Determined or One Pointed Intellect
However even after controlling the senses, trace of desire for such
sense pleasures like good food remains and can go only after beholding the God,
the supreme truth. The senses are very powerful. Like powerful horses they can
drag down the mind of even the wise. With determined and one pointed devotion
towards God, senses and mind, passions, anger, lust and desire can be
controlled. That’s what a person of steady intellect is capable of
doing.
Lord Krishna then told
Arjuna how anger destroys sanity and
reason. He said that while constantly thinking about selfish interests, a person
gets attached to those thoughts, i.e. he cannot get rid of them. From attachment
come selfish motives and desires. If one for instance thinks continuously that
one should have a coveted object, by constantly meditating over that thought, he
develops a strong desire for possessing the object. He becomes anxious about
failure to get the object. From desire springs anger, against all the obstacles
in the path of acquiring that object. From anger comes delusion and from
delusion, temporary insanity and loss of ability to think logically. At that
situation one falls from the path of virtue. Therefore anger and desire unless
controlled, leads to vice.
Every vice in this world stems from desire and
anger - a selfish desire to enjoy and anger against the obstacles to enjoy. Such
uncontrolled passions lead to destruction in the same way as uncontrolled horses
lead a chariot to the path of destruction.
One who is ever free from the twin passions of attraction and
repulsion, can move among the sense objects including all the good things in the
world, without any attraction or lust for them. This can happen with complete
mastery over one’s senses, and such a person attains everlasting peace through
self control. Such a person of tranquil mind is free from all sorrows and can
attain the steadfast intellect.
However persons, who do not have this mastery over senses, who are
yet to realize the supreme truth, do not possess this unique faculty of steady
intellect, nor do they have knowledge of this intellect. Without the knowledge
they are devoid of peace and without peace they cannot attain happiness.
Senses can even drag the mind with them, like a powerful gale which
drives a boat on the river. Such uncontrolled senses can wreak havoc on a
person. Persons of uncontrolled senses yield very easily to anger, passions,
temptations, fear, lust and greed and they are ever sorrowful. Senses are like
powerful horses, controlled by mind as the reign and body as the carriage. If
these horses are not controlled, they will drive the carriage anywhere, leading
to serious damage and destruction.
If for instance, one is so attached to
drinking that one cannot leave it, the drinking ultimately becomes the cause of
grief and destruction.
However others, who have controlled these senses and are
indifferent towards sense objects of pleasure, can be of steadfast
intellect.
A person of steadfast intellect will have clear understanding
through complete mastery over the senses and therefore what is unknown and
obtuse to common men, the lofty spiritual thoughts and realizations, will be
clear as daylight to him, while he would be oblivious to what are obvious to
common men, viz. selfish desires and material gains. His selfless and esoteric
thoughts are alien to the ordinary people, and the worldly affairs are alien to
him. He is awake when the entire world is immersed in the deep slumber of
ignorance. He is not awake to the selfishness and material pursuits of the
world.
The world of sense objects and material desires may hit a person of
steady intellect day in and day out, but he would remain calm and unperturbed by
them, without falling to temptations, just as an ocean does not swell even as
myriads of rivers pour water into it. Free from desires, such persons are
without ego or possessiveness, and thus they attain everlasting
peace.
Lord Krishna termed this
state as “Brahmisthiti”, or the state
of supreme consciousness, where one never suffers from any delusion, and
attaining which, even in the end, one attains freedom from all
bondages.
Sthitapragnya is a great concept in
human psychology. It is the state of an ever perfect being, a person free from
desire and from the vagaries of mind and senses. Such persons are ever free as
they do not suffer from any anxiety on account of unfulfilled desires, are not
affected by material prosperity or adversity and therefore are not concerned
about virtue or vices. When they perform an action, they do it for the action’s
sake, without cherishing any desire for its fruits. In fact in the next chapter
we shall see that such actions are mainly for "Lokasamgraham" or
education of people, to teach others to follow the right path, as
Buddha or Christ or Ramakrishna-Vivekananda did. Calm
and composed under all circumstances, they are sources of immense strength and
peace. Such beings are the ever liberated beings, who cannot be tainted by the
world and its affairs. This is the state of steady intellect which, Lord Krishna sets as goal to Arjuna and to the entire
mankind.
However unless that state is obtained actions
should not be relinquished. This is the subject of discussion in the next
chapter.
Thus ends the chapter on Sankhya Yoga or the Yoga of doctrines of
Sankhya.
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