The equanimity and balance of personality which are observed in a Perfect Man, in the midst of the changing vicissitudes of life, are brought out in this stanza. One who has gone beyond the tyrannies of the three gunas lives in a kingdom of his own, wherein neither the thrills of Sattwa, nor the noisy clamours of Rajas, nor the weariness of Tamas have any admission at all. Serenely self-composed, he dwells in the Self, far away from the sweat and agitations of base appetites, low impulses and selfish passions.
To the average man, this state of equipoise may look like complete death. And, no doubt, it is so; it is the death of the limited, finite life of relative experiences, lived by the baser ego. Spirit, conditioned by Matter, behaves like a reed upon the tumultuous surface of an ever-agitated mind. Always disturbed by the constant storms of love and hate, likes and dislikes, this unhappy sense-on-individuality suffers its shattering agitations and endless sorrows.
To withdraw, therefore, from this chaotic field of desires and attachments into the shelter of the Self, is to release the diviner possibilities in ourselves. The dreamer dies to be reborn as the waker; the individual sense of the ego dies to release the infinite glories of the Self.
Having awakened from the dream, what would be the waker’s relationship with his dream-world, is the question that Arjuna asks Krishna! One who has gone beyond the shackles of the three gunas, has awakened from all the misconceptions of the world, fed by one’s ‘I’-ness and ‘my’-ness. In that state of godly awakening, there cannot be any deep and sincere relationship with the experiences of the lower world, whether it be joy or sorrow, things dear or not-dear, blame or praise. In all the experiences, he is a balanced, unattached witness.
WHO DWELLS IN THE SELF (Svasthah) — One who has transcended the gunas that rule the tendencies of the mind, becomes the Self, just as one who has crossed the frontiers of a dream, discovers himself to be waker. What would be the relationship of one who dwells in the Self, with the things around him, and what would be his attitude to things happening around him, is being answered here. Established as he is in Supreme Wisdom, the world that is contacted from the levels of the body, the mind and the intellect does not touch him. He lives in a world of his own, far above the plane of Matter.
ALIKE IN PLEASURE AND IN PAIN — To come in contact with the outside world through sense-perceptions, to evaluate them in terms of similar experiences in the past, and to experience pleasure or pain, is a trick of our individual personality. The worlds of stimuli march into us and we respond to them and these intelligent responses can fall under two categories: pleasure and pain. That which is pleasurable to one is bound to be painful to another. If the things of the world were in their own nature either pleasurable or painful, they would have certainly caused the same uniform reactions in all of us.
It is the nature of the Sun to be hot, and therefore, the heat of the Sun is common to us all. But the things of the world do not produce reactions in everyone in the same way, and therefore, it is an interpretation of our mind and intellect, which is coloured by our own past experiences. He who is not looking at the world through these coloured goggles of the mind and intellect will be alike in pleasure and pain.
REGARDING A CLOD OF EARTH, A PRECIOUS STONE AND GOLD ALIKE — Possession of things is another appetite which the majority of living creatures have. People like to possess and hoard precious-stones or gold, but do not care for a clod of mud. But to an awakened Man-of-Wisdom, all these possessions are one and the same and from his estimation none of them has any real value.
Children collect peacock feathers, shells, marbles, broken glass-bangles, old stamps, shapely stones, etc., from the roadside or from waste-paper baskets, and with extreme possessiveness, they keep them as their precious possessions. But as they grow, without a regret, they throw them away and the younger ones in the family accept them with gratitude as a precious inheritance from their elders. Similarly, a man living his ego-centric life of desires for possessions, may value gold and precious stones; but to the Awakened Soul, in his sense of Infinitude, these limited possessions, hugged on to by lesser minds, have no charm at all.
THE SAME TOWARDS THINGS DEAR AND THINGS NOT-DEAR — In our relationship with others, where there is an agreeable nature, we come to love it dearly, while, wherever there is a disagreeable nature, we hate it. Love and hate, dear and not-dear, are all our reactions to the agreeable and disagreeable natures of things or situations. These reactions are, no doubt, from the levels of the mind. One who is standing on windy shores wearing a thick coat will not feel the cold that another must feel, when, in his nakedness, he is dipping in the sea. the cold waters come in contact with the skin of the naked man and he experiences the discomforts, while the man on the shore, comfortably warm in his coat, knows no cold.
The average man, plunged in identification with his own mind and intellect, suffers the world and interprets it as agreeable or disagreeable, and brings down upon himself a lot of confusions and problems. The man of Steady Wisdom is he, whose equilibrium is not disturbed by the onslaught of things and circumstances of the world, whether they be dear or not dear.
SAME IN CENSURE AND IN PRAISE — A Man-of-Perfection is the same in censure and praise. The experience of a dream cannot contribute either joy or sorrow to one who has “awakened,” he might have been a beggar insulted by the entire society in the dream-world or might have been an adored Raja ruling a vast empire in his dream. But when he wakes up, neither the PRAISE he received as a Raja, nor the CENSURE he suffered as a beggar can leave any reactions upon him. Awakened from the “dream”, the Man-of-Wisdom evaluates the blame and praise of the world outside and finds them both utterly insignificant.
In the above four beautiful, chosen phrases, Vyasa has indicated some of the main conditions of life in which the ordinary man comes to eke out his joys and sorrows. Pleasure and pain, good and bad possessions, agreeable and disagreeable experiences, joys and sorrows provided by praise and censure, are some of the conditions of life by which we get entangled in a web of agitations and sorrows.
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