Date: July 29, 2025
Part 10: ज्ञानकर्मसंन्यासयोगः – The Yoga of Knowledge – 3
Continued from Part 9
In the next few verses in the chapter on Yoga of Knowledge, Sri Krishna elaborates on the idea of sacrifice. He speaks of the psychological disciplines by which seekers of higher self-possession and self-knowledge practice and develop self-control and self-discipline. Sri Aurobindo clearly explains these disciplines bringing out their distinctness.
One of these disciplines focuses on receiving the objects of sense-perception without allowing the mind to be disturbed or affected by its sense-activities. As a result, the senses themselves become pure fires of sacrifice. There is also the discipline which stills the senses; this allows for the soul in its purity to remain calm and still behind the veil of mind-action. Then there is the path of self-knowledge by which, “all the actions of the sense-perceptions and all the action of the vital being are received into that one still and tranquil soul” (Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, Vol. 19, p. 121).
There may be others who in their pursuit of perfection may follow the discipline of consecrating material and physical offerings, like a devotee does to his deity as part of the worship. For some it may be the austerity of self-discipline and directing the energy of one’s soul to some high aim, tapo-yajña. Or it may be some form of Yoga, like the prāṇāyāma of the Rajayogins and Hathayogins. Or one may offer one’s knowledge. All these offerings tend to the purification of the being.
All such disciplines are performed as sacrifice; all sacrifice is a way towards the attainment of the highest. Only they who receive and enjoy amṛta, the nectar of immortality, left over from the sacrifice attain to the eternal Brahman, says the Gita. Sri Aurobindo explains the true nature of sacrifice in the cosmic order of things:
“In the ancient Vedic system there was always a double sense physical and psychological, outward and symbolic, the exterior form of the sacrifice and the inner meaning of all its circumstances… The food eaten as the leavings of the sacrifice is, it is explained, the nectar of immortality, amṛta, left over from the offering; and here we have still something of the old Vedic symbolism in which the Soma-wine was the physical symbol of the amṛta, the immortalising delight of the divine ecstasy won by the sacrifice, offered to the gods and drunk by men.
“The offering itself is whatever working of his energy, physical or psychological, is consecrated by him in action of body or action of mind to the gods or God, to the Self or to the universal powers, to one’s own higher Self or to the Self in mankind and in all existences.”
Sri Krishna tells Arjuna that all these and many other forms of sacrifice are offered in the mouth of the Brahman (the mouth of that Fire which receives all offerings). One who knows that all sacrifices are born of work becomes free. By “born of work” is meant that “all proceed from and are ordained by the one vast energy of the Divine which manifests itself in the universal karma and makes all the cosmic activity a progressive offering to the one Self and Lord”. For the sādhaka, the last stage of this progressive offering is “self-knowledge and the possession of the divine or Brahmic consciousness.” (ibid., p. 122).
The Gita speaks of the gradations of various forms of sacrifice, with physical offering being the lowest and the sacrifice of knowledge the highest. But this is not any lower knowledge, it is the highest, supreme self-knowledge and God-knowledge. The term jñāna used in Indian philosophy and Yoga always means the light by which we grow into our true being. All action culminates in this knowledge.
“As the works grow more and more desireless, equal-minded, sacrificial in spirit, the knowledge increases; with the increase of the knowledge the soul becomes firmer in the desireless, sacrificial equality of its works. The sacrifice of knowledge, says the Gita therefore, is greater than any material sacrifice.”
~ ibid., p. 200
Possessing this Supreme Knowledge one does not fall again into the mind’s ignorance; for by this knowledge, one begins to see all existences without exception in the supreme Self, in the Purushottama. This supreme self-knowledge and God-knowledge can make a liberated person cross over all the crookedness of evil and sin. As a fire when kindled turns its fuel to ashes, so the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes. The man perfected by Yoga arrives at this pure knowledge of self in the self by the course of Time.
A person who has śraddhā, the kind of steadfast faith which no intellectual doubt can be allowed to disturb, who has conquered and controlled the mind and senses, who has fixed his whole conscious being on the truth of that supreme Reality in which all exists, attains self-knowledge and supreme peace, says the Gita. An ignorant without faith or one who is full of doubts, neither enjoys this world nor any world beyond. The importance of faith is eloquently elaborated by Sri Aurobindo:
“…it is true that without faith nothing decisive can be achieved either in this world or for possession of the world above, and that it is only by laying hold of some sure basis and positive support that man can attain any measure of terrestrial or celestial success and satisfaction and happiness; the merely sceptical mind loses itself in the void.
“But still in the lower knowledge doubt and scepticism have their temporary uses; in the higher they are stumbling-blocks: for there the whole secret is not the balancing of truth and error, but a constantly progressing realisation of revealed truth.”
~ ibid., p. 204
The fourth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita concludes by an important declaration by Sri Krishna. One who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga offered all works as sacrifice and is in possession of the Self is not bound by one’s works. Arjuna is thus guided to cut asunder with the sword of knowledge the doubt that has arisen out of ignorance and abides in his heart and resort to Yoga.
