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VerseThe Gita in Sri Aurobindo’s Words

Verse 6·8

The Blessed Lord

Verse

ज्ञानविज्ञानतृप्तात्मा कूटस्थो विजितेन्द्रियः ।युक्त इत्युच्यते योगी समलोष्टाश्मकाञ्चनः ॥

jñānavijñānatṛptātmā kūṭastho vijitendriyaḥyukta ityucyate yogī samaloṣṭāśmakāñcanaḥ

Gītā 6·8

The Yogi, who is satisfied with self-knowledge, tranquil and self-poised, master of his senses, regarding alike clod and stone and gold, is said to be in Yoga.

Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy

AI translationAI-synthesised translation — not Sri Aurobindo’s text

His translation

KRISHNA Who doeth the works he hath to do but dependeth [not] on the fruit of his works, he is the Sunnyasin and he is the Yogin and not he who lighteth not the daily fire and doeth not the daily ritual. Know this, O Pandava, that the thing which men call renunciation is nothing but Yoga, since no man becometh a Yogin if he hath not renounced the imaginations of the will. Of the sage who has yet to ascend the hill of Yoga, works are the medium, but calm is the medium of him who sitteth already on the hilltops. For when a man has renounced all the imaginings of the will and his heart clings not to his works and clings not to the objects of the senses, that is the true Sunnyasin, that is the sitter on the hilltop of Yoga. Let a man deliver his soul by its own strength & let him not afflict his spirit to weaken it; for a man’s self is its own & only friend and its own & only enemy. To that man his self is a friend who has conquered self by the Self, but when he is not in touch with his self, it worketh enmity against him like an outward foe. Now when he has mastered self and is at peace, then the Self of him is utterly at its ease, unaffected by heat & cold, pleasure or pain, imperturbable in honour & disgrace. The Yogi whose soul is satisfied with wisdom and discernment, the immovable sitter on his hilltop and victor over his senses, is called the Yogin who hath the Yoga; and gold and gravel, sand or stone is all to him one substance. He who hath one heart for his lover and his friend and foeman and those who care not for him, who stand midway between liking & hating, for men he should love and men he should hate, yea & even his soul maketh no difference between the saint & the sinner, he is the truly great among men.

CWSA 5 · Translations · The Bhagavad Gita: The First Six Chapters · p. 96

Essays on the Gita

But when one has got to the top? Then works are no longer the cause; the calm of self-mastery and self-possession gained by works becomes the cause. Again, the cause of what? Of fixity in the Self, in the Brahman-consciousness and of the perfect equality in which the divine works of the liberated man are done. “For when one does not get attached to the objects of6·4 sense or to works and has renounced all will of desire in the mind, then is he said to have ascended to the top of Yoga.” That, as we know already, is the spirit in which the liberated man does works; he does them without desire and attachment, without the egoistic personal will and the mental seeking which is the parent of desire. He has conquered his lower self, reached the perfect calm in which his highest self is manifest to him, that highest self always concentrated in its own being, samāhita, in Samadhi, not only in the trance of the inward-drawn consciousness, but always, in the waking state of the mind as well, in exposure to the causes of desire and of the disturbance of calm, to grief and pleasure, heat and cold, honour and disgrace, all the dualities,6·5–9 śītoṣṇa-sukhaduḥkheṣu tathā mānāpamānayoḥ. This higher self is the Akshara, kūṭastha, which stands above the changes and the perturbations of the natural being; and the Yogin is said to be in Yoga with it when he also is like it, kūṭastha, when he is superior to all appearances and mutations, when he is satisfied with self-knowledge, when he is equal-minded to all things and happenings and persons.

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