Gita 02.68 – Be a soul-deliverer, not a soul-killer

Tasmād yasya mahābhāho nigruhitāni sarvaśaḥ indriyāṇ indriyārthebhyas tasya prajñāṁ pratiṣṭhitaḥ Tasmād yasya mahābhāho Here, Krishna is giving one level of conclusion to his answer by delineating a course of action. So, he is responding to Arjuna's question, how does the self-realized person walk? That means, how does the self-realized person engage the senses, move around in this world using the senses but without getting entangled? So, the previous verse said that even one of the roaming senses on which the mind focuses can carry away. indriyāṇāṁ hijaratāṁ yena manu-anuvidhyate tadasyaharati prajñāṁ vāyur-nāvaṁ vāmbhasī This verse is stating that actually, therefore, because any of the senses can carry away the mind and the intelligence thereof.

So, therefore, control all the senses. Tasmād yasya mahābhāho O Mahābhāho, Arjuna, you are extremely powerful. Therefore, exhibit your power in overpowering the senses.

nigrahitāṇi sarvaśaḥ sarvaśaḥ All of the senses. nigrahitāṇi indriyāṇi indriyārtheb Yes. So, nigraha means regulation, control.

In what? In the contact of the senses. indriyāṇi indriyārtheb, yeah. This combination of words comes, cards comes repeatedly in the Bhagavad Gita as a compound word.

indriyāṇi indriyārtheb, yes. Senses and sense objects. tasya prajñāpratishtita Tasya prajñāpratishtita, such a person is well situated in intelligence.

Now, this may seem to be like a very rigidly authoritarian sort of control. The fact is, this is what helps us to have authentic self-expression. The senses are peripheral to our self.

They are parts of the body and the body itself is peripheral to the soul. The soul has had many bodies in the past and the soul will have many bodies in the future. So, therefore, the body and its senses are peripheral to the soul.

And when we control the senses, that means essentially that we don't let the senses determine the way our life takes. Now, we let ourselves be the determiner of our life direction. So, life may seem like a big word here.

You may say that, oh, but the senses, they will just ask for a little pleasure here, a little pleasure there. That is not going to determine my life. Yes, it's not that you starve all the senses.

If the pleasures are within the principles of dharma, then actually, we also have bodily needs and bodily needs need to be fulfilled. But the important point is that to not let the body's needs replace the soul's needs. To not let the senses greed, you talk about body's needs.

The body has some basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter. Beyond that, we want to live respectably. That is fine.

But when the body's need becomes a greed and it becomes so pervasive in our consciousness that it leaves no room in the consciousness for considering the spiritual side of life, then it is spiritually catastrophic. Again, catastrophic may seem to be a strong word, but the scriptures do use that Atmaha, killer of the soul. That's the word which the Upanishad, the Upanishad uses.

That person, whoever that person may be, in material that person may be very famous, very powerful, but Atmaha is a killer of the soul. Who is that person who is the killer of the soul? They attain the lokas which are meant for the asuras. That is covered by darkness and ignorance.

They will get it after death. Now who are the Atmahana? That the Upanishad assumes the reader understands. Now, actually if we see, if the soul is killed, then the soul cannot go anywhere.

Killed means existence is ended. So obviously, Atmano can't be taken literally over here. If killing would mean ending of existence, then the whatever has ended existence cannot go anywhere.

And we could say that when the body is killed, the soul goes elsewhere. But if the soul is killed, then who is there to go anywhere? So the point is, it is used in a metaphorical sense to kill the spiritual propensity. And the word killing is used because it just as we understand that killing is a grievous crime.

So similarly, murder can lead, if somebody murders someone, then often in many countries there is capital punishment in return, hanging or execution in some other way. Because killing is considered to be a grievous crime. So we are using the metaphor of killing, Atmano.

Now, actually the gravity of deadening the soul's spiritual propensities through indiscriminate sense gratification is communicated. So deadening the soul's spiritual propensity, the soul always has the capacity and the inclination to search for spiritual truths. But depending on the bodily covering it has, that capacity, that inclination is expressed or not expressed.

And when the soul is in human form, there is an opportunity to express that, Brahma Jijnasa. But if the soul habituates itself to sense gratification, then that spiritual propensity becomes covered. Because although the body is human, the activities are like animal activities and therefore the consciousness becomes reduced to animal-like consciousness and so one cannot perceive spiritual truth.

So that's how the person becomes like a soul killer. That means killer of the opportunity for life at the spiritual level that the soul had. So we are talking about soul killing over here because the previous verse metaphor of a wind carrying away a boat is also related with soul killer.

It is said that the human body is like a boat and one who does not use this boat to cross over material existence, that person is like a soul killer. Puman bhavabdhin, nataret, saatmaha, puman bhavabdhin, bhavabdhin, the ocean of material existence, nataret, one who does not cross over it, saatmaha, that person is a killer of the soul. So controlling the senses enables us to become not the killer of the soul but the deliverer of the soul.

Now we understand that ultimately Krishna is a deliverer but Krishna delivers when we call out to him and when we choose to accept his attempts to rescue us and in that sense we have to deliver ourselves. The Bhagavad Gita also uses the word uddharedatmanatmanam, the soul, the self should elevate the self. So not just elevate, uddhara, uddhaara, we use not just in terms of elevation but actually in terms of delivering.

The word uddhaara means delivery, uddhaara guru, the delivering guru we say. So the point here is that by controlling the senses like this thoroughly we will become not the killers of the soul but the deliverer of the soul and the more we relish spiritual happiness by tani, yuktaasita matparahas, Krishna has said in 2.61b, yuktaasita, fix your consciousness on me, matparaha, matparaha. So to the extent we do that, fixing the consciousness on Krishna, to that extent when we fix the consciousness on Krishna, to that extent we will find that we will become freed from the miseries of material existence and to that extent we will actually relish spiritual happiness.

So although rigorous sense control may seem demanding and it will be demanding if it is divorced from a spiritual purpose to life but when there is a spiritual purpose and there is a spiritual process available then sense control becomes the way to experience deeper, richer, greater spiritual fulfillment and thus it becomes not demanding but fulfilling because in order to control the senses we have to fix the mind on Krishna and it is not sense control that is fulfilling but it is the impetus for absorption in Krishna that is provided by the determination to control the senses that absorption in Krishna is actually fulfilling,.