Gita 02.58 – Withdraw consciousness inwards as a basic defense mechanism

Thank you bhagavad gita 2.58 Krishna is continuing his answers to Arjuna's question and now he is describing the answer to kimasi how does such a person the self-realized person restrain the senses and keep them under control so Krishna gives a metaphor of a tortoise over here yada samharate chayam samharate one who takes inside withdraws chayam that kurma anganiva sarvasaham kurma is the tortoise anganiva in the body sarvasaham tortoise senses danger then it withdraws its limbs inside its hard shell the hard shell covers the entire back of the tortoise and it is a very solid defense for it but the parts of its body which come out of that shell are vulnerable so its head, its forelimbs and its rear limbs these are vulnerable and so whenever the tortoise senses danger it withdraws all of them into its shell and the shell is so hard and so tough and so protective that even if some predator comes and tries to attack the tortoise it cannot do anything more than just get hurt by the hardness of that shell so basically withdrawing in words is the defense mechanism of the tortoise and Krishna is advocating a similar defense mechanism over here for the transcendentalist indriyan indriyarthe so indriya is senses indriyartha is the sense objects artha is purpose or meaning or value or the thing that gives that purpose meaning value the object the senses their purpose is to look for sense objects so that's why indriyartha refers to the sense objects indriyan indriyarthe bhyas so that person is is well situated in intelligence who similarly deals with the senses and the sense objects that means that just as the tortoise withdraws its limbs inside so just as the tortoise withdraws its limbs inside similarly the self realized person withdraws the senses inside away from the sense objects now the contact of the sense objects happens at multiple levels first there is perception and then say the eyes see a beautiful form and then there is desire that is kindled more and more and then there may be the man approaches the woman and then the relationship or the entanglement it becomes more and more so it begins with the contact of the senses with the sense objects so withdrawing the senses from the sense objects means not letting the contact take place just as the predator can hit can hurt the tortoise only when its limbs are protruding outwards and are vulnerable to the attack similarly the sense objects can hurt us only when they can penetrate into our senses that is their impressions can penetrate into our senses just as the tortoise the tortoise predator the animal threatening it cannot do anything although it may be right next to the vicinity if the tortoise withdraws its limbs similarly alluring sense objects may be around us but if we have withdrawn our limbs inwards then those sense objects cannot affect us they cannot tempt or threaten or distract or distress us now the tortoise can physically withdraw the limbs inside can we do that among our senses if we see there we have the knowledge acquiring senses and the working senses so primarily the process of sense gratification begins by perceiving some attractive sense object through the knowledge acquiring senses and then we use the working senses to get that object and try to enjoy it so among our senses if we see we have some control over their functioning while we are in a particular situation we cannot close our ears we cannot close our nose at least not automatically we have to physically put some plugs in the ear or physically press the nose to close it and we cannot press the nose for very long we will lose breath so the nose in that sense we cannot stop it from much negative stimuli we cannot really check it much the ears we can check but it is not naturally we have to artificially plug something in there the tongue we can surely tongue is inside the body it is not protruding outside so we can surely decide whether to put something on the tongue or not so that way the faculty of taste we have control over and then touch if we are sitting next to something or we are touching that object and we are forced to touch then it is different but even the touch we can just move physically away to some extent now eyes are the sense which we can close so we may be in a particular place but if we close our eyes then we are not troubled by that so other senses so for example the ears we cannot close naturally nor the nose so literally speaking we cannot withdraw our senses the way a tortoise does so that withdrawal refers not to a physical pulling in of the senses but actually a pulling in of our consciousness which is wandering here and there through the senses so for example we cannot close our eyes but if we are walking along a road there is no need for us to look in both directions look up and look down and look at the hoardings and look at all the people passing by that will only fill us with more and more agitating stimuli and it will become very difficult for us to control ourselves if those stimuli go inside through our eyes and start agitating us so we can just look straight ahead or look down and walk or we can look at one particular object and keep moving ahead that way we may have to be conscious of the traffic and the way people are travelling but that doesn't mean that we have to for the sake of functioning in this world for which we will naturally use patakshya pramana that doesn't mean that we are trashing in any way shraddha pramana so the point of this analysis is to recognise that actually we are souls who want to serve and service requires positive object of meditation and the more we are able to produce this positive object of meditation Krishna through the realisation of his devotees the more we can move forward in our spiritual journey and the more we can ultimately attain him so in this verse the point is made that we minimise the interaction of the senses and the sense objects by drawing our consciousness in the verse just as actually by this we can stay focused in our service to Krishna even among those situations where it is distracting or tempting.