TWENTY
THREE
Nirvana and Works in the World
THE union of the soul with the Purushottama by a Yoga of the
whole being is the complete teaching of the Gita and not only the union with
the immutable Self as in the narrower doctrine which follows the exclusive way
of knowledge. That is why the Gita subsequently, after it has effected the
reconciliation of knowledge and works, is able to develop the idea of love and devotion,
unified with both works and knowledge, as the highest height of the way to the
supreme secret. For if the union with the immutable Self were the sole secret
or the highest secret, that would not at all be possible; for then at a given
point our inner basis for love and devotion, no less than our inner foundation
of works, would crumble away and collapse. Union utter and exclusive with the
immutable Self alone means the abolition of the whole point of view of the
mutable being, not only in its ordinary and inferior action but in its very
roots, in all that makes its existence possible, not only in the works of its ignorance,
but in the works of its knowledge. It would mean the abolition of all that
difference in conscious poise and activity between the human soul and the
Divine which makes possible the play of the Kshara; for the action of the
Kshara would become then entirely a play of the ignorance without any root or
basis of divine reality in it. On the contrary, union by Yoga with the
Purushottama means the knowledge and enjoyment of our oneness with him in our
self-existent being and of a certain differentiation in our active being. It is
the persistence of the latter in a play of divine works which are urged by the motive
power of divine love and constituted by a perfected divine Nature, it is the
vision of the Divine in the world harmonised with a realisation of the Divine
in the self which makes action and devotion possible to the liberated man, and not
only possible but inevitable in the perfect mode of his being.
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But the direct
way to union lies through the firm realisation of the immutable Self, and it is
the Gita's insistence on this as a first necessity, after which alone works and
devotion can acquire their whole divine meaning, that makes it possible for us
to mistake its drift. For if we take the passages in which it insists most
rigorously upon this necessity and neglect to observe the whole sequence of
thought in which they stand, we may easily come to the conclusion that it does
really teach actionless absorption as the final state of the soul and action
only as a preliminary means towards stillness in the motionless Immutable. It
is in the close of the fifth and throughout the sixth chapter that this
insistence is strongest and most comprehensive. There we get the description of
a Yoga which would seem at first sight to be incompatible with works and we get
the repeated use of the word Nirvana to describe the status to which the Yogin
arrives.
The mark of this
status is the supreme peace of a calm self-extinction, śāntim nirvāna-paramām, and, as if to
make it quite clear that it is not the Buddhist's Nirvana in a blissful
negation of being, but the Vedantic loss of a partial in a perfect being that
it intends, the Gita uses always the phrase brahma-nirvāna,
extinction in the Brahman; and the Brahman here certainly seems to mean the
Immutable, to denote primarily at least the inner timeless Self withdrawn from
active participation even though
immanent in the externality of Nature. We have to see then what is the drift of
the Gita here, and especially whether this peace is the peace of an absolute
inactive cessation, whether the self-extinction in the Akshara means the
absolute excision of all knowledge and consciousness of the Kshara and of all
action in the Kshara. We are accustomed indeed to regard Nirvana and any kind
of existence and action in the world as incompatible and we might be inclined
to argue that the use of the word is by itself sufficient and decides the
question. But if we look closely at Buddhism, we shall doubt whether the
absolute incompatibility really existed even for the Buddhists; and if we look
closely at the Gita, we shall see that it does not form part of this supreme
Vedantic teaching.
The Gita after
speaking of the perfect equality of the Brahman-knower who has risen into the
Brahman-consciousness,
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brahmavid brahmani sthitah, develops in nine verses
that follow its idea of Brahmayoga and of Nirvana in the Brahman. “When the
soul is no longer attached to the touches of outward things,” it begins, “then
one finds the happiness that exists in the Self; such a one enjoys an
imperishable happiness, because his self is in Yoga, yukta, by Yoga with the Brahman.” The non-attachment is essential,
it says, in order to be free from the attacks of desire and wrath and passion,
a freedom without which true happiness is not possible. That happiness and that
equality are to be gained entirely by man in the body: he is not to suffer any
least remnant of the subjection to the troubled lower nature to remain in the
idea that the perfect release will come by a putting off of the body; a perfect
spiritual freedom is to be won here upon earth and possessed and enjoyed in the
human life, prāk śarīra-vimoksanāt.
It then continues, “He who has the inner happiness and the inner ease and
repose and the inner light, that Yogin becomes the Brahman and reaches
self-extinction in the Brahman, brahma-nirvānam.”
Here, very clearly, Nirvana means the extinction of the ego in the higher
spiritual, inner Self, that which is for ever timeless, spaceless, not bound by
the chain of cause and effect and the changes of the world-mutation,
self-blissful, self-illumined and for ever at peace. The Yogin ceases to be the
ego, the little person limited by the mind and the body; he becomes the
Brahman; he is unified in consciousness with the immutable divinity of the
eternal Self which is immanent in his natural being.
But is this a
going in into some deep sleep of samadhi away from all world-consciousness, or
is it the preparatory movement for a dissolution of the natural being and the
individual soul into some absolute Self who is utterly and for ever beyond
Nature and her works, laya, moksa?
Is that withdrawal necessary before we can enter into Nirvana, or is Nirvana, as
the context seems to suggest, a state which can exist simultaneously with
world-consciousness and even in its own way include it? Apparently the latter,
for in the succeeding verse the Gita goes on to say, “Sages win Nirvana in the
Brahman, they in whom the stains of sin are effaced and the knot of doubt is
cut asunder, masters of their selves, who are occupied in doing good to all
creatures, sarvabhūta-hite ratāh.”
That would almost seem to
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mean that to be thus is to be in
Nirvana. But the next verse is quite clear and decisive, “Yatis (those who practice
self-mastery by Yoga and austerity) who are delivered from desire and wrath and
have gained self-mastery, for them Nirvana in the Brahman exists all about
them, encompasses them, they already live in it because they have knowledge of the
Self.” That is to say, to have knowledge and possession of the self is to exist
in Nirvana. This is clearly a large extension of the idea of Nirvana. Freedom
from all stain of the passions, the self-mastery of the equal mind on which
that freedom is founded, equality to all beings, sarvabhūtesu, and beneficial love for all, final
destruction of that doubt and obscurity of the ignorance which keeps us divided
from the all-unifying Divine and the knowledge of the One Self within us and in
all are evidently the conditions of Nirvana which are laid down in these verses
of the Gita, go to constitute it and are its spiritual substance.
Thus Nirvana is
clearly compatible with world-consciousness and with action in the world. For
the sages who possess it are conscious of and in intimate relation by works
with the Divine in the mutable universe; they are occupied with the good of all
creatures, sarvabhūtahite. They
have not renounced the experiences of the Kshara Purusha, they have divinized them;
for the Kshara, the Gita tells us, is all existences, sarvabhūtāni, and the doing universal good to all is a
divine action in the mutability of Nature. This action in the world is not
inconsistent with living in Brahman, it is rather its inevitable condition and
outward result because the Brahman in whom we find Nirvana, the spiritual
consciousness in which we lose the separative ego-consciousness, is not only within
us but within all these existences, exists not only above and apart from all
these universal happenings, but pervades them, contains them and is extended in
them. Therefore by Nirvana in the Brahman must be meant a destruction or
extinction of the limited separative consciousness, falsifying and dividing,
which is brought into being on the surface of existence by the lower Maya of
the three Gunas, and entry into Nirvana is a passage into this other true
unifying consciousness which is the heart of existence and its continent and
its whole containing and supporting, its whole original and
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eternal and final truth. Nirvana
when we gain it, enter into it, is not only within us, but all around, abhito vartate, because this is not only the Brahman-consciousness which
lives secret within us, but the Brahman-consciousness in which we live. It is
the Self which we are within, the supreme Self of our individual being but also
the Self which we are without, the supreme Self of the universe, the self of
all existences. By living in that self we live in all, and no longer in our
egoistic being alone; by oneness with that self a steadfast oneness with all in
the universe becomes the very nature of our being and the root status of our
active consciousness and root motive of all our action.
But again we get
immediately afterwards two verses which might seem to lead away from this
conclusion. “Having put outside of himself all outward touches and concentrated
the vision between the eyebrows and made equal the prāna and the ap\āna
moving within the nostrils, having controlled the senses, the mind and the
understanding, the sage devoted to liberation, from whom desire and wrath and
fear have passed away is ever free.” Here we have a process of Yoga that brings
in an element which seems quite other than the Yoga of works and other even
than the pure Yoga of knowledge by discrimination and contemplation; it belongs
in all its characteristic features to the system, introduces the
psycho-physical askesis of Rajayoga. There is the conquest of all the movements
of the mind, cittavrttinirodha;
there is the control of the breathing, Pranayama; there is the drawing in of
the sense and the vision. All of them are processes which lead to the inner trance
of Samadhi, the object of all of them moksa,
and moksa signifies in
ordinary parlance the renunciation not only of the separative
ego-consciousness, but of the whole active consciousness, a dissolution of our
being into the highest Brahman. Are we to suppose that the Gita gives this
process in that sense as the last movement of a release by dissolution or only
as a special means and a strong aid to overcome the outward-going mind? Is this
the finale, the climax, the last word? We shall find reason to regard it as
both a special means, an aid, and at least one gate of a final departure, not
by dissolution, but by an uplifting to the supracosmic existence. For even here
in this passage this is not the last word; the last word, the finale,
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the climax comes in a verse that
follows and is the last couplet of the chapter. “When a man has known Me as the
Enjoyer of sacrifice and tapasya (of all askesis and energisms), the mighty
lord of all the worlds, the friend of all creatures, he comes by the peace.”
The power of the Karmayoga comes in again; the knowledge of the active Brahman,
the cosmic supersoul, is insisted on among the conditions of the peace of
Nirvana.
We get back to
the great idea of the Gita, the idea of the Purushottama, – though that name is
not given till close upon the end, it is always that which Krishna means by his
“I” and “Me”, the Divine who is there as the one self in our timeless immutable
being, who is present too in the world, in all existences, in all activities,
the master of the silence and the peace, the master of the power and the
action, who is here incarnate as the divine charioteer of the stupendous
conflict, the Transcendent, the Self, the All, the master of every individual
being. He is the enjoyer of all sacrifice and of all tapasya, therefore shall
the seeker of liberation do works as a sacrifice and as a tapasya; he is the
lord of all the worlds, manifested in Nature and in these beings, therefore
shall the liberated man still do works for the right government and leading on
of the peoples in these worlds, lokasamgraha;
he is the friend of all existences, therefore is the sage who has found Nirvana
within him and all around, still and always occupied with the good of all
creatures, – even as the Nirvana of Mahayana Buddhism took for its highest sign
the works of a universal compassion. Therefore too, even when he has found
oneness with the Divine in his timeless and immutable self, is he still
capable, since he embraces the relations also of the play of Nature, of divine
love for man and of love for the Divine, of bhakti.
That this is the
drift of the meaning, becomes clearer when we have fathomed the sense of the
sixth chapter which is a large comment on and a full development of the idea of
these closing verses of the fifth, – that shows the importance which the Gita
attaches to them. We shall therefore run as briefly as possible through the
substance of this sixth chapter. First the Teacher emphasises – and this is
very significant – his often repeated asseveration about the real essence of
Sannyasa, that it is an
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inward, not an outward
renunciation. “Whoever does the work to be done without resort to its fruits,
he is the Sannyasin and the Yogin, not the man who lights not the sacrificial
fire and does not the works. What they have called renunciation (Sannyasa),
know to be in truth Yoga; for none becomes a Yogin who has not renounced the
desire-will in the mind.” Works are to be done, but with what purpose and in
what order? They are first to be done while ascending the hill of Yoga, for
then works are the cause, kāranam.
The cause of what? The cause of self-perfection, of liberation, of nirvana in the
Brahman; for by doing works with a steady practice of the inner renunciation
this perfection, this liberation, this conquest of the desire-mind and the
ego-self and the lower nature are easily accomplished.
But when one has
got to the top? Then works are no longer the cause; the calm of self-mastery
and self-possession gained by works becomes the cause. Again, the cause of
what? Of fixity in the Self, in the Brahman-consciousness and of the perfect
equality in which the divine works of the liberated man are done. “For when one
does not get attached to the objects of sense or to works and has renounced all
will of desire in the mind, then is he said to have ascended to the top of Yoga.”
That, as we know already, is the spirit in which the liberated man does works;
he does them without desire and attachment, without the egoistic personal will
and the mental seeking which is the parent of desire. He has conquered his lower
self, reached the perfect calm in which his highest self is manifest to him,
that highest self always concentrated in its own being, samāhita, in Samadhi, not only in the trance of the
inward-drawn consciousness, but always, in the waking state of the mind as
well, in exposure to the causes of desire and of the disturbance of calm, to
grief and pleasure, heat and cold, honour and disgrace, all the dualities, śitosna-sukhaduhkhesu
tathā mānāpamānayoh. This higher self is the
Akshara, kūtastha, which
stands above the changes and the perturbations of the natural being; and the
Yogin is said to be in Yoga with it when he also is like it, kūtastha, when he is
superior to all appearances and mutations, when he is satisfied with
self-knowledge, when he is equal-minded to all things and happenings and
persons.
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But this Yoga is
after all no easy thing to acquire, as Arjuna indeed shortly afterwards
suggests, for the restless mind is always liable to be pulled down from these
heights by the attacks of outward things and to fall back into the strong
control of grief and passion and inequality. Therefore, it would seem, the Gita
proceeds to give us in addition to its general method of knowledge and works a
special process of Rajayogic meditation also, a powerful method of practice, abhyāsa, a strong way to the
complete control of the mind and all its workings. In this process the Yogin is
directed to practise continually union with the Self so that that may become
his normal consciousness. He is to sit apart and alone, with all desire and
idea of possession banished from his mind, self-controlled in his whole being
and consciousness. “He should set in a pure spot his firm seat, neither too
high, nor yet too low, covered with a cloth, with a deer-skin, with sacred
grass, and there seated with a concentrated mind and with the workings of the
mental consciousness and the senses under control he should practise Yoga for
self-purification, ātmaviśuddhaye.”
The posture he takes must be the motionless erect posture proper to the
practice of Rajayoga; the vision should be drawn in and fixed between the
eye-brows, “not regarding the regions.” The mind is to be kept calm and free
from fear and the vow of Brahmacharya observed; the whole controlled mentality
must be devoted and turned to the Divine so that the lower action of the
consciousness shall be merged in the higher peace. For the object to be attained
is the still peace of Nirvana. “Thus always putting himself in Yoga by control
of his mind the Yogin attains to the supreme peace of Nirvana which has its
foundation in Me, śāntim nirvānaparamām
matsamsthām.”
This peace of
Nirvana is reached when all the mental consciousness is perfectly controlled
and liberated from desire and remains still in the Self, when, motionless like
the light of a lamp in a windless place, it ceases from its restless action,
shut in from its outward motion, and by the silence and stillness of the mind
the Self is seen within, not disfigured as in the mind, but in the Self, seen,
not as it is mistranslated falsely or partially by the mind and represented to
us through the ego, but self-perceived by the Self, svaprakāśa. Then the soul is satisfied and knows its own
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true and exceeding bliss, not
that untranquil happiness which is the portion of the mind and the senses, but
an inner and serene felicity in which it is safe from the mind's perturbations
and can no longer fall away from the spiritual truth of its being. Not even the
fieriest assault of mental grief can disturb it; for mental grief comes to us
from outside, is a reaction to external touches, and this is the inner, the
self-existent happiness of those who no longer accept the slavery of the
unstable mental reactions to external touches. It is the putting away of the
contact with pain, the divorce of the mind's marriage with grief, duhkha-samyoga-viyogam.
The firm winning of this inalienable spiritual bliss is Yoga, it is the divine
union; it is the greatest of all gains and the treasure beside which all others
lose their value. Therefore is this Yoga to be resolutely practised without
yielding to any discouragement by difficulty or failure until the release,
until the bliss of Nirvana is secured as an eternal possession.
The main stress
here has fallen on the stilling of the emotive mind, the mind of desire and the
senses which are the recipients of outward touches and reply to them with our
customary emotional reactions; but even the mental thought has to be stilled in
the silence of the self-existent being. First, all the desires born of the
desire-will have to be wholly abandoned without any exception or residue and
the senses have to be held in by the mind so that they shall not run out to all
sides after their usual disorderly and restless habit; but next the mind itself
has to be seized by the buddhi and drawn inward. One should slowly cease from
mental action by a buddhi held in the grasp of fixity and having fixed the mind
in the higher self one should not think of anything at all. Whenever the
restless and unquiet mind goes forth, it should be controlled and brought into
subjection in the Self. When the mind is thoroughly quieted, then there comes
upon the Yogin the highest, stainless, passionless bliss of the soul that has
become the Brahman. “Thus freed from stain of passion and putting himself
constantly into Yoga, the Yogin easily and happily enjoys the touch of the
Brahman which is an exceeding bliss.”
And yet the
result is not, while one yet lives, a Nirvana which puts away every possibility
of action in the world, every relation with beings in the world. It would seem
at first that it ought to
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be so. When all the desires and
passions have ceased, when the mind is no longer permitted to throw itself out
in thought, when the practice of this silent and solitary Yoga has become the
rule, what farther action or relation with the world of outward touches and
mutable appearances is any longer possible? No doubt, the Yogin for a time
still remains in the body, but the cave, the forest, the mountain-top seem now
the fittest, the only possible scene of his continued living and constant
trance of Samadhi his sole joy and occupation. But, first, while this solitary
Yoga is being pursued, the renunciation of all other action is not recommended
by the Gita. This Yoga, it says, is not for the man who gives up sleep and food
and play and action, even as it is not for those who indulge too much in these
things of the life and the body; but the sleep and waking, the food, the play,
the putting forth of effort in works should all be yukta. This is generally interpreted as meaning that all should be
moderate, regulated, done in fit measure, and that may indeed be the
significance. But at any rate when the Yoga is attained, all this has to be yukta in another sense, the ordinary
sense of the word everywhere else in the Gita. In all states, in waking and in
sleeping, in food and play and action, the Yogin will then be in Yoga with the
Divine, and all will be done by him in the consciousness of the Divine as the
self and as the All and as that which supports and contains his own life and
his action. Desire and ego and personal will and the thought of the mind are
the motives of action only in the lower nature; when the ego is lost and the
Yogin becomes Brahman, when he lives in
and is, even, a transcendent and universal consciousness, action comes
spontaneously out of that, luminous knowledge higher than the mental thought
comes out of that, a power other and mightier than the personal will comes out
of that to do for him his works and bring its fruits:¹ personal action has ceased, all has been taken up
into the Brahman and assumed by the Divine,
mayi sannyasya karmāni.
For when the
Gita describes the nature of this self-realisation and the result of the Yoga
which comes by Nirvana of the separative ego-mind and its motives of thought
and feeling and action into the Brahman-consciousness, it includes the cosmic
sense,
¹yoga-ksemam vahāmyaham.
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though lifted into a new kind of
vision. “The man whose self is in Yoga, sees the self in all beings and all beings
in the self, he sees all with an equal vision.” All that he sees is to him the
Self, all is his self, all is the Divine. But is there no danger, if he dwells
at all in the mutability of the Kshara, of his losing all the results of this difficult
Yoga, losing the Self and falling back into the mind, of the Divine losing him
and the world getting him, of his losing the Divine and getting back in its
place the ego and the lower nature? No, says the Gita; “he who sees Me
everywhere and sees all in Me, to him I do not get lost, nor does he get lost
to Me.” For this peace of Nirvana, though it is gained through the Akshara, is
founded upon the being of the Purushottama, matsamsthām,
and that is extended, the Divine, the Brahman is extended too in the world of
beings and, though transcendent of it, not imprisoned in its own transcendence.
One has to see all things as He and live and act wholly in that vision; that is
the perfect fruit of the Yoga.
But why act? Is
it not safer to sit in one's solitude looking out upon the world, if you will,
seeing it in Brahman, in the Divine, but not taking part in it, not moving in
it, not living in it, not acting in it, living rather ordinarily in the inner
Samadhi? Should not that be the law, the rule, the dharma of this highest
spiritual condition? No, again; for the liberated Yogin there is no other law,
rule, dharma than simply this, to live in the Divine and love the Divine and be
one with all beings; his freedom is an absolute and not a contingent freedom,
self-existent and not dependent any longer on any rule of conduct, law of life
or limitation of any kind. He has no longer any need of a process of Yoga,
because he is now perpetually in Yoga. “The Yogin who has taken his stand upon
oneness and loves Me in all beings, however and in all ways he lives and acts,
lives and acts in Me.” The love of the world spiritualised, changed from a
sense-experience to a soul-experience, is founded on the love of God and in
that love there is no peril and no shortcoming. Fear and disgust of the world
may often be necessary for the recoil from the lower nature, for it is really
the fear and disgust of our own ego which reflects itself in the world. But to
see God in the world is to fear nothing, it is to embrace all in the being of
God;
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to see all as the Divine is to
hate and loathe nothing, but love God in the world and the world in God.
But at least the
things of the lower nature will be shunned and feared, the things which the
Yogin has taken so much trouble to surmount? Not this either; all is embraced
in the equality of the self-vision. “He, O Arjuna, who sees with equality everything
in the image of the Self, whether it be grief or it be happiness, him I hold to
be the supreme Yogin.” And by this it is not meant at all that he himself shall
fall from the griefless spiritual bliss and feel again worldly unhappiness,
even in the sorrow of others, but seeing in others the play of the dualities
which he himself has left and surmounted, he shall still see all as himself,
his self in all, God in all and, not disturbed or bewildered by the appearances
of these things, moved only by them to help and heal, to occupy himself with
the good of all beings, to lead men to the spiritual bliss, to work for the
progress of the world Godwards, he shall live the divine life, so long as days
upon earth are his portion. The God-lover who can do this, can thus embrace all
things in God, can look calmly on the lower nature and the works of the Maya of
the three gunas and act in them and upon them without perturbation or fall or
disturbance from the height and power of the spiritual oneness, free in the
largeness of the God-vision, sweet and great and luminous in the strength of
the God-nature, may well be declared to be the supreme Yogin. He indeed has
conquered the creation, jitah
sargah.
The Gita brings
in here as always bhakti as the climax of the Yoga, sarvabhūtasthitam yo mām bhajati ekatvam āsthitah;
that may almost be said to sum up the whole final result of the Gita's teaching
– whoever loves God in all and his soul is founded upon the divine oneness,
however he lives and acts, lives and acts in God. And to emphasise it still
more, after an intervention of Arjuna and a reply to his doubt as to how so
difficult a Yoga can be at all possible for the restless mind of man, the
divine Teacher returns to this idea and makes it his culminating utterance.
“The Yogin is greater than the doers of askesis, greater than the men of
knowledge, greater than the men of works; become then the Yogin, O Arjuna,” the
Yogin, one who seeks for and attains, by works and knowledge and askesis or by
whatever other
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means, not even spiritual
knowledge or power or anything else for their own sake, but the union with God
alone; for in that all else is contained and in that lifted beyond itself to a
divinest significance. But even among Yogins the greatest is the Bhakta. “Of all
Yogins he who with all his inner self given up to Me, for Me has love and
faith, śraddhāvān bhajate,
him I hold to be the most united with Me in Yoga.” It is this that is the
closing word of these first six chapters and contains in itself the seed of the
rest, of that which still remains unspoken and is nowhere entirely spoken; for
it is always and remains something of a mystery and a secret, rahasyam, the highest spiritual mystery
and the divine secret.
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