ये त्वक्षरमनिर्देश्यम् अव्यक्तं पर्युपासते ।सर्वत्रगमचिन्त्यं च कूटस्थमचलं ध्रुवम् ॥
ye tvakṣaramanirdeśyam avyaktaṁ paryupāsatesarvatragamacintyaṁ ca kūṭasthamacalaṁ dhruvam
But those who seek after the indefinable unmanifest Immutable omnipresent, unthinkable, self-poised, immobile, constant, they also by restraining all their senses, by the equality of their understanding and by their seeing of one self in all things and by their tranquil benignancy of silent will for the good of all existences, arrive to Me.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Mottoes of The Life Divine
When men seek after the Immutable, the Indeterminable, the Unmanifest, the All-Pervading, the Unthinkable, the Summit Self, the Immobile, the Permanent, — equal in mind to all, intent on the good of all beings, it is to Me that they come.
Essays on the Gita
In the frame of its synthesis it admits the seeking of the abstractive thinkers for the Indefinable, anirdeśyam, the ever8·21 unmanifest Immutable, avyaktam akṣaram. Those who devote themselves to this search, find, they also, the Purushottama, the supreme Divine Person, mām, the Spirit and highest Soul and Lord of things. For his utmost self-existent way of being is indeed an unthinkable, acintyarūpam, an unimaginable positive, an absolute quintessence of all absolutes far beyond the determination of the intelligence. The method of negative passivity, quietude, renunciation of life and works by which men feel after this intangible Absolute is admitted and ratified in the Gita’s philosophy, but only with a minor permissive sanction. This negating knowledge approaches the Eternal by one side only of the truth and that side the most difficult to reach and follow for the embodied soul in Nature,12·5 duḥkhaṁ dehavadbhir avāpyate; it proceeds by a highly specialised, even an unnecessarily arduous way, “narrow and difficult to tread as a razor’s edge.” Not by denying all relations, but through all relations is the Divine Infinite naturally approachable to man and most easily, widely, intimately seizable. This seeing is not after all the largest or the truest truth that the Supreme is without any relations with the mental, vital, physical existence of man in the universe, avyavahāryam, nor that what is described as the empirical truth of things, the truth of relations, vyavahāra, is altogether the opposite of the highest spiritual truth, paramārtha. On the contrary there are a thousand relations by which the supreme Eternal is secretly in contact and union with our human existence and by all essential ways of our nature and of the world’s nature, sarva-bhāvena18·62, can that contact be made sensible and that union made real to our soul, heart, will, intelligence, spirit. Therefore is this other way natural and easy for man, sukham āptum. God does not make himself difficult of approach to us: only one thing is needed, one demand made on us, the single indomitable will to break through the veil of our ignorance and the whole, the persistent seeking of the mind and heart and life for that which is all the time near to it, within it, its own soul of being and spiritual essence and the secret of its personality and its impersonality, its self and its nature. This is our one difficulty; the rest the Master of our existence will himself see to and accomplish,18·66 ahaṁ tvāṁ mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ.
To this question Krishna replies with an emphatic decisiveness. “Those who found their mind in Me and by constant12·2 union, possessed of a supreme faith, seek after Me, I hold to be the most perfectly in union of Yoga.” The supreme faith is that which sees God in all and to its eye the manifestation and the non-manifestation are one Godhead. The perfect union is that which meets the Divine at every moment, in every action and with all the integrality of the nature. But those also who seek by a hard ascent after the indefinable unmanifest Immutable12·3–4 alone, arrive, says the Godhead, to Me. For they are not mistaken in their aim, but they follow a more difficult and a less complete and perfect path. At the easiest, to reach the unmanifest Absolute they have to climb through the manifest Immutable here. This manifest Immutable is my own all-pervading impersonality and silence; vast, unthinkable, immobile, constant, omnipresent, it supports the action of personality but does not share in it. It offers no hold to the mind; it can only be gained by a motionless spiritual impersonality and silence and those who follow after it alone have to restrain altogether and even draw in completely the action of the mind and senses. But still by the equality of their understanding and by their seeing of one self in all things and by their tranquil benignancy of silent will for the good of all existences they too meet me in all objects and creatures. No less than those who unite themselves with the18·62 Divine in all ways of their existence, sarva-bhāvena, and enter15·19 largely and fully into the unthinkable living fountainhead of8·8–9 universal things, divyaṁ puruṣam acintya-rūpam, these seekers too who climb through this more difficult exclusive oneness towards a relationless unmanifest Absolute find in the end the same Eternal. But this is a less direct and more arduous way; it is not the full and natural movement of the spiritualised human nature.
Mottoes of The Life Divine
When men seek after the Immutable, the Indeterminable, the Unmanifest, the All-Pervading, the Unthinkable, the Summit Self, the Immobile, the Permanent, — equal in mind to all, intent on the good of all beings, it is to Me that they come.
Gita.*
Other writings
From this lofty platform the great creed rises to its crowning ideas, for since we must act but neither for any human or future results of action nor for the sake of the action itself, and yet action must have some goal to which it is devoted, there is no goal left but God. We must devote then our actions to God &…Read the whole passage · 700 wordsClose the passage
From this lofty platform the great creed rises to its crowning ideas, for since we must act but neither for any human or future results of action nor for the sake of the action itself, and yet action must have some goal to which it is devoted, there is no goal left but God. We must devote then our actions to God & through that rise to complete surrender of the personality to him, whether in the idea of him manifest through Yoga or the idea of him Unmanifest through God-knowledge. “They who worship me as the imperishable, illimitable, unmanifest, controlling all the organs, one-minded to all things, they doing good to all creatures attain to me. But far greater is their pain of endeavour whose hearts cleave to the Unmanifest; for hardly can salvation in the unmanifest be attained by men that have a body. But they who reposing all actions in Me, to Me devoted contemplate and worship me in single-minded Yoga, speedily do I become their saviour from the gulfs of death & the world, for their hearts, O Partha, have entered into me. On Me repose thy mind, pour into Me thy reason, in Me wilt thou have then thy dwelling, doubt it not. Yet if thou canst not steadfastly repose thy mind in Me, desire, O Dhananjaya, to reach me by Yoga through askesis. If that too thou canst not, devote thyself to action for Me; since also by doing actions for My sake thou wilt attain thy soul’s perfection. If even for this thou art too feeble then abiding in Yoga with me with a soul subdued abandon utterly desire for the fruits of action. For better than askesis is knowledge, and better than knowledge is concentration and better than concentration is renunciation of the fruit of deeds, for upon such renunciation followeth the soul’s peace”. Such is the ladder which Vyasa has represented Krishna as building up to God with action for its firm & sole basis. If it is questioned whether the Bhagavadgita is the work of Vyasa (whether he be Krishna of the Island is another question to be settled on its own merits), I answer that there is nothing to disprove his authorship, while on the other hand allowing for the exigencies of philosophical exposition the style is undoubtedly either his or so closely modelled on his as to defy differentiation. Moreover the whole piece is but the philosophical justification and logical enlargement of the gospel of action, preached by Krishna in the Mahabharat proper, the undoubted work of this poet. I have here no space for anything more than a quotation. Sanjaya has come to the Pandavas from Dhritarashtra and dissuaded them from battle in a speech taught him by that wily & unwise monarch; it is skilfully aimed at the most subtle weakness of the human heart, representing the abandonment of justice & their duty as a holy act of self-abnegation and its pursuit as no better than wholesale murder and parricide. It is better for the sons of Pandou to be dependents, beggars & exiles all their lives than to enjoy the earth by the slaughter of their brothers, kinsmen and spiritual guides: contemplation is purer & nobler than action & worldly desires. Although answering firmly to the envoy, the children of Pandou are in their hearts shaken; for as Krishna afterward tells Karna, when the destruction of a nation is at hand wrong comes to men’s eyes clothed in the garb of right. Sanjaya’s argument is one Christ & Buddha would have endorsed; Christ & Buddha would have laboured to confirm the Pandavas in their scruples. On Krishna rests the final word & his answer is such as to shock seriously the conventional ideas of a religious teacher to which Christianity & Buddhism have accustomed us. In a long & powerful speech he deals at great length with Sanjaya’s arguments. We must remember therefore that he is debating a given point and speaking to men who have not like Arjouna the adhikar to enter into the “highest of all mysteries”. We shall then realise the close identity between his teaching here and that of the Gita.
472) The Lord of Love has said, “They who follow after the Unknowable & Indefinable, follow after Me and I accept them.” He has justified by His word the Illusionist & the Agnostic. Why then, O devotee, dost thou rail at him whom thy Master has accepted?
Evening talks
Sri Aurobindo: Why is he particular about the Non-Being? You arrive at the Non-Being by following the negative path. That is to say, when you start from mind, I mean spiritual mind, you come or open yourself to the experience of Nirvana. This Nirvana is the negation of all that the mind can affirm as the Being but it is only a gate of entry into the Absolute. From this Nirvana you can either take up the negative or the affirmative path. By the negative you reach the Non-Being or what the Gita calls _anirdeshyam_ (the Indeterminate). This Non-Being is the Buddhist Nirvana or the Chinese Tao. The Buddhists consider it as Shunya, the Void, while to the Taoists this Void contains everything. Again, this Nirvana is not the same as the Brahmanirvana of the Gita.
