here, by Krishna. It is not only sufficient that we look within, come to note our weaknesses, erase them, substitute the opposite good qualities, and develop in ourselves the better, but we must see to it, that, whatever little conquests we might have made out of Satan's province are not again handed back to Satan's dominion. Krishna warns, almost in the same breath, "DO NOT ALLOW THE SELF THEREAFTER TO FALL DOWN AND BE DRAGGED AGAIN" to the old level of the cheaper way of existence.
The second line of the stanza contains a glorious idea shaped into a beauty of expression which almost immortalises Vyasa. We are considered both as our own friend and our own enemy. Any intelligent man observing and analysing life will vouchsafe for the truth of the statement, but here, more is meant philosophically, than meets the eye. Generally, we do not fully understand the import when we say "THE SELF IS THE FRIEND OF THE SELF."
The lower in us can ever raise itself to the attunement of the Higher, but the Higher can influence only when the lower is available for Its influence. To the extent the lesser in us surrenders itself to the influence of the Higher, to that extent, It can serve the lower as a great friend. But if the lower refuses to come under the influence of the Diviner in us, the Divine Presence is accused as an enemy of ourselves, inasmuch as the dynamism of life provides us Its energy both for our "life of higher aspirations" and the "life of low temptations."
Ultimately, it is for the aspirant himself to accept the responsibility for blessing or damning himself. The potentiality for improvement, the chances for self-growth, the strength to haul ourselves out from our own misconceptions, are ever open for employment. But it all depends upon how we make use of them.
NOW IT MAY BE ASKED: "WHAT SORT OF A MAN IS THE FRIEND OF HIMSELF AND WHAT SORT OF A MAN IS THE ENEMY OF HIMSELF?" THE ANSWER FOLLOWS:
The Divine in us becomes a friend when, under its influence, the Satan in us gets converted. To the extent the lower ego withdraws itself from its identifications with the body and the sense-organs, feelings and ideas relating to the extrovert life, to that extent that given ego has come under the salutory influence of the nobler and the Diviner. To such an ego, available for corrective proselytisation, the Self is a friend. But where the little self remains a constant rebel against the Higher, to that unconquered-self, the Diviner Self is as if inimical in Its attitude.
In short, the higher Self becomes a friend to the lower which is available for and which allows itself to be conquered by the higher influence; and the Diviner becomes inimical to the undivine when the lower limited ego remains unconquered by the higher aspirations in us. This stanza is an elucidating annotation on the previous one.
EARLIER, THE STATE OF MENTAL EQUIPOISE, CALLED YOGARUDHAH, WAS EXPLAINED. WHAT EXACTLY IS THE FULFILMENT OF SUCH A STATE IN YOGA IS BEING EXPLAINED NOW:
When a seeker has come in his inner life to the state explained as Yogarudhah, and when in that State of equipoise, the mind is held steadfast in contemplation over the Supreme, the self-controlled one, in all serenity, is capable of maintaining his consistency of meditation in all circumstances, favourable and adverse, at all levels of his personality. In the second line of the stanza it is clearly indicated that no excuse in the world is sufficiently strong to justify a seeker's inability to continue keeping the awareness of his Eternal Nature in himself.
Three pairs-of-opposites are indicated here as: (i) heat and cold; (ii) joy and sorrow; (iii) honour and dishonour. In enumerations of these three pairs of conditions, Krishna is exhausting, through the mention of the types, all possible threats to his equipoise and tranquillity that an individual may get from the outer world.
HEAT AND COLD --- These are stimuli that are felt and experienced by the body, at the body level. Whether in heat or in cold, thoughts, we know, do not expand or shrink, and the ideas cannot shiver or perspire. All these reactions can be only in the body, and therefore, Krishna is indicating by this pair all the vicissitudes that may visit the body, such as health and disease, youth and old-age, etc.
By the second pair-of-opposites indicated here as PLEASURE AND PAIN, the Lord is symbolically indicating all the destinies suffered in the mental zone. Pleasure and pain are experienced not by the body but always by the mind. It includes all the tyrannies of our different emotions which might threaten the mental arena, at one time or another in a man's life. Hatred and love, affection and jealousy, kindness and cruelty... a thousand varieties of emotions may storm the 'within'; but none of them is an excuse, according to Krishna, for the diligent and the sincere to lose hold of himself from the steadfastness in his contemplation.
Similarly also, the last pair-of-opposites indicated as HONOUR AND DISHONOUR shows how no threat of any storm in the intellectual zone is a sufficient plea to sympathise with an individual who has fallen away from the State of Perfection. Honour and dishonour are evaluated and reacted to only by the intellect.
Thus, by these three representative pairs-of-opposites from the three worlds of the body, the mind, and the intellect, Krishna is trying to exhaust all possibilities of obstacles in man's life, and then he adds that in all such conditions, the Supreme Self is to be the object of constant realisation for one who is perfectly self-controlled and serene. He ever remains unruffled in all circumstances --- favourable or unfavourable; in all environments --- good or bad; in all companies --- wise or foolish.
WHAT IS THE GLORY OF SUCH AN INDIVIDUAL? WHAT DOES HE BECOME BY SUCH A PROCESS? WHY SHOULD HE GO THROUGH SUCH A LABORIOUS INWARD TRAINING AND SELF-DISCIPLINE?
Such an individual, self-controlled and serene, who has constantly come to contemplate upon the Nature of the Self as understood from the Shastras, through all his circumstances in life, soon becomes, says Krishna, filled with a divine satisfaction and becomes an unshakable Yogin. Here, the satisfaction is not merely the joy that an intelligent man comes to enjoy when he carefully studies and masters Vedanta, but, according to Krishna, the satisfied contentment which a true Yogin comes to experience and which is much superior to the thrilled joys experienced in all intense studies.
The knowledge gained through study is indicated here by the term Jnana, and the first-hand experience gained by the seeker of the Self in himself is called the Knowledge of direct perception, which is termed here, in the Geeta-vocabulary, as Vijnana.
UNCHANGING, IMMUTABLE (Kootasthah) --- This is the term used for the Eternal Self. Its expressiveness becomes apparent when we understand that the term "koota" in Sanskrit, means the "anvil." The anvil is that upon which the blacksmith places his red-hot-iron-bits and hammers them into the required shapes. In spite of the hammerings, nothing happens to the anvil as the anvil resists all modifications and change, but allows all other things to get changed upon it. Thus, the term "kootasthah" means that which "remains anvil-like" and though itself suffers no change, it makes others change.
He is a saint and has the full-blown fragrance of perfection, who has sought and discovered a perfect contentment which arises out of this subjective experience of what the Shastra says, and has come in contact with the Self that changes not. And such a saint becomes tranquil and a master of equal-vision in all conditions of life. To him, a clod of mud, a precious stone and costly gold are all the same. This equanimity of mind in profit and loss, at the acquisition of precious things or at the presentation of mere filth, is the very test to show that the individual has spiritually evolved and that to him no gain can bring any extra joy, nor any loss --- any sorrow!!
In my dream I earned a lot of wealth, but ere I enjoyed it fully, I woke up to my waking-state, poverty. In my destitution, when I am suffering the pangs of hunger, I will not feel, in any sense of the term, consoled by the thought that I was rich in my dream and that in my dream-bank I had my dream-riches in its dream-vaults! Similarly, to a master who has gained perfection and transcended the world of the mind and intellect, and achieved the true awakening of the Soul, thereafter, a lump of earth, a piece of gold or a precious stone of this world are all equally futile things. They cannot add even a jot of extra joy or pain unto him. He has become the sole proprietor of Bliss Absolute. To Kubera, the treasurer of the heavens, a kingdom on the globe is no profit and has no power to make him dance in ecstasy!!
MOREOVER:
In the previous stanza it was indicated that the man of perfection develops equal-vision as far as things of the world are concerned. The universe is not made of things alone, but is constituted of beings also. Now the doubt arises, what will be the relationship of a perfect man of equipoise with the living kingdom of beings around him? Will he negate the whole lot as unreal? In his preoccupations with the experience of the Eternal and the Immortal, which is the substratum for the entire world of changing phenomenal beings, will he ignore to serve the world and help the living generation? This idea is taken up here for discussion.
Such a man of excellence, says Krishna, regards all relationships with an equal love and consideration, be they "FRIENDS, OR FOES, OR INDIFFERENT OR NEUTRAL, OR HATEFUL, OR NEAREST RELATIONS." In his equal-vision, all of them are equally important and he embraces, in his Infinitude, all of them with the same warmth and ardour.
His love knows no distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the bad. To him a sinner is but an ego living in its misunderstandings, since sin is only a mistake of the soul and not a positive blasphemy against Itself. Rama Tirtha beautifully expresses it when he says that "we are punished BY the sin and not FOR it."
In the right understanding of his own Self and the resulting realisation of his own Self, he becomes the Self everywhere. He discovers a unity in the perceived diversity and a subtle rhythm in the obvious discord in the world outside. To him, who has realised himself to be the Self which is all-pervading, the entire universe becomes his own Self, and therefore, his relationship with every other part of the universe is equal and same. Whether I get wounded in the hand or the leg, on the back or in the front, on the head or on the shoulder, it is the same to me, since I am equally identifying with my head, my trunk, and my legs, as myself.
Sources: vedabase.com; The Holy Geeta
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