सर्वभूतस्थमात्मानं सर्वभूतानि चात्मनि ।ईक्षते योगयुक्तात्मा सर्वत्र समदर्शनः ॥
sarvabhūtasthamātmānaṁ sarvabhūtāni cātmaniīkṣate yogayuktātmā sarvatra samadarśanaḥ
The man whose self is in Yoga, sees the self in all beings and all beings in the self, he is equal-visioned everywhere.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Essays on the Gita
The man whose self is in Yoga, sees the self in all beings and all beings in the self, he sees all with an equal vision.
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.
Essays on the Gita
To exalt oneself out of the lower imperfect Prakriti, traiguṇyamayī māyā, into unity with the divine being, consciousness and nature,* madbhāvam āgatāḥ, is the object of the Yoga. But4·10 when this object is fulfilled, when the man is in the Brahmic status and sees no longer with the false egoistic vision himself and the world, but sees all beings in the Self, in God, and the Self in all beings, God in all beings, what shall be the action,—since action there still is,—which results from that seeing, and what shall be the cosmic or individual motive of all his works? It is the question of Arjuna,* but answered from a standpoint other than that from which Arjuna had put it. The motive cannot be personal desire on the intellectual, moral, emotional level, for that has been abandoned,—even the moral motive has been abandoned, since the liberated man has passed beyond the lower distinction of sin and virtue, lives in a glorified purity beyond good and evil. It cannot be the spiritual call to his perfect self-development by means of disinterested works, for the call has been answered, the development is perfect and fulfilled. His motive of action can only be the holding together of the peoples,3·25 cikīrṣur lokasaṅgraham. This great march of the peoples towards a far-off divine ideal has to be held together, prevented from falling into the bewilderment, confusion and utter discord of the understanding which would lead to dissolution and destruction and to which the world moving forward in the night or dark twilight of ignorance would be too easily prone if it were not held together, conducted, kept to the great lines of its discipline by the illumination, by the strength, by the rule and example, by3·21 the visible standard and the invisible influence of its Best. The best, the individuals who are in advance of the general line and above the general level of the collectivity, are the natural leaders of mankind, for it is they who can point to the race both the way they must follow and the standard or ideal they have to keep to or to attain. But the divinised man is the Best in no ordinary sense of the word and his influence, his example must have a power which that of no ordinarily superior man can exercise. What example then shall he give? What rule or standard shall he uphold?
- kiṁ prabhāṣeta kim āsīta vrajeta kim.
Hence the immense importance attached by the Gita in its elements of Karmayoga to equality; it is the nodus of the free spirit’s free relations with the world. Self-knowledge, desirelessness, impersonality, bliss, freedom from the modes of Nature, when withdrawn into themselves, self-absorbed, inactive, have no need of equality; for they take no cognisance of the things in which the opposition of equality and inequality arises. But the moment the spirit takes cognisance of and deals with the multiplicities, personalities, differences, inequalities of the action of Nature, it has to effectuate these other signs of its free status by this one manifesting sign of equality. Knowledge is the consciousness of unity with the One; and in relation with the many6·29–31 different beings and existences of the universe it must show itself by an equal oneness with all. Impersonality is the one immutable spirit’s superiority to the variations of its multiple personality in the world; in its dealings with the personalities of the universe it must show itself in the equal and impartial spirit of its action with regard to all, however various that action may be made by the variety of relations into which it is moulded or of the conditions under which it has to take place. So Krishna in the Gita says that none is dear to him, none hated, to all he is equal in spirit; yet is the God-lover the special receiver of his grace, because the relation he has created is different and the one4·11 impartial Lord of all yet meets each soul according to its way of approach to him. Desirelessness is the illimitable Spirit’s superiority to the limiting attraction of the separate objects of desire in the world; when it has to enter into relations with those objects, it must show it either by an equal and impartial indifference in their possession or by an equal and impartial unattached delight in all and love for all which, because it is self-existent, does not depend upon possession or non-possession, but is in its essence unperturbed and immutable. For the spirit’s bliss is in itself, and if this bliss is to enter into relations with things and creatures, it is only in this way that it can manifest its free spirituality. Traiguṇātītya, transcendence of the gunas, is the unperturbed spirit’s superiority to that flux of action of the modes of Nature which is in its constant character perturbed and unequal; if it has to enter into relations with the conflicting and unequal activities of Nature, if the free soul is to allow its nature any action at all, it must show its superiority by an impartial equality towards all activities, results or happenings.
The higher knowledge we then get is that which is to the knower of Brahman his constant vision of things when he lives uninterruptedly in the Brahman, brahmavid brahmaṇi sthitaḥ. That is not a vision or knowledge or consciousness of Brahman to the exclusion of all else, but a seeing of all in Brahman and as the Self. For, it is said, the knowledge by which we rise beyond all relapse back into the bewilderment of our mental4·35 nature, is “that by which thou shalt see all existences without exception in the Self, then in Me.” Elsewhere the Gita puts it more largely, “Equal-visioned everywhere, he sees the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self. He who sees Me everywhere and all and each in Me, is never lost to Me nor I to him. He who has reached oneness and loves Me in all beings, that Yogin, howsoever he lives and acts, is living and acting in Me. O Arjuna, he who sees all equally everywhere as himself, whether it be happiness or suffering, I hold him to be the supreme Yogin.” That is the old Vedantic knowledge of the Upanishads which the Gita holds up constantly before us; but it is its superiority to other later formulations of it that it turns persistently this knowledge into a great practical philosophy of divine living. Always it insists on the relation between this knowledge of oneness and Karmayoga, and therefore on the knowledge of oneness as the basis of a liberated action in the world. Whenever it speaks of knowledge, it turns at once to speak of equality which is its result; whenever it speaks of equality, it turns to speak too of the knowledge which is its basis. The equality it enjoins does not begin and end in a static condition of the soul useful only for self-liberation; it is always a basis of works. The peace of the Brahman in the liberated soul is the foundation; the large, free, equal, worldwide action of the Lord in the liberated nature radiates the power which proceeds from that peace; these two made one synthesise divine works and God-knowledge.
For when the Gita describes the nature of this self-realisation and the result of the Yoga which comes by Nirvana of the separative ego-mind and its motives of thought and feeling and action into the Brahman-consciousness, it includes the cosmic sense, though lifted into a new kind of vision.6·29 “The man whose self is in Yoga, sees the self in all beings and all beings in the self, he sees all with an equal vision.” All that he sees is to him the Self, all is his self, all is the Divine. But is there no danger, if he dwells at all in the mutability of the Kshara, of his losing all the results of this difficult Yoga, losing the Self and falling back into the mind, of the Divine losing him and the world getting him, of his losing the Divine and getting back in its place the ego and the lower nature? No, says the Gita; “he who sees Me everywhere and sees all in6·30 Me, to him I do not get lost, nor does he get lost to Me.” For this peace of Nirvana, though it is gained through the Akshara, is founded upon the being of the Purushottama, mat-saṁsthām, and that is extended, the Divine, the Brahman is extended too in the world of beings and, though transcendent of it, not imprisoned in its own transcendence. One has to see all things as He and live and act wholly in that vision; that is the perfect fruit of the Yoga.
The Gita answers by presenting the Supreme as something greater even than the immutable Self, more comprehensive, one who is at once this Self and the Master of works in Nature. But he directs the works of Nature with the eternal calm, the equality, the superiority to works and personality which belong to the immutable. This, we may say, is the poise of being from which he directs works, and by growing into this we are growing into his being and into the poise of divine works. From this he goes forth as the Will and Power of his being in Nature, manifests himself in all existences, is born as Man in the world, is there in the heart of all men, reveals himself as the Avatar, the divine birth in man; and as man grows into his being, it is into the divine birth that he4·23 grows. Works must be done as a sacrifice to this Lord of our6·29–31 works, and we must by growing into the Self realise our oneness with him in our being and see our personality as a partial manifestation of him in Nature. One with him in being, we grow one with all beings in the universe and do divine works, not as ours,3·20 but as his workings through us for the maintenance and leading of the peoples.
The Synthesis of Yoga
All this existence can therefore be approached by a Yoga of positive and active in place of the negative and passive equality. This requires, first, a new knowledge which is the knowledge of unity,—to see all things as oneself and to see all things in God and God in all things. There is then a will of equal acceptance of all phenomena, all events, all happenings, all persons and forces as masks of the Self, movements of the one energy, results of the one power in action, ruled by the one divine wisdom; and on the foundation of this will of greater knowledge there grows a strength to meet everything with an untroubled soul and mind. There must be an identification of myself with the self of the universe, a vision and a feeling of oneness with all creatures, a perception of all forces and energies and results as the movement of this energy of my self and therefore intimately my own; not, obviously, of my ego-self which must be silenced, eliminated, cast away,—otherwise this perfection cannot come,—but of a greater impersonal or universal self with which I am now one. For my personality is now only one centre of action of that universal self, but a centre intimately in relation and unison with all other personalities and also with all those other things which are to us only impersonal objects and forces: but in fact they also are powers of the one impersonal Person (Purusha), God, Self and Spirit. My individuality is his and is no longer a thing incompatible with or separated from universal being; it is itself universalised, a knower of the universal Ananda and one with and a lover of all that it knows, acts on and enjoys. For to the equal knowledge of the universe and equal will of acceptance of the universe will be added an equal delight in all the cosmic manifestation of the Divine.
Other writings
The third process of the yoga is to perceive all things as God. First, as a rule, in the process of knowledge one comes to see pervading all space and time one divine impersonal Existence, Sad Atman, without movement, distinction or feature, śāntam alakṣaṇam, in which all names and forms seem to stand with a very doubtful or a very minor reality. In this realisation the One may seem to be the only reality and everything else Maya, a purposeless and inexplicable illusion. But afterwards, if you do not stop short and limit yourself by the impersonal realisation, you will come to see the same Atman not only containing and supporting all created things, but informing and filling them, and eventually you will be able to understand that even the names and forms are Brahman. You will then be able to live more and more in the knowledge which the Upanishads and the Gita hold up as the rule of life; you will see the Self in all existing things and all existing things in the Self, ātmānaṁ sarvabhūteṣu sarvabhūtāni cātmani; you will be aware of all things as Brahman, sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma. But the crowning realisation of this yoga is when you become aware of the whole world as the expression, play or Lila of an infinite divine personality, when you see in all, not the impersonal Sad Atman which is the basis of manifest existence,—although you do not lose that knowledge,—but Sri Krishna who at once is, bases and transcends all manifest and unmanifest existence, avyakto ‘vyaktāt paraḥ. For behind the Sad Atman is the silence of the Asat which the Buddhist Nihilists realised as the śūnyam and beyond that silence is the Paratpara Purusha (puruṣo vareṇya ādityavarṇas tamasaḥ parastāt). It is he who has made this world out of his being and is immanent in and sustains it as the infinite-finite Ishwara, ananta and sānta, Shiva and Narayana, Sri Krishna the Lilamaya who draws all of us to him by his love, compels all of us by his masteries and plays his eternal play of joy and strength and beauty in the manifold world.
Writings in Bengali
The whole human race is advancing towards Knowledge enjoying Ignorance; this is the true evolution. Those who are best, sadhaks, yogis, men of knowledge, devotees, karmayogis, they are the advance guard of this great expedition; reaching the distant destination with swift speed they return and make the human race hear the good news, show the path, distribute power. The Avatars and Vibhutis of God coming make the path easy, create favourable conditions, destroy obstacles. Knowledge in Ignorance, renunciation in enjoyment, asceticism in the world, all beings in the Self, the Self in all beings, the world in God, God in the world, this realisation is real knowledge; this is the appointed path of the human race to go to the destination. Narrowness of self-knowledge is the main obstacle to progress; body-consciousness, selfishness is the root cause of that narrowness; therefore seeing others as oneself is the first step to progress.
Evening talks
Sri Aurobindo: These are, rather, conditions for realisation. All experiences are true and have their place. But because one is true one can’t say that the other is false. Truth is infinite. There are so many ways to come to the Truth. The wider you become, the higher you go, the more you find that there is still more and more. For instance, the Maharshi has his experience of ‘I’. But when I had the Nirvana experience I could not think of an ‘I’ — however much I tried I could not think of any ‘I’. It simply got displaced. One can’t speak of it as ‘I’. It is either ‘He’ or ‘That’ — I call it Laya. Realisation of the Self is all right; Laya is a part of a realisation which is much more comprehensive. When I do not accept Mayavada it is not that I have not realised the Truth behind it or that I don’t know “the One in All” and “All in the One”, — but because I have other realisations which are equally strong and which cannot be shut out. The Maharshi is right and everybody else is also right.
When I don’t accept the Self as final, it is not that I have not realised its Truth or that I don’t know the One in All and All in the One. But I have other realisations which are equally strong and which cannot be shut out. The Maharshi is right and everybody else is also right.
Disciple: When the Gita says: “You will find the Self in all and all in the Self and then in Me” — what Self does it speak of?
Satyendra: When Krishna in the Gita says, “You will find the Self in all and all in the Self and then in me”, what Self is meant?
Sri Aurobindo laughing: _ Yes – the Gita also makes the Divine appear variously: the Divine says, “I am in everybody”, and then, “Everybody is in me”, and finally, “Everybody is in me but I am not in them.”
