The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity

The First Six Chapters of the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 24: Sannyasa and Yoga are One

Chapter Six of the Bhagavadgita, which is called dhyana yoga, or the yoga of meditation, is also known as atma samyama yoga, or the yoga of self-restraint. In some editions of the Bhagavadgita we will find the concluding colophon worded as atma samyama yoga, while in others it is termed dhyana yoga because dhyana is the height of atma samyama. Meditation is the crowning point of self-control.

We were referring yesterday to the terms sannyasa and yoga, which appeared to suggest or indicate two different approaches to life, sannyasa meaning 'abandonment, relinquishment', tyaga meaning 'renunciation, non-attachment or non-possession of anything that is of the nature of a belonging', and yoga meaning in one context 'right action, rightly motivated conduct and behaviour, or communion with Reality'.

It is possible that the human mind, which is accustomed to think in crude ways and in a prosaic manner, accustomed to take things for granted in the way they are formally presented in the world, taking the letter for the spirit mostly, such a mind is likely to see no vital connection between yoga and sannyasa. Bhagavan Sri Krishna makes out at the very outset that sannyasa and yoga mean one and the same thing. Yaṃ saṃnyāsam iti prāhur yogaṃ taṃ viddhi pāṇḍava, na hy asaṃnyastasaṃkalpo yogī bhavati kaścana (BG 6.2): What is called sannyasa is the same as yoga, and what is called yoga is the same as sannyasa.

In a more homely way, we can say that freedom from illness is health, and health is freedom from illness. Sannyasa is freedom from illness, and yoga is health. What is the difference between these two conditions? We may say there is a difference because in freedom from illness we are engaged in or have achieved non-contact with something, whereas in health we are established in something. But we have to exercise our subtle understanding here to appreciate that non-contact is the same as self-establishment. They cannot be two different things. Self-establishment gets vitiated to the extent that there is external content, and to the extent that we are free from any kind of outward contact, to that extent we are in our own selves. Therefore, there need not be much of a difficulty in accepting that health and freedom from illness are not two entirely different things. So sannyasa, which is non-contact – and therefore non-possession, non-craving, non-longing and non-association, nonattachment – cannot be entirely different from union with fact.

The fact of the matter, with which union has to be established by the practice of yoga, is the main subject of this chapter on dhyana yoga, meditation. That which engenders the spirit of contact with external things, rather, making one feel that there is a total dependence of oneself on external factors, is the creative will of the individual. It is called sankalpa in this verse that I recited just now. Sankalpa is a determination of the will in respect of an external achievement and the fulfilment of a wish. This must be done, this has to be obtained, this situation should prevail. Such are some of the features of a creative volition, or will. But it is here mentioned in this verse that no one can be a yogi with this kind of creative will. Na hy asaṃnyastasaṃkalpo yogī bhavati kaścana: One cannot be oneself and also another at the same time. Either we are somewhere else, or we are here. We cannot be in two places at the same moment. Any creative projection of consciousness in the form of a wish for satisfaction from outside sources is an alienation of the Self. An alienation of oneself is a movement of oneself from oneself into something else which is not oneself. So if yoga is union with Reality, we shall be told shortly that the Self is the greatest reality; therefore, to be in the state of yoga, which is to be in union with Reality, would be to be established in the Self, and that would imply the non-association of consciousness with anything that is not itself.

Now, incidentally, it will be learned that the Self is consciousness. There is the identity of what we call consciousness with the fact of selfhood. There is nothing that can be called a self except consciousness. Consciousness is that which knows, and it cannot become the known object at any time. It cannot become other than what it is. It cannot become an object. It cannot move out of itself. A question of consciousness moving out of itself would imply the possibility of consciousness becoming other than what it is, and consciousness becoming other than what it is would mean consciousness becoming unconsciousness, because that which is not consciousness, that which is other than consciousness, is unconsciousness, non-consciousness, externality, materiality and spatiality. Such a thing is not possible because the term 'self' is applied to that position which cannot brook any interference from outside, and a self cannot become a non-self. That establishment of the Self in itself is the ultimate yoga. Hence, sannyasa goes with it. Attachment cannot go with yoga because union with oneself, which is the fact of yoga, cannot be at the same time a union with the contrary to it. One cannot be a non-sannyasin and at the same time be a yogi.

Here the Bhagavadgita uses the word 'sannyasa' in a specialised sense, not in the usual socially-interpreted traditional sense of an isolated life of retreat, socially speaking. These are external forms taken by the retreat of consciousness into oneself. However, the Bhagavadgita wants us to be very cautious here. The prescription here by the Bhagavadgita is extremely precise – namely, that renunciation and union are not two things, which is to be understood and borne in mind carefully. With what are we going to be in union in the state of yoga, and from what are we going to detach ourselves in sannyasa? Most people – every one of us, I should say – will one day or the other come a cropper in probing this theme. None of us can be so sure that the matter is very clear. It may look that it is clear for a moment, but suddenly a cyclonic dust may blow over our heads and our vision can be blurred, and it would not be easy to make out what exactly is required of us in leading a spiritual life, which we call the life of yoga, and incidentally, the yoga of renunciation also. We are likely to commit a mistake, and a mix-up is likely to be made.

It was mentioned briefly in the Second Chapter itself that sankhya, which is right understanding, on which yoga, which is right action, is based, is a clarity of intention in regard to everything in the world, namely, one's association with things, one's relation to things. We may be unrelated to things physically while in a state of physical retreat. If we are on top of a hill, we are in a state of retreat with no contact whatsoever with apparently attractive things in the world. But the Bhagavadgita tells us that this is not the way of looking at things. Contact with an object does not necessarily mean non-physical contact because the bondage of the spirit, which is engendered by contacts of various types, is not to be connected with a physical juxtaposition of things.

The person is there wherever the person's mind is. Wherever our mind is, there we are sitting. We are sitting here, but if our mind is not here, we are not here, because we are not the body. It is easy with a little bit of investigation to accept that the so-called 'I' is not this physical frame only. The great status that I am maintaining as the me or the I or the myself cannot be wholly associated with the physical body. My requirement is not necessarily a bodily requirement. Hence, where I am is not to be decided by the position of the physical body. Therefore, the freedom and the bondage of a person is not identical with associations which are entirely physical. Non-contact with the physical objects may go hand in hand with psychological contact. An abstemious person may be physically unconnected with the things of the world, but that person may be psychologically connected. Taste for things is one thing; absence of contact for things is another thing. There can be absence of physical association with things with the taste for the very same thing from which one is away, and the sannyasa that is spoken of, and to which reference was made here as sankalpa tyaga, is the absence of taste for things, and not a physical isolation, because it matters not where the body is, but it matters very much where the mind is.

Hence, the term sannyasa used here is to be understood in a highly elevated spiritual sense. It is not a ritual. It is not something that is done outwardly. The whole system of the yoga of the Bhagavadgita is an inwardisation, gradually, stage by stage, of what we have to call selfhood. Outwardly, the bound man's self is in the objects to which he is attached. The self of the mother is in the son or the daughter, the rich man's self is in the money, the proud man's self is in his power and position and authority, so the self can also be somewhere outside the physical body, as in the instances cited, because the self, for all practical purposes, is in that location of the mind of the person. So wherever the mind is seated, the self projects itself there. The consciousness animates psychological operations, and we become totally alienated persons in our day-to-day life of humdrum occupation.

So na hy asaṃnyastasaṃkalpo yogī bhavati kaścana, yaṃ saṃnyāsam iti prāhur yogaṃ taṃ viddhi: To be healthily established in one's own self is to be detached from everything that is not oneself. Hence, yoga and sannyasa are one and the same thing. Yadā hi nendriyārtheṣu na karmasv anuṣajjate, sarvasaṃkalpasaṃnyāsī yogārūḍhas tadocyate (Gita 6.4): That person is to be considered as established in the state of yoga who is inwardly unconcerned with actions performed, or with the objects of sense. Attachments are psychological and also physical. We may be sensorily attached to corresponding physical objects or we may be psychologically attached to a kind of self-respect that we maintain, an egoism that we have, a recognition that we assume for our own selves, or a status that we seem to be occupying in our own eyes. This is also an attachment.

In the practice of yoga, therefore, the Bhagavadgita makes out here that a careful, detached attitude should be maintained not only in respect of one's psychological operations, but also in respect of one's sensory actions. Action is psychological as well as physical, and contact also is of this nature. Nendriyārtheṣu na karmasv anuṣajjate: When we are not helplessly tied down by the bonds of attachment to the works that we do and the objects that are around us, we are free from that binding inward conduct called psychic or creative willing: sarva sankalpa sannyasa. Such a person is automatically established in the state of yoga.

Now, what does one mean by saying that there is such a thing called 'establishment in yoga'? We have to go slowly here in making things a little clear. Gradually the theme will be unfolded as we move forward. It is the same as establishment in the Self – restraint of the self for the sake of establishment in the Self. This is, again, a little intriguing position and description. We restrain that, the very thing on which we have to establish ourselves. The self has to be controlled in order that one may become the Self. That which troubles us is the Self, and that which shall bestow freedom on us is also the Self. Our sorrow is caused by a kind of self, and our joy also shall be in the Self. What is the kind of self that troubles us? What is the kind of self in which we are going to be established when we are said to be rooted in yoga?

The 'self' is used in various significations in the language of the Bhagavadgita. The physical body is considered by us as our self. “I am coming just now.” When we make statements like this, we mean that the body is coming. “I am hungry, I am feeling cold, I am feeling thirsty, I am tired.” These are statements associated with the physical self. Or when the mother says that she is dead because her child is dead, she does not refer to her physical self. It is another self altogether which she was considering as her son or daughter, or some child. Or a rich man says that he is dead because all his wealth has gone. The wealth is dead; therefore, the person himself feels he is dead. So here is one kind of self which exclaims, “I am gone!”

What has gone? A kind of self has been in a state of affairs which is inexplicable to that experiencer. The loss of a property looks like the loss of selfhood; the loss of respect looks like the loss of selfhood. We have varieties of selves, and these are the selves that give us trouble. Money-self, wealth-self, respect-self, property-self, son-self, husband-self, wife-self, daughter-self, land-self, building-self – these are all selves only. They are the self because anything that happens to them appears to happen to one's own self. There is a trouble of the self and the whole building cracks, or the land goes, or there is a cataclysm which wipes away everything. It looks as if the self of the person has gone, and great sorrow descends. This is an externalised self, an artificial self, a concocted self; nevertheless, it is a self, and we are living in that self only. This is a binding self, a grief-giving self which has to be restrained gradually; and even the bodily self and the psychological self is not the real self, because it is oscillating, it has a wavelike motion. All these selves have to be restrained for the sake of establishment in another self altogether.

There are gradations of the dimension of the self; there are degrees of self. There is an external self, an internal self, and finally there is the universal Self. The only dependable self is the universal Self. All other selves are tentative walking sticks; they are crutches on which we seem to be hanging somehow, but they are not ourselves. The crutch is not me, the walking stick is not I, yet it appears as if we have some connection with these.

The Gita will tell us in a further verse that the self is the friend of the Self and the self is also the enemy of the Self. All these will have to be understood in a very, very subtle implication that is embedded in these verses. These short sentences are filled with immense metaphysical meaning and psychological suggestiveness. Hence, when it is said that one is in a state of yoga, or establishment in the Self, it has to be understood that there is a rootedness in one kind of self. But the kind of self with which one is associated at any given moment of time is to be properly encountered in the manner it is associated. This is to be in a state of harmony with all things. It was mentioned to us that yoga is also a state of harmony in every sense of the term. We never are at loggerheads with anything due to any particular degree of reality or level of being; we are in a state of harmony. There is a gradual rising from the lower condition of self to the higher condition of self, from the lower state of health to the higher state of health. “I am improving in health,” people say. He has not really become entirely healthy. “How are you, my dear friend?” “Improving. Better. My health is better,” he replies. The betterness of health is one degree of health. It is better than the condition which was yesterday. The lesser condition of health which was yesterday was also a kind of illness. Today I am better, which means I am in a higher state of health today than I was yesterday. Now, when I use the word 'better', it means it is one degree of health and not the whole of health, which means though I am in a higher state of health today, still an element of illness is persisting; otherwise, I should say I am totally all right, not simply better. So these are some of the ways we can understand the manner of establishing oneself in the state of selfhood as we establish ourselves in a state of health gradually.

Now, the lower condition is to be set in harmony with the higher condition. We are not moving from one enemy's kingdom to another enemy's kingdom. It is a graduated ascent of intensified forms of friendship. Lesser friendship becomes more intensified friendship, and more intensified friendship becomes inseparable friendship. Finally it becomes one entity only, not even two persons. So it is a movement from one level of harmony to another level of harmony. In every degree of reality we are set in a state of equilibrium; we are friends. Yoga is a state of friendship with all things, and the intensity and degree of friendship depends upon the extent of distance maintained between oneself and the other, whatever the other be. The distance gets diminished as we go inward more and more, and then the friendship becomes more and more intense until the word 'friendship' is no more applicable, and it is total communion.

Hence, one condition of self is to be abandoned for the sake of another condition of self. This also implies that sannyasa and yoga go together. Sannyasa is the abnegation of association with a lower condition of selfhood for the purpose of a higher inclusive state of self, which includes everything that was earlier. Hence, a person who has renounced has not lost anything. Here, again, we have to bear in mind that we have not lost anything by abandoning. We have not lost anything by renunciation, because we do not lose the lower state of health when we are in a higher state of health. When we are in a higher state of health, we do not say we have lost our lower state of health, because the lower is transcended in the higher. Hence, yoga and sannyasa are the same, renunciation and establishment in the self are identical, tyaga is not different from yoga. Very carefully we have to maintain this in mind: Sannyasa and yoga are one.