Gita 08.12 – In yoga, the technical is a necessary preliminary to the transcendental
In the next verse. Thank you. Bhagavad Gita 8.12 Sarva-dvarani-sanyamya manorudinu-yudhya cha murdhyadhāyātmanah prāṇam āstito yoga-dharaṇāṁ Here Krishna is going to describe briefly the process of yoga by which one can attain perfection.
Tatte padam sangrahena pravakṣe, he said in the previous verse, that process I will describe in brief. So, that brevity will be in the next two verses description. So, here he says, here he is describing the stage of yoga, which is called Bhaktya-hār, wherein one shuts out the senses sarva-dvarani-sanyamya, controlling all the doors.
Now, dvāra is a metaphorical way of referring to the senses. The senses are considered to be doors for the body, which is often compared to a city or a place or a residence. Navadvāre pure dehi naiva kurvannākārayaṇī So, Krishna has talked about this body as a Navadvāra pura.
Pura is city, dvāra is gate. The city of nine gates, using a door to refer to the senses is a recurrent feature of the Bhagavad Gita. We will see this again in 14.11 also, where Krishna will say sarva-dvāreṣu dehesu prakāśyam pujāyate jñānaṁ yadā tathā vidyā devṛddhaṁ sattva-mittyutā He says when all the gates of the body are aligned with knowledge.
So, now here Krishna is saying sarva-dvārani-sanyamya, controlling all the doors. That means, we carefully choose what are the inputs that we allow into the body and what are the inputs that we don't allow into the body. sarva-dvārani-sanyamya manoruddhi-niruddhi-ca That one controls the mind, fixing it on the heart.
mūrdhya ādhāyātmanaḥ prāṇam and let the prana rise and fix it in the head. āsthito-yogadhāranām āsthito-situated āsthito-means properly situated yogadhāranām dhāranām When one does like this, then one moves from the praktyāḥ stage to the dhāraṇaḥ stage. So, these are the advanced stages of yoga.
Yama, Niyamasa and Prāṇāyam are the preliminary stages. then there is pratyahara dhyan dharana samadhi like that so now here Krishna is telling that pratyahara involves shutting out the senses shutting out the sense objects rather by regulating the senses and that is what is referred to in the lines so especially the first line sarva-dvarani sanyamya so here by shutting out the senses sarva-dvarani sanyamya manoroti nirudhecha fixing the mind on the heart what does this mean so it means that the conscious the in the mind is the route through which our consciousness moves if we consider suppose we are looking out of a room through a window we're sitting in the room it's all covered with walls and there's one small window in it so it is through that window we can look out at the world apart from that we can't look anywhere else and suppose that windows angle can be changed by which we can either look upwards or we can look downwards then we will be able to by directing the window change what we are able to see or if we consider binoculars we may move the binoculars in different directions and get a close-up vision of what is seen over there so the mind is basically the tool for perception for us so when you focus the mind on the heart that means we concentrate on the heart here Krishna is not referring to that we say like a doctor using a stethoscope tries to measure the breathing or the heartbeat or such things so it's not that we focus on whether our blood pressure is low or high manoroti nirudhecha here means that the heart is where the soul is present so we meditate on our spiritual identity more than a ha ya pranam so the prana vayu is actually the subtle environment within which the soul floats so instead of floating prana so prana is not just air it is a specific kind of air which allows the soul to float in its presence and in this prana what is there in this prana is the reality that in this prana is the soul situated and when the soul departs from one body to another body the prana also goes with it now the prana can be situated at various levels that is the whole process in which through kundalini in kundalini yoga they try to raise the prana there are various chakras within the body and from the lower chakras they try to raise the consciousness towards the higher chakras and that such raising of consciousness is said to help the soul move upward and raise our raising of the chakra raising of the prana through these chakras it is meant to raise our consciousness towards the higher levels of reality now so there are the muladhara chakra, swadhisthana chakra, manipura chakra, anahata chakra, vishuddha chakra, agya chakra and sahasrara chakra so these chakras are basically centers of circles or centers of energy we could say subject is technical and we don't have to go into these technicalities during our practice of bhakti but suffice it to say that the process of yoga has its own profound complex technicalities and as one raises the consciousness or tries to raise the consciousness through the process of ashtanga yoga the moordhya refers to the head so as the consciousness rises upwards the sahasrara chakra is situated in the head and when the prana is situated prana rises it comes in the head that is considered to be astitva yoga dharana the yogi student dharana and it is said that some yogis after they situate the prana in their head the time for death comes then they ensure that they the prana shoots up through their head and they depart from the body from upward side though when the soul departs from the upper holes or soul departs directly from the head back then that is considered to be an auspicious departure with the soul destined for higher destinations so one who gets the soul to the one who sorry one who gets the prana to the moordhya adhaya prana who has got the prana to the sahasrara chakra that person has come to the stage that is one step below absorption and trance so dhyana and samadhi are next deep deep deep increasingly deeper states of concentration here there is dharana astitva yoga dharana so krishna has told in the previous words that he will describe the process by which through yogic practice one can move towards liberation vishanti myathayo vitaragaha so that process is describing in this in the next verse the moment from the external consciousness through shutting out the senses and raising the prana till it reaches the head that is summarized in this one verse and although the prana is subtle and incomprehensible to inaccessible to modern science still that is also material so krishna will talk about these adjustments as steps and then to move from dharana towards samadhi and then to move towards mukti talk about what we should be the object of meditation that he will talk about in the next verse which we will see.