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VerseThe Gita in Sri Aurobindo’s Words

Verse 6·21

The Blessed Lord

Verse

सुखमात्यन्तिकं यत्तद् बुद्धिग्राह्यमतीन्द्रियम् ।वेत्ति यत्र न चैवायं स्थितश्चलति तत्त्वतः ॥

sukhamātyantikaṁ yattad buddhigrāhyamatīndriyamvetti yatra na caivāyaṁ sthitaścalati tattvataḥ

Gītā 6·21

That in which the soul knows its own true and exceeding bliss, which is perceived by the intelligence and is beyond the senses, wherein established, it can no longer fall away from the spiritual truth of its being.

Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy

His translation

In a silent place let the Yogin gird his self to Yoga, solitary, governed in heart & spirit, devote his soul continually without desires, without the sense of belongings. In a pure & holy region let him set up his steady & unchanging seat, neither very high nor very low, with grass of cusha spread and a deerskin…Read the whole passage · 774 wordsClose the passage

In a silent place let the Yogin gird his self to Yoga, solitary, governed in heart & spirit, devote his soul continually without desires, without the sense of belongings. In a pure & holy region let him set up his steady & unchanging seat, neither very high nor very low, with grass of cusha spread and a deerskin thereon, and on that a robe. There with his mind directed to one point, with a rein on the workings of his heart & senses, let him sit on the seat he has made and betake himself to Yoga for the cleansing of the self within. He shall sit steady holding head & neck & body in one line & motionless and he shall keep his gaze fixed on the joining-place of his nostrils so that his eyes shall not wander over the regions; so steadfast in the vow of abstinence & purity with a glad & calm spirit from which fear hath been driven out, with a mind under restraint, with a heart full of Me let him sit in Yoga giving himself utterly to Me. Ever if he yoke himself so to Yoga with a governed heart, the Yogin reacheth that Peace in Me which is entire quietude. Yoga is not for the overeater neither can a man get Yoga by abstaining utterly from food, nor is it for him that is overgiven to sleep nor can one get it by waking always. But when a man eateth his food & giveth his pleasures to God and all his striving in his works & his sleep is for Him & his waking is for Him, Yoga cometh to that man [and] slayeth his sorrows. When the mind is wholly under government & stands well contained in the Self, when all desirable things cannot get the heart to hunger after them, then a man is said to be in Yoga. Even as the flame of a lamp in a windless place moveth not at all, such is the image men have handed down of a Yogin when he practiseth Yoga with his heart under rein. That wherein the conscious heart ceaseth & is blocked in from its workings by constancy in the practice of Yoga, that wherein by the strength of the self the mind of man seeth the Self and is wholly satisfied in the Self,—where this inward Spirit knoweth that extreme & exceeding happiness which is beyond the reach of the senses & which the reason cannot grasp, and it cleaveth to it & moveth not from the truth of things,—that which when a man has won he cannot conceive of any greater gain, to which when he holds he is not moved therefrom even by the most sore poignant grief, that know for a man’s divorce from his long wedlock with sorrow, which is called Yoga; resolutely should a man set himself to that Yoga with a heart that will not despond. He must abandon all the longings that are born of the imaginations of the Will nor keep one back for his comfort, he must surround with his mind & force in from their delight the cohort of the senses; so with the understanding self held well within the grasp of Strong-Control he must cabin in the mind into the self and think of nothing at all. Whenever & to whatever side darts away the infirm & restless mind, thou must curb it from its journey to bring it back within the Self & in the Self tame it to obedience—for a high beatitude cometh to such a Yogi whose mind is calmed, whose active nature is tranquillised, who has no sin, who has wholly become Brahman. Easily shall the Yogi who ever thus setteth himself to Yoga put from him the stain of obscuration, easily feel the utter bliss and the touch divine. The soul that is set in Yoga seeth himself in all creatures & all creatures in himself and he hath one heart for all beings that the world containeth. When a man seeth Me everywhere and all the world in Me, I am with him always and he is always with Me, and we are lost to each other never. When a Yogin becometh one with all beings & loveth Me in all creatures, though he live & move in all manner of activities, he liveth & doeth only in Me. For him I deem to be the greatest Yogin, O Urjoona, who looks alike on all beings everywhere as if they were his own self whether it be for happiness or whether it be for pain.

CWSA 5 · Translations · The Bhagavad Gita: The First Six Chapters · pp. 96–98

The Life Divine

The complete use of pure reason brings us finally from physical to metaphysical knowledge. But the concepts of metaphysical knowledge do not in themselves fully satisfy the demand of our integral being. They are indeed entirely satisfactory to the pure reason itself, because they are the very stuff of its own existence. But our nature sees things through two eyes always, for it views them doubly as idea and as fact and therefore every concept is incomplete for us and to a part of our nature almost unreal until it becomes an experience. But the truths which are now in question, are of an order not subject to our normal experience. They are, in their nature, “beyond the perception of the senses but seizable by the perception of the reason.” Therefore, some other faculty of experience is necessary by which the demand of our nature can be fulfilled and this can only come, since we are dealing with the supraphysical, by an extension of psychological experience.

CWSA 21 · The Life Divine - I · The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge · pp. 67–68

None of them, however, leads to the aim we have in view, the psychological experience of those truths that are “beyond perception by the sense but seizable by the perceptions of the reason”, buddhigrāhyam atīndriyam.* They give us only a larger field of phenomena and more effective means for the observation of phenomena. The truth of things always escapes beyond the sense. Yet is it a sound rule inherent in the very constitution of universal existence that where there are truths attainable by the reason, there must be somewhere in the organism possessed of that reason a means of arriving at or verifying them by experience. The one means we have left in our mentality is an extension of that form of knowledge by identity which gives us the awareness of our own existence. It is really upon a self-awareness more or less conscient, more or less present to our conception that the knowledge of the contents of our self is based. Or to put it in a more general formula, the knowledge of the contents is contained in the knowledge of the continent. If then we can extend our faculty of mental self-awareness to awareness of the Self beyond and outside us, Atman or Brahman of the Upanishads, we may become possessors in experience of the truths which form the contents of the Atman or Brahman in the universe. It is on this possibility that Indian Vedanta has based itself. It has sought through knowledge of the Self the knowledge of the universe.

CWSA 21 · The Life Divine - I · The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge · pp. 70–71

Record of Yoga

But man can become aware of things which the senses cannot grasp, buddhigrâhyam atîndriyam. The proof of that you can get daily, when the Yogic power is developed. This single fact that man can see with his Buddhi the truth about a thing he has never seen or known before, is enough to destroy the materialistic idea of thought.

CWSA 11 · Record of Yoga - II · Yogic Sadhan V · p. 1384

From The Gita in Sri Aurobindo’s Words · Sri Aurobindo · The Bhagavad Gita · incarnateword.in