कैर्लिङ्गैस्त्रीन्गुणानेतान् अतीतो भवति प्रभो ।किमाचारः कथं चैतां स्त्रीन्गुणानतिवर्तते ॥
kairliṅgaistrīnguṇānetān atīto bhavati prabhokimācāraḥ kathaṁ caitāṁ strīnguṇānativartate
Arjuna said: What are the signs of the man who has risen above the three gunas, O Lord? What his action and how does he surmount the gunas?
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience? What are the10·16 great manifestations of its self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by meditation? May he not see even11·1–4 now the divine cosmic Form of That which is actually speaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and finally a clear14·21 statement of the practical operations and results of the three modes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount.17·1
But what, asks Arjuna, are the signs of such a man, what his action and how is he said even in action to be above the three gunas? The sign, says Krishna, is that equality of which I have so constantly spoken; the sign is that inwardly he regards happiness and suffering alike, gold and mud and stone as of equal value and that to him the pleasant and the unpleasant, praise and blame, honour and insult, the faction of his friends and the faction of his enemies are equal things. He is steadfast in a wise imperturbable and immutable inner calm and quietude. He initiates no action, but leaves all works to be done by the gunas of Nature. Sattwa, rajas or tamas may rise or cease in his outer mentality and his physical movements with their results of enlightenment, of impulsion to works or of inaction and the clouding over of the mental and nervous being, but he does not rejoice when this comes or that ceases, nor on the other hand does he abhor or shrink from the operation or the cessation of these things. He has seated himself in the conscious light of another principle than the nature of the gunas and that greater consciousness remains steadfast in him, above these powers and unshaken by their motions like the sun above clouds to one who has risen into a higher atmosphere. He from that height sees that it is the gunas that are in process of action and that their storm and calm are not himself but only a movement of Prakriti; his self is immovable above and his spirit does not participate in that shifting mutability of things unstable. This is the impersonality of the Brahmic status; for that higher principle, that greater wide high-seated consciousness, kūṭastha, is the immutable Brahman.14·21, 14·21–26, 14·22, 14·23
