स्थितप्रज्ञस्य का भाषा समाधिस्थस्य केशव ।स्थितधीः किं प्रभाषेत किमासीत व्रजेत किम् ॥
sthitaprajñasya kā bhāṣā samādhisthasya keśavasthitadhīḥ kiṁ prabhāṣeta kimāsīta vrajeta kim
Arjuna said: What is the sign of the man in Samadhi whose intelligence is firmly fixed in wisdom? How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
His translation
URJOONA What is the speech of him in whom Wisdom hath taken its firm seat, O Késhove, of him who is in Samadhi, he whose thought standeth on the settled understanding, what speaketh he and what are his sittings, and what his goings?
Essays on the Gita
The sign of the man in Samadhi is not that he loses consciousness of objects and surroundings and of his mental and physical self and cannot be recalled to it even by burning or torture of the body, — the ordinary idea of the matter; trance is a particular intensity, not the essential sign. The test is the expulsion of all desires, their inability to get at the mind, and it is the inner state from which this freedom arises, the delight of the soul gathered within itself with the mind equal and still and high-poised above the attractions and repulsions, the alternations of sunshine and storm and stress of the external life. It is drawn inward even when acting outwardly; it is concentrated in self even when gazing out upon things; it is directed wholly to the Divine even when to the outward vision of others busy and preoccupied with the affairs of the world. Arjuna, voicing the average human mind, asks for some outward, physical,2·54 practically discernible sign of this great Samadhi; how does such a man speak, how sit, how walk? No such signs can be given, nor does the Teacher attempt to supply them; for the only possible test of its possession is inward and that there are plenty of hostile psychological forces to apply. Equality is the great stamp of the liberated soul and of that equality even the most discernible signs are still subjective.2·56 “A man with mind untroubled by sorrows, who has done with desire for pleasures, from whom liking and wrath and fear have passed away, such is the sage whose understanding has become founded in stability.” He is “without the triple action of the qualities of Prakriti,2·45 without the dualities, ever based in his true being, without getting or having, possessed of his self.” For what gettings and havings has the free soul? Once we are possessed of the Self, we are in possession of all things.
Letters
To be sthitaprajña merely means to have one’s thinking mind settled in the spiritual consciousness in the realisation of Self. That does not necessarily transform the other parts of the nature. The bringing down of the Force and Light of the higher consciousness, the opening of the psychic and the centres of the mind, vital and physical, the consent and receptive opening of the nature to the workings of the psychic and the higher consciousness, finally the opening to the supramental are the conditions of transformation. What do you mean by “attaining” the higher consciousness? The higher consciousness is something above the mind, vital and body of the human being. It is wholly spiritual. To attain may mean only to be able to go into it at will or to remain in it with a part of one’s consciousness, while the rest goes on in the old way. Psychic transformation is when the whole being is remoulded into the nature of the psychic; spiritual transformation is when the whole being is spiritualised; supramental transformation is when the whole being is supramentalised—that cannot be done automatically by merely being aware of the higher consciousness or attaining it in the ordinary limited sense.
Evening talks
Sri Aurobindo: You ask like Arjuna in the Gita: “How does the _sthitaprajña_ walk? How does he speak?”
Sri Aurobindo: You are asking like Arjuna in the Gita, “How does a liberated man walk or speak?” As I said, you have to be transformed yourself to know that. _(Laughter)_
