गुणानेतानतीत्य त्रीन् देही देहसमुद्भवान् ।जन्ममृत्युजरादुःखैर् विमुक्तोऽमृतमश्नुते ॥
guṇānetānatītya trīn dehī dehasamudbhavānjanmamṛtyujarāduḥkhair vimukto’mṛtamaśnute
When the soul thus rises above the three gunas born of the embodiment in Nature, he is freed from subjection to birth and death and their concomitants, decay, old age and suffering, and enjoys in the end the Immortality of its self-existence.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
In tamasic equality by itself there is no real liberation; but it can be made a powerful starting-point, if, as in Indian asceticism, it is turned into the sattwic by the perception of the greater existence, the truer power, the higher delight of the immutable Self above Nature. The natural turn of such a movement, however, is towards Sannyasa, the renunciation of life and works, rather than to that union of inner renunciation of desire with continued activity in the world of Nature which the Gita advocates. The Gita, however, admits and makes room for this movement; it allows as a recoiling starting-point the perception of the defects of the world-existence, birth and disease and death and old age and sorrow, the historic starting-point of the Buddha,13·9 janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi-duḥkha-doṣānudarśanam, and it accepts the effort of those whose self-discipline is motived by a desire for release, even in this spirit, from the curse of age and death,7·29 jarā-maraṇa-mokṣāya mām āśritya yatanti ye. But that, to be of any profit, must be accompanied by the sattwic perception of a higher state and the taking delight and refuge in the existence of the Divine, mām āśritya. Then the soul by its recoil comes to a greater condition of being, lifted beyond the three gunas and free from birth and death and age and grief, and enjoys the immortality of its self-existence, janma-mṛtyu-jarā-duḥkhair vimukto ‘mṛtam aśnute14·20. The tamasic unwillingness to accept the pain and effort of life is indeed by itself a weakening and degrading thing, and in this lies the danger of preaching to all alike the gospel of asceticism and world-disgust, that it puts the stamp of a tamasic weakness and shrinking on unfit souls, confuses their understanding, buddhibhedaṁ janayet, diminishes the sustained3·26 aspiration, the confidence in living, the power of effort which the soul of man needs for its salutary, its necessary rajasic struggle to master its environment, without really opening to it—for it is yet incapable of that—a higher goal, a greater endeavour, a mightier victory. But in souls that are fit this tamasic recoil may serve a useful spiritual purpose by slaying their rajasic attraction, their eager preoccupation with the lower life which prevents the sattwic awakening to a higher possibility. Seeking then for a refuge in the void they have created, they are able to hear the divine call, “O soul that findest thyself in this transient and9·33 unhappy world, turn and put thy delight in Me,” anityam asukhaṁ lokam imaṁ prāpya bhajasva mām.
But this would seem to imply a cessation of all doing, since all natural action is done by the gunas, by Nature through her modes. The soul cannot act by itself, it can only act through Nature and her modes. And yet the Gita, while it demands freedom from the modes, insists upon the necessity of action. Here comes in the importance of its insistence on the abandonment of the fruits; for it is the desire of the fruits which is the most potent cause of the soul’s bondage and by abandoning it the soul14·16 can be free in action. Ignorance is the result of tamasic action, pain the consequence of rajasic works, pain of reaction, disappointment, dissatisfaction or transience, and therefore in attachment to the fruits of this kind of activity attended as they are with these undesirable accompaniments there is no profit. But of works rightly done the fruit is pure and sattwic, the inner result is knowledge and happiness. Yet attachment even to these pleasurable things must be entirely abandoned, first, because in the mind they are limited and limiting forms and, secondly, because, since sattwa is constantly entangled with and besieged by rajas and tamas which may at any moment overcome it, there is a perpetual insecurity in their tenure. But, even if one is free from any clinging to the fruit, there may be an attachment to the work itself, either for its own sake, the essential rajasic bond, or owing to a lax subjection to the drive of Nature, the tamasic, or for the sake of the attracting rightness of the thing done, which is the sattwic attaching cause powerful on the virtuous man or the man of knowledge. And here evidently the resource is in that other injunction of the Gita, to give up the action itself to the Lord of works and be only a desireless and equal-minded instrument of his will. To see that the modes of Nature are the14·19 whole agency and cause of our works and to know and turn to that which is supreme above the gunas, is the way to rise above the lower nature. Only so can we attain to the movement and14·20 status of the Divine, mad-bhāva, by which free from subjection to birth and death and their concomitants, decay, old age and suffering, the liberated soul shall enjoy in the end immortality and all that is eternal.
The Synthesis of Yoga
This is the greater consciousness into which our inferior consciousness has to be transformed, this nature of the Ignorance with its unquiet unbalanced activity of the three modes changed into this greater luminous supernature. At first we become free from the three gunas, detached, untroubled, nistraiguṇya; but this is the recovery of the native state of the soul, the self, the spirit free and watching in its motionless calm the motion of Prakriti in her force of the Ignorance. If on this basis the nature, the motion of Prakriti, is also to become free, it must be by a quiescence of action in a luminous peace and silence in which all necessary movements are done without any conscious reaction or participation or initiation of action by the mind or by the life-being, without any ripple of thought or eddy of the vital parts: it must be done under the impulsion, by the initiation, by the working of an impersonal cosmic or a transcendent Force. A cosmic Mind, Life, Substance must act, or a pure transcendent Self-Power and Bliss other than our own personal being or its building of Nature. This is a state of freedom which can come in the Yoga of works through renunciation of ego and desire and personal initiation and the surrender of the being to the cosmic Self or to the universal Shakti; it can come in the Yoga of knowledge by the cessation of thought, the silence of the mind, the opening of the whole being to the cosmic Consciousness, to the cosmic Self, the cosmic Dynamis or to the supreme Reality; it can come in the Yoga of devotion by the surrender of the heart and the whole nature into the hands of the All-Blissful as the adored Master of our existence. But the culminating change intervenes by a more positive and dynamic transcendence: there is a transference or transmutation into a superior spiritual status, triguṇātīta, in which we participate in a greater spiritual dynamisation; for the three lower unequal modes pass into an equal triune mode of eternal calm, light and force, the repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature.
Writings in Bengali
guṇānetānatītya trīndehī dehasamudbhavān
janmamṛtyujarāduḥkhairvimukto’mṛtamaśnute (14.20)
নান্যং গুণেভ্যঃ কর্ত্তারং যদা দ্রষ্টানুপশ্যতি।
গুণেভ্যশ্চ পরং বেত্তি মদ্ভাবং সোঽধিগচ্ছতি॥
গুণানেতানতীত্য ত্রীন্ দেহী দেহসমুদ্ভবান্।
জন্মমৃত্যুজরাদুঃখৈর্বিমুক্তোঽমৃতমশ্নুতে॥
প্রকাশঞ্চ প্রবৃত্তিঞ্চ মোহমেব চ পাণ্ডব।
ন দ্বেষ্টি সংপ্রবৃত্তানি ন নিবৃত্তানি কাঙ্ক্ষতি॥
উদাসীনবদাসীনো গুণৈর্যো ন বিচাল্যতে।
গুণা বর্ত্তন্ত ইত্যেব যোঽবতিষ্ঠতি নেঙ্গতে॥
সমদুঃখসুখঃ স্বস্থঃ সমলোষ্টাশ্মকাঞ্চনঃ।
তুল্যপ্রিয়াপ্রিয়ো ধীরস্তুল্যনিন্দাত্মসংস্তুতিঃ॥
মানাপমানয়োস্তুল্যস্তুল্যো মিত্রারিপক্ষয়োঃ।
সর্ব্বারম্ভপরিত্যাগী গুণাতীতঃ স উচ্যতে॥
মাঞ্চ যোঽব্যভিচারেণ ভক্তিযোগেন সেবতে।
স গুণান্ সমতীত্যৈতান্ ব্রহ্মভূয়ায় কল্পতে॥
“যখন জীব সাক্ষী হইয়া গুণত্রয় অর্থাৎ ভগবানের ত্রৈগুণ্যময়ী শক্তিকেই একমাত্র কর্ত্তা বলিয়া দেখে এবং এই গুণত্রয়েরও উপর শক্তির প্রেরক ঈশ্বরকে জানিতে পারে, তখন সে-ই ভগবৎ-সাধর্ম্ম্য লাভ করে। তখন দেহস্থ জীব স্থূল ও সূক্ষ্ম এই দুই প্রকার দেহসম্ভূত গুণত্রয়কে অতিক্রম করিয়া জন্ম মৃত্যু জরাদুঃখ হইতে বিমুক্ত হইয়া অমরত্ব ভোগ করে। সত্ত্বজনিত জ্ঞান, রজোজনিত প্রবৃত্তি বা তমোজনিত নিদ্রা নিশ্চেষ্টা ভ্রমস্বরূপ মোহ আসিলে বিরক্ত হয় না, এই গুণত্রয়ের আগমন নির্গমনে সমান ভাব রাখিয়া উদাসীনের ন্যায় স্থির হইয়া থাকে, গুণগ্রাম তাহাকে বিচলিত করিতে পারে না, এই সবই গুণের স্বধর্ম্মজাত বৃত্তি বলিয়া দৃঢ় থাকে। যাহার পক্ষে সুখদুঃখ সমান, প্রিয়াপ্রিয় সমান, নিন্দাস্তুতি সমান, কাঞ্চন লোষ্ট্র উভয়ই প্রস্তরের তুল্য, যে ধীরস্থির, নিজের মধ্যে অটল, যাহার নিকট মান-অপমান একই, মিত্রপক্ষ ও শত্রুপক্ষ সমান প্রিয়, যে স্বয়ং প্রেরিত হইয়া কোন কার্য্যারম্ভ করে না, সকল কর্ম্ম ভগবানকে সমর্পণ করিয়া তাঁহারই প্রেরণায় কর্ম্ম করে, তাহাকেই গুণাতীত বলে। যে আমাকে নির্দ্দোষ ভক্তিযোগে সেবা করে, সে-ই এই তিন গুণকে অতিক্রম করিয়া ব্রহ্মপ্রাপ্তির উপযুক্ত হয়।”
