This and the following five stanzas are a dissertation on the fruits of Yoga and they explain what a perfect meditator can gain in life, and what his experiences are while living in this world during and after his spiritual realisation.

Throughout the Geeta, so far, Krishna has been stressing the necessity of one quality, steadfastness (yuktah). A complete and exhaustive definition has not so far been given to explain this crucial term, although sufficient hints have been thrown in here and there, to indicate the nature of the man who is steadfast in devotion and Yoga; here we have almost a complete definition of it.

When the mind is completely under control, the stanza claims, it “RESTS SERENELY IN THE SELF ALONE.” A little reflection can bring the truth of the statement into our easy comprehension. An uncontrolled mind is one which frantically gallops on, seeking satisfaction among the sense-objects. We have already been told that the mind can be withdrawn from its preoccupations with its usual sense-objects, only when it is firmly tied down to the contemplation of the Self, which is the Eternal Substratum, the Conscious Principle that illumines all perceptions and experiences. Naturally therefore, a mind that is fully controlled is a mind which has lost itself, as it were, in the steady and continuous contemplation upon the Self.

The above explanation is endorsed by the second line of the stanza which gives us an inkling as to the means by which we can fix our mind on the Supreme. “FREE FROM LONGING AFTER ALL DESIRES” — is the means that has been suggested repeatedly throughout the Lord’s Song. It is unfortunate that hasty commentators have unconsciously, come to over-emphasize the “renunciation of all desires” as the cardinal virtue in Hinduism. There is an ocean of difference between the ‘DESIRES’ and the ‘LONGING AFTER DESIRES.’ Desires in themselves are not unhealthy, nor can they actually bring about any sorrow unto us. But the disproportionate amount of our clinging to our desires is the cancer of the mind that brings about all the mortal agonies into life.

For example, desire for wealth is healthy, inasmuch as it encourages the mind to act and to accomplish, to acquire and to keep, to earn and to save. But when desire POSSESSES an individual in such a way that he becomes almost hysterical with over-anxiety, it makes him incompetent to put forth any substantial creative effort and accomplish glories worthy of the dignity of man.

A desire in itself cannot and does not bring about storms in the mind, as our longing after those very same desires does. The Geeta advises us only to renounce our YEARNINGS for all objects of desires.

Through discrimination and proper intellectual evaluation of the sense-objects, when an individual has withdrawn his mind from its usual sense-gutters, the mind comes to take hold of the subtler and the diviner theme of the Self for its contemplation. The limited and the finite sense-objects agitate the mind, while the Unlimited and the Infinite Self brings peace and joy into it. This condition of sense-withdrawal and the entry of the mind into the Self is called its condition of steadfastness (Yuktah). Such an individual has a fully integrated (Yuktah) personality.

SUCH A YOGIN’S INTEGRATED MIND IS DESCRIBED BELOW:

A yogi, nihsprhah, who has become free from hankering, thirst; sarva-kamebhyah, for all desirable objects, seen and unseen; is tada, then; ucyate, said to be; yuktah, Self-absorbed; yada, when; the viniyatam, controlled; cittam, mind, the mind that has been made fully one-pointed by giving up thought of external objects; avatisthate, rests; atmani eva, in the non-dual Self alone, i.e. he gets established in his own Self. An illustration in being given for the mind of that yogi which has become Self-absorbed: