The Spiritual Import of the Mahabharata
and the Bhagavadgita

by Swami Krishnananda

This equalisation of the breath between the ida and pingala by driving it into the sushumna is called the practice of kumbhaka, a stoppage of the breathing arrived at either by alternate breathing, known usually as sukha purvak pranayama, with which we are already acquainted, or by a sudden stoppage of breath which is called kevala kumbhaka—we neither breathe in nor breathe out. Various types of kumbhaka are mentioned in systems like the sutras of Patanjali, for instance. Either the breath can be held by alternate breathing, or after expulsion, or after inhalation, or suddenly. Generally, the sudden stopping is regarded as the highest type of kumbhaka, where we do not think too much about the breathing process, but hold it by a sudden attention fixed upon the object of our meditation.

So, pranapanau samau krtva nasabhyantara-carinau, yatendriya-mano-buddhir. Here is the masterstroke of yoga, which rises above what I already have said. There has to be a totality of unitedness of the senses, the mind and the intellect. This is very important and hard to comprehend. Like three brothers working in unison in a single family, with one thought though the brothers are three, the senses, the mind and the intellect have to engage themselves in a single practice of absorption of oneself in the object of meditation. When the senses stand together with the mind, and the intellect does not operate, it is called the supreme yoga. When the five senses stand together with the mind, that condition is called pratyahara or the withdrawal of sense energy into the mind. Generally the senses operate independently of the mind, as children working independently of the parents. They are not united with the parents. Pratyahara is the union of the senses in the mind in such a way that it appears that the senses have become the mind itself. There is no distinction between the senses and the mind, and we do not know which is operating at a particular moment. The eyes do not see and the ears do not hear, etc., independently, but they combine to perform a single function of attention through the mind, so that it is the mind that sees and hears, not the eyes and ears. It is a supernormal perception, and the intellect talks from logical deliberations. The intellect ceases from argumentative activity and merges itself in this central function which is the head of all the senses, the mind as well as the intellect. When such unison takes place—yatendriya-mano-buddhir munir moksha-paryanah—one becomes a real muni, a really silent person. The silence of the mind is real mouna, where the mind ceases to think of objects, whereas in ordinary verbal mouna the mind may think of objects; though the speech may not express objects through language, but the mind does think of objects. But the mind has to stop thinking of objects—that is yoga, and that is real mouna. One becomes a real muni when this state is attained; one becomes yatendriya-mano-buddhir munir, restrained in the senses, the mind and the intellect.

Moksha-paryanah—here is another glorious message for us. You have to be yearning for liberation. Your aspiration for moksha is the masterstroke. It is the forte before you in yoga which dissolves the senses, the mind and the intellect at one stroke. As mist dissolves before the sun, the senses, the mind and the intellect dissolve, as it were, in a flow of moksha-consciousness. In this state your soul is surging forth into infinity. Your heart is yearning to attain union with the Absolute, like the calf running to the mother cow that it had lost, like a river rushing towards the ocean, not resting quiet until it reaches the ocean. As you gasp for breath when you are being drowned in water, so is the soul to surge forth to that great destination called moksha, or liberation of the spirit, in the absolute Brahman. This longing is the panacea for all ills of human life. This desire for moksha is the destruction of all desires. It is the self-consummation of oneself, and the consuming of oneself in the fire of longing for that state where all longing ceases. To desire the atman is to end all desires. It burns up every longing which is extraneous. Vigateccha-bhaya-krodho yah sada mukta eva sah: Such a person is automatically freed from likes and dislikes. There is no need of any comment on this subject; it follows spontaneously. Such a person is already liberated even while alive in this world. These two verses are so grand and magnificent before us, occurring towards the end of the fifth chapter of the Gita, introducing us into the larger exposition of the sixth chapter where dhyana yoga or meditation is described.

What is meditation? It is the centring of oneself in one’s Self, the transferring of the object into the Self and the Self into the object, so that the two become one. Sometimes this state is called samadhi. A proper balancing of the subject and the object is samadhi; a complete equilibrium is samadhi. This is attained through meditation, dhyana. For this purpose you have to understand what is the object of dhyana—what meditation is. On what are you going to concentrate? People are very enthusiastic about meditation; they want to meditate, but on what? That is not clear because there are umpteen things in the world on which you can concentrate and absorb yourself. Here, in the language of yoga at least, meditation means meditation on the ultimate reality of things; not on the forms which are passing, not on the shapes of things which come and go, not on the illusory presentation of the phenomena of the world, but on that which lies as the background of phenomena. The noumenom is the object of meditation, not the phenomenon. What is this noumenom? In the language of the Bhagavadgita, the noumenom is referred to as the Atman of things. The selfhood or the being that is at the root of all things is called the Atman. The contemplation or the meditation prescribed in the sixth chapter of the Gita is on the Atman of things, as was mentioned in the earlier verse in the fifth chapter that we spoke about.

Self-knowledge leads to all knowledge. Meditation on the Self does not mean meditation on one’s own self; such a thing is not, because it has been mentioned already that one who has become the Self of one’s own self has also become the Self of all—sarvabhutatmabhutatma. So, to meditate on one’s Self is to meditate on all selves—the totality of selves. But one has to understand what this ‘Self’ is before one can embark on this great adventure of meditation.

Yada hi nendriyarthesu na karmasv anusajjate, sarva-sankalpa-sannyasi yogrudhas tadochyate. In one sense, without going into much detail, the Bhagavadgita tells us in this verse in the sixth chapter that one can be regarded as established in yoga, yogarudha, when certain conditions are fulfilled. A very few but very important of these are mentioned. When one is not attached to or is not clinging to any object of sense or even to the action that one performs, and abandons all initiative whatsoever, either internally or externally—that person can be regarded as having established himself in yoga. So you can imagine what yoga is from this verse, which can be considered as a psychological definition of yoga. The more advanced metaphysical and spiritual definitions will come afterwards. Here we have a purely psychological definition: not to be clinging to objects, not to cling even to karma or the action that one performs, and to also abandon the volition that is behind the mental activity of clinging, whether to objects or to actions.

There are two types of attachments—attachment to objects and attachment to actions. Both of these are taken into consideration here. One is not to be attached to either of these—either to the object or to the action. We have the feeling that a particular object is desirable and a particular action is desirable. Now, this desirability of the object or the action arises on account of a sense of agency in oneself, doership, which is the root ill of the whole of human life. The consciousness of agency or doership is the fear of suffering, because whether it is attachment to objects or attachment to actions, it stands as an attachment, which means to say, a movement of the mind towards some external location other than the Self that is non-externalised. In this externalisation of the mind by way of attachment to objects and actions, there is an automatic reaction set up, because reaction to action is nothing but the corollary that follows from interference with the law of the cosmos. Just as a DC current of electricity can give us a kick when we touch it because there is a repulsion automatically created on account of our contact with the flow of electric energy, for reasons which electrical engineers know very well—the law of electricity is such—likewise, there is a system that is operating in the cosmos, a system which is known as rita, in the language of the Vedas. The dharma which we usually speak of, the great righteousness of the cosmos, the virtue that we are acquainted with, the goodness that we are speaking of, whatever it is—the great principle of rectitude which operates in an equilibrated manner throughout the universe is interfered with when there is self-affirmation by way of consciousness of agency in action and consciousness of a desire for objects outside. This interference is paid back in its own coin by the karmaphala, or the nemesis, as we call it.

So when this ceases, one becomes a super-individual person. No individual can escape the consequence of action, inasmuch as to be conscious of individuality is also to be conscious of agency of action. So to withdraw oneself from the consciousness of agency in action is to rise above the consciousness of individuality itself. It follows that when there is no individual volition, sarva-sankalpa-sannyasi takes place. Such a person is established in yoga—yogarudhas tadochyate. Here is the initial instruction on the practice of meditation in the sixth chapter of the Bhagavadgita.