येषां त्वन्तगतं पापं जनानां पुण्यकर्मणाम् ।ते द्वन्द्वमोहनिर्मुक्ता भजन्ते मां दृढव्रताः ॥
yeṣāṁ tvantagataṁ pāpaṁ janānāṁ puṇyakarmaṇāmte dvandvamohanirmuktā bhajante māṁ dṛḍhavratāḥ
But those men of virtuous deeds, in whom sin is come to an end, they, freed from the delusion of the dualities, worship Me, steadfast in the vow of self-consecration.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Essays on the Gita
Man, therefore, has first of all to become ethical, sukṛtī, and then to rise to heights beyond any mere ethical rule of living, to the light, largeness and power of the spiritual nature, where he gets beyond the grasp of the dualities and its7·28 delusion, dvandva-moha. There he no longer seeks his personal good or pleasure or shuns his personal suffering or pain, for by these things he is no longer affected, nor says any longer, “I am virtuous,” “I am sinful,” but acts in his own high spiritual nature by the will of the Divine for the universal good. We have already seen that for this end self-knowledge, equality, impersonality are the first necessities, and that that is the way of reconciliation between knowledge and works, between spirituality and activity in the world, between the ever immobile quietism of the timeless self and the eternal play of the pragmatic energy of Nature. But the Gita now lays down another and greater necessity for the Karmayogin who has unified his Yoga of works with the Yoga of knowledge. Not knowledge and works alone are demanded of him now, but bhakti also, devotion to the Divine, love and adoration and the soul’s desire of the Highest. This demand, not expressly made until now, had yet been prepared when the Teacher laid down as the necessary turn of his Yoga the conversion of all works into a sacrifice to the Lord of our being and fixed as its culmination the giving up of all works, not only into our impersonal Self, but through impersonality into the Being from whom all our will and power originate. What was there implied is now brought out and we begin to see more fully the Gita’s purpose.
We have now set before us three interdependent movements of our release out of the normal nature and our growth into the divine and spiritual being. “By the delusion of the7·27 dualities which arises from wish and disliking, all existences in the creation are led into bewilderment,” says the Gita. That is the ignorance, the egoism which fails to see and lay hold on the Divine everywhere, because it sees only the dualities of Nature and is constantly occupied with its own separate personality and its seekings and shrinkings. For escape from this circle the first necessity in our works is to get clear of the sin of the vital ego, the fire of passion, the tumult of desire of the rajasic nature, and this has to be done by the steadying sattwic impulse of the ethical being. When that is done,7·28 yeṣāṁ tvantagataṁ pāpaṁ janānāṁ puṇyakarmaṇām,—or rather as it is being done, for after a certain point all growth in the sattwic nature brings an increasing capacity for a high quietude, equality and transcendence,—it is necessary to rise above the dualities and to become impersonal, equal, one self with the Immutable, one self with all existences. This process of growing into the spirit completes our purification. But while this is being done, while the soul is enlarging into self-knowledge, it has also to increase in devotion. For it has not only to act in a large spirit of equality, but to do also sacrifice to the Lord, to that Godhead in all beings which it does not yet know perfectly, but which it will be able so to know, integrally, samagraṁ mām, when it has firmly the vision of the one self everywhere and in all existences. Equality and vision of unity once perfectly gained, te dvandva-moha-nirmuktāḥ, a supreme bhakti, an all-embracing devotion7·28 to the Divine, becomes the whole and the sole law of the being. All other law of conduct merges into that surrender,18·66 sarva-dharmān parityajya. The soul then becomes firm in this bhakti and in the vow of self-consecration of all its being, knowledge, works; for it has now for its sure base, its absolute foundation of existence and action the perfect, the integral, the unifying knowledge of the all-originating Godhead, te bhajante māṁ dṛḍha-vratāḥ7·28.
The Arya — text not in the CWSA
Gita VII. 1–28
