As a complete Shastra, the Geeta has to be faithful to Truth and Truth alone, irrespective of what the tradition of the country, at a given period, might have made the faithful ones believe. It is not very unhealthy to believe that Grace from an external source is constantly helping a true seeker striving on his path — but this is really healthy only when this thought is correspondingly complemented with sufficiently intense self-effort. “MAN SHOULD UPLIFT HIMSELF BY HIMSELF,” is an open statement declared by no less a person than Lord Krishna Himself — not cooed in a playful mood in the company of the gopis on the Jamuna-banks at a hilarious hour of laughter and play, but roared to Arjuna on the battlefield at a serious moment of His life’s fulfilment as an Avatara. Man, if he wants to exalt himself into the greater cultural and spiritual possibilities now lying dormant in him, has to raise the lower in himself to the greater perfection that is the true and eternal core in himself.

Everyone has in himself a picture of the ideal. This intellectual conception of ourselves is always very vivid in each one of us. But unfortunately, this ideal remains only in the realm of thought and is not lived in the world of activity. Intellectually we may have a clear and vivid picture of what we should be, but mentally and physically we behave as though we were the opposites of our own ideal concepts. The gulf between the ‘IDEAL-ME’ and the ‘ACTUAL-ME’ is the measure of man’s fall from his perfection. Most of us are generally unconscious of this duality in ourselves. We mistakes ourselves to be the ideal and are generally blind to our own ACTUAL imperfections. Thus we find a notoriously selfish man in society warmly and sincerely criticising the slightest traces of selfishness in his neighbour! In a world of no mirrors, it is possible that a squint-eyed man may laugh at another squint-eyed person because the one who laughs knows not the angle in which his own eye-balls are facing each other!!

Within ourselves, if we, carefully watch, we can discover that intellectually we have a clear concept of a morally strong, ethically perfect, physically loving and socially disciplined man that ‘we should be’; but in the mental zones of our emotions and feelings, however, we are tantalised by our own attachments, likes and dislikes, loves and hatreds, appetites and passions, and we behave like curs fed by the way-side gutters and ever quarrelling with others of the same ilk over dry and marrowless bones!!

As long as the individual has not realised the existence of this dual personality in himself, there cannot be any religion for him. If an individual has discovered that there is “enough in him to be divided into two portions,” and when he wants to keep the lower as brilliant and chaste as the higher, the technique that he will have to employ to fulfil this aspiration is called RELIGION.

Mind is the saboteur that enchants us away from perfection, to be a slave to the flesh and the external objects of brittle satisfaction. Mind is the conditioning that distorts the ideal and creates the lower Satanic sensuous self in us, which is to be brought into unison with the intellect, the equipment for the higher Self to manifest. In short, when the rational and discriminative capacities of a limited intellect are brought to bear their authority upon the wavering and wandering, sense-mongering-mind, the lower is brought under discipline and made to attune with the nobler and the diviner in us. The processes by which the lower is brought under the direct management and discipline of the higher are all together called the spiritual techniques.

This process of self-rehabilitation and self-redemption of the Satan in us cannot be executed by inviting tenders and giving the contract to the lowest bidder! Each will have to do it all by himself: “ALONE TO THE ALONE ALL ALONE” IS THE WAY. No Guru can take the responsibility; no scripture can promise this redemption; no altar can, with its divine blessings, make the lower the higher. The lower must necessarily be trained slowly and steadily to accept and come under the influence of the discipline of the higher. In this process, the teacher, the scripture, and the houses-of-God, have all their proper appointed duties and limited influences. But the actual happening depends upon how far we ourselves learn to haul ourselves out from the gutters of misunderstanding in ourselves.

So far Bhagawan has indicated an exhaustive treatment which may be, in many of its aspects, considered as equivalent to the modern psychological process called introspection. Realising our own weaknesses, rejecting the false, asserting the better, and trying to live, generally, as best as we can, the higher way-of-life, is the process of introspection. But his is only half the entire process and not the whole of it.

The other half also is insisted upon, here, by Krishna. It is not only sufficient that we look within, come to note our weaknesses, erase them, substitute the opposite good qualities, and develop in ourselves the better, but we must see to it, that, whatever little conquests we might have made out of Satan’s province are not again handed back to Satan’s dominion. Krishna warns, almost in the same breath, “DO NOT ALLOW THE SELF THEREAFTER TO FALL DOWN AND BE DRAGGED AGAIN” to the old level of the cheaper way of existence.

The second line of the stanza contains a glorious idea shaped into a beauty of expression which almost immortalises Vyasa. We are considered both as our own friend and our own enemy. Any intelligent man observing and analysing life will vouchsafe for the truth of the statement, but here, more is meant philosophically, than meets the eye. Generally, we do not fully understand the import when we say “THE SELF IS THE FRIEND OF THE SELF.”

The lower in us can ever raise itself to the attunement of the Higher, but the Higher can influence only when the lower is available for Its influence. To the extent the lesser in us surrenders itself to the influence of the Higher, to that extent, It can serve the lower as a great friend. But if the lower refuses to come under the influence of the Diviner in us, the Divine Presence is accused as an enemy of ourselves, inasmuch as the dynamism of life provides us Its energy both for our “life of higher aspirations” and the “life of low temptations.”

Ultimately, it is for the aspirant himself to accept the responsibility for blessing or damning himself. The potentiality for improvement, the chances for self-growth, the strength to haul ourselves out from our own misconceptions, are ever open for employment. But it all depends upon how we make use of them.

NOW IT MAY BE ASKED: “WHAT SORT OF A MAN IS THE FRIEND OF HIMSELF AND WHAT SORT OF A MAN IS THE ENEMY OF HIMSELF?” THE ANSWER FOLLOWS:

By the self (Atman), i.e., by the mind, which is unattached to sense-objects, one should raise the self. One should not allow the self to sink by a mind which is of the contrary kind. ‘For the self alone,’ i.e., the mind alone is the friend of the self; and it alone is the foe of the self. [The figure of speech here is of Samsara as the ocean in which the individual self is like an object with liability to sink. What causes its sinking is the lingering attachments of the mind to some objects, though in the discipline of Jnana Yoga one may keep aloof from such objects. A mind with such attachments is the foe and without them, the friend.]