Gita 05.27 – Shut out the sense objects to seek inwards

Thank you Bhagavad Gita 5.27 so here this verse marks a transition from karma yoga to ashtanga yoga the Bhagavad Gita is an inclusive book which gives an overview of various processes of yoga and thereby enables us to move towards the topmost yoga, bhakti yoga so in the first six chapters it focuses on karma yoga and gives a trajectory of how karma yoga culminates in bhakti yoga through the intermediate step of ashtanga yoga so here we see that Krishna in the fifth chapter has talked about karma yoga till now and 27-28th verses he will talk about ashtanga yoga and 29th verse he will talk about bhakti yoga and while talking thus he will focus on the giving a summary over here this chapter so what he uses, he summarizes in verses 27 and 28 will be elaborated in chapter 6 which focuses on ashtanga yoga and what he gives in a sutra like form in 29th verse will be elaborated from chapter 7 to chapter 12 so Krishna has now talked about how by the practice of karma yoga in the previous verse he said that he used the word brahma nirvana labhante brahma nirvana and now of talking about that attainment of brahma of extinction of material existence and attainment of spiritual existence now Krishna moves forward and talks about how the karma yogi can also take an alternative trajectory and move towards ashtanga yoga so here he describes the initial stage of ashtanga yoga now sparshan here refers specifically to the sense object of touch generically it refers to all sense objects those which are external sense objects keeping them outside so one object is used to refer to the full group here Krishna has used there is used in 4.26 so shotra is ear and shabda is sound and of course there Krishna used the word but sometimes just one is mentioned with a hint of others or with no explicit hint of others but it represents the whole group just like give us our daily bread so now when bread it is included give us water will give us some something to eat with the bread also bread represents that whole thing just like sometimes one particular specific can represent the whole group similarly sparshan here refers to the whole group so the sense object of touch can be quite titillating the sense gratification you know especially in terms of sex begins with seeing or hearing or whatever it may be we may hear we may see a beautiful good looking person we may hear as it happened with Vishwamitra he heard the ankle bells of Menaka but whichever it is in the sense gratification especially in terms of sex it terminates in sparshan so Krishna uses that sparsha as a representative to talk about how one should turn away from the sense objects one should give up sense gratification so give up give up shut the sense objects outside don't let them come into the consciousness and then and the eyes be fixed on the space between the eyebrows dhruvo is eyebrows antare is in the space between now we look physically there is nothing specifically beautiful about the space between our eyebrows and it's not even very easy to just focus our eyes on the eyebrows but the point of this is again this is a specific application which continues what is talked about in the previous line so how does one do sparshan how does one shut out the sense objects now one way could be that we just close our eyes but often closing our eyes opens us to the danger of going off to sleep and keeping our eyes open opens us to the danger of not realizing of getting distracted by the various things that we are seeing outside so one solution is the concentration point of the space between the eyebrows by thus having a convenient focus point for the eyes one can work thereafter on moving the consciousness in the desired direction inwards ultimately towards the indwelling lord which is what samadhi is all about the chakshush chaivantarebdho so in that way shut out the extra sense objects fix the senses situate the senses in a way that they will not agitate so one example of this is the eyes are fixed on the tip of the eyebrows so there is nothing that can distract the eyes that way neither externals nor internals overcoming by lethargy and sleep nor the external overcoming by the unending happenings in the world with often the unending parade of the sense objects that is featured in the world chakshush chaivantarebdho and after keeping the eyes like this fix between the sense objects pranapanasamaukrtva nasavyantaracharinau pranapanasamaukrtva so to create a balance between the pran and the apan these are two kinds of airs that are talked about in the vedic literature especially in the yogic literature within the broad yantra of vedic literature in the ashtamayoga literature one stage is called as pranayama where there is a regulation of breath which is treated as a foundation for the redirection of consciousness so the essential principle over here is that one shuts out the external in order to go towards the internal and how one can further move towards the internal will be described in the sixth chapter and this process itself will be further stated about talked about in the next verse.