Verse 5
Yatsaankhyaih praapyate sthaanam
Tad yogair api gamyate;
Ekam saankhyam cha yogam
Cha yah pashyati sa pashyati.
That place which is reached by the Sankhyas or
the Jnanis is reached by the (Karma) Yogis. He sees who sees knowledge and the
performance of action (Karma Yoga) as one.
Lord Krishna now
clarifies specifically that atma tattva or realization of the soul is the
result and that persons who practice renunciation of actions attains this same
result as those that practice prescribed Vedic activities without desire for
reward and thus for one who sees this similarity of result sees that both paths
are actually one.
The word yoga meaning
the science if the individual consciousness attaining communion with the
ultimate consciousness denotes by the suffix api meaning
also of one who is a practitioner of yoga
Without spiritual
intelligence one's actions can never be properly established. Whereas
performance of activities in spiritual intelligence without desire of rewards
automatically leads one to renunciation. The person who performs actions with
renunciation offering the results to the Supreme Lord attains the eternal
Brahman or the spiritual substratum pervading all existence.
The detachment of the
Sankhya yogi is quite unusual and not easy to cultivate. If the Sankhya yogi
has such a withdrawn outlook, then how come the Karma yogi who is not only involved
in action but does not claim that he has a withdrawn outlook, is able to attain
the same goal as the Sankhya Yogi?
Perhaps, Sri Krishna
has the answer!!
True, the karma yogi
does not, like the Sankhya Yogi, say that it is merely his body that acts, nor
does he say “I am the Atman” .
But an important
thing is that, he dedicates everything to God. For him, God may seem to be
external but that does not matter. Since all actions are offered to God,
nothing ever touches him. Arjuna, note carefully that because the Karma yogi is
all the time thinking of God, for him also, God eventually becomes internal!!!
The Sankhya yogi, by
fully identifying himself with “Atman” or the inner SELF, totally disassociates
himself actions and therefore also from the consequences – in other words,
actions do not bind him.
For a karma yogi
also, actions do not bind him as he has offered all actions and results of
actions to God. (Pujari and Prasad talk / post covers this aspect).
The unbinding is
achieved by two different techniques- in one case, total focus inside and in
the other, total absorption in God who might be perceived as external, but has
actually become internal. For reaching the ultimate Supreme state or Brahman,
it does not matter which of the two strategies is adopted. The important thing
is to ensure that actions do not bind.
Sri Ramana was
totally absorbed in Inner Self whereas Sri Ramakrishna was totally absorbed in
worship of Ma Kaali and did everything for the divine mother.
Yet, if one carefully
looks at their lives, one can know that both of them reached the ultimate goal
of Realization. Thus, when it comes to the attainment of Goal and
after attainment of goal, typecasting a yogi as either a Sankhya yogi or a
Karma yogi is a meaningless exercise.
Love.
