अथ केन प्रयुक्तोऽयं पापं चरति पूरुषः ।अनिच्छन्नपि वार्ष्णेय बलादिव नियोजितः ॥
atha kena prayukto’yaṁ pāpaṁ carati pūruṣaḥanicchannapi vārṣṇeya balādiva niyojitaḥ
Arjuna said: But (if there is no fault in following our Nature) what is this in us that drives a man to sin, as if by force, even against his own struggling will, O Varshneya?
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
His translation
URJOONA Who then is this by whom man is impelled that he worketh sin in the world, yea though he will it not, O Varshnéyan, as if forced to it by very violence?
Essays on the Gita
The Gita says, indeed, “All existences follow their nature and what shall coercing it avail?” which seems, if we take it by3·33 itself, a hopelessly absolute assertion of the omnipotence of Nature over the soul; “even the man of knowledge acts according to his own nature.” And on this it founds the injunction to follow faithfully in our action the law of our nature. “Better is one’s own law of works, svadharma, though in itself faulty3·35 than an alien law well wrought out; death in one’s own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law.” What is precisely meant by this svadharma we have to wait to see until we get to the more elaborate disquisition in the closing chapters about Purusha and Prakriti and the gunas; but certainly it does not mean that we are to follow any impulse, even though evil, which what we call our nature dictates to us. For between these two verses the Gita throws in this further injunction, “In the3·34 object of this or that sense liking and disliking are set in ambush; fall not into their power, for they are the besetters of the soul in its path.” And immediately after this, in answer to Arjuna’s objection who asks him, if there is no fault in following our3·36 Nature, what are we then to say of that in us which drives a man to sin, as if by force, even against his own struggling will, the Teacher replies that this is desire and its companion wrath, children of rajas, the second guna, the principle of passion, and this desire is the soul’s great enemy and has to be slain. Abstention from evil-doing it declares to be the first condition for liberation, and always it enjoins self-mastery, self-control, saṁyama, control of the mind, senses, all the lower being.
Letters
The moral of the condition you describe is not that Yoga should not be done but that you have to go on steadily healing the rift between the two parts of the being. The division is very usual, almost universal in human nature, and the following of the lower impulse in spite of the contrary will in the higher parts happens to almost everybody. It is the phenomenon noted by Arjuna in his question to Krishna, “Why does one do evil, even though one wishes not to do it, as if compelled to it by force?”, and expressed sententiously by Ovid, “video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor”.* By constant effort and aspiration one can arrive at a turning point when the psychic asserts itself and what seems a very slight psychological change or reversal alters the whole balance of the nature.
The realisation in the mind of the One brings or ought to bring a certain freedom in the mind, but it is possible for the vital and the body under its impulse to go on having the ordinary movements—for they depend only partially on the mind for their action. They can even carry it away, haranti prasabhaṁ manaḥ, or they can act in spite of the mind’s reasoning and disapprobation. “I see the better and approve it, I follow the worse” as the Roman poet puts it—in the language of the Gita, anicchannapi balād iva niyojitaḥ. It is necessary therefore that the realisation with its peace and force of purity should come down concretely into the vital and physical itself so that when the vital movements try to rise they are met by it and unable to remain because of its automatic pressure.
