Dear All,
From now on, Arjuna
becomes curious to know what sort of a person the Self-realized soul is.
Krishna satisfied Arjuna’s curiosity in the upcoming verses and in the process,
introduces an important expression namely STITHAPRAJNA.
Stithaprajna is
described as a person with a steady mind. But when that state is experienced,
then actually, the mind is transcended, so, it is not about a person who just
has a steadfast mind but taking the clue from the Upanishad declaration “Prajnanam
Brahma”, Stithaprajna is to be expressed as the one who is Rooted (stitha), is
Consciousness (Prajna).
Verse 54
Arjuna Uvaacha:
Sthitaprajnasya kaa bhaashaa
Samaadhisthasya keshava;
Sthitadheeh kim prabhaasheta
Kimaaseeta vrajeta kim.
Arjuna said (asked):
What, O Krishna, is
the description of him who has steady wisdom and is merged in
the Superconscious State? How does one of steady wisdom speak? How does he
sit? How does he walk?
The style of the
scriptures is such that when they refer to one organ, they include all of them
collectively. So, the question is how do the organs of action
function.
A realized Person is
one who has reached the state of Infinity and yet is living in the world. How does the Infinite express itself in the finite?
Sthita means steady, prajna means one of wisdom.
Kaa bhaasha means
what is his nature, his description.
Prabhaasheta means how does he speak. Speech is one of the five organs of
action. So, the question is How he acts when He is in the
world?
Kimaaseeta means how does he sit? When you sit, you
are with yourself, not contacting the world. So, the
question is about his inner nature.
And the last, ‘vrajeta kim’, how does he walk? When you walk you interact
with the world. So how does such a person meet the external
world?
Hence it is a
complete question – a word painting of a person of Excellence,
where, the painting is veiled and is to be unveiled by the Lord through
His answer to the above question in the next few verses.
Verse 55
Sri Bhagawan Uvaacha:
Prajahaati yadaa kaamaan
Sarvaan paartha manogataan;
Aatmanyevaatmanaa tushtah Sthitaprajnastadochyate.
The Blessed Lord said:
When a man completely
casts off, O Arjuna, all the desires of the mind and is satisfied in the
Self by the Self, then is he said to be one of steady wisdom.
Lord Krishna explains
that such a being (Stithaprajna) is immersed in the soul and is completely
satisfied by the soul.
The stability of one’s mind can be known when one becomes pleased and satisfied
by the resultant purity of the mind after completely abandoning all desires and
lust.
Swami says,
“The Stithaprajna
will be free from all desire and ever engaged in the contemplation of the
Atma.
To give up the promptings of the desire in the mind is a negative process. The
negative process is to remove the seedlings of wrong and evil from the mind.
But here, the positive process to grow the crop of attachment to God (SELF)
in the field cleansed thus is portrayed”.
(Extract from the
book - Message of the Lord)
The Garuḍa Purāṇa states:
Chakradharo ’pi suratvaṁ
Suratvalābhe sakalasurapatitvam
Bhavtirum surapatirūrdhvagatitvaṁ
Tathāpi nanivartate tṛiṣhṇā
(2.12.14) [v47]
“A king wishes to be the emperor of the whole world;
the emperor aspires to be a celestial god; a celestial god seeks to
be Indra, the king of heaven; and Indra desires to be Brahma, the secondary
creator. Yet the thirst for material enjoyment does not get satiated.”
But when one learns
to turn the mind away from material allurements and renounces the desires of
the senses, such a person comes in touch with the inner
bliss of the soul and becomes transcendentally situated.
The Kaṭhopaniṣhad goes to the extent of saying that one who has renounced desires
becomes like God:
yadā sarve pramuchyante
kāmā ye ’sya hṛidi śhritaḥ
atha martyo ’mṛito
bhavatyatra brahma
samaśhnute
(2.3.14)[v48]
“When one eliminates
all selfish desires from the heart, then the materially fettered jīvātmā (soul) attains freedom from birth and death,
and becomes God like in virtue.”
Sri Krishna states
in the above verse that a transcendentally situated person is one who has given
up selfish desires and cravings of the senses and is satisfied in the self.
The above
Kathopanishad verse says, "....... He attains freedom from birth and
death".
For attaining this freedom, one need not have to die physically. The
freedom is not physical freedom from anything but the eternal freedom from
one's identity with one's BMI equipment. So, a Stithaprajna does not have / own
a body at all. Then who is there in Him, to think about the birth or death of
his body, which is not his own any more.
If one has a glimpse of this freedom for a fraction of a minute in his
nidhidhysana, then, he can never (mentally) return to this world of bondage,
world of noise, world of Ego!!!!
Contemplate...
Love.
