VI: 18

Chapter 6, Verse 18

"With mind and heart in harmony,
Finding rest in the spirit within,
All desires dissolved,
They are Yuktas,
One in God."

Sri Aurobindo:

Yoga, Krishna has said, is not for those who give up sleep and food and play and action, even as it is not for those who indulge inordinately in these things; but the sleep and waking, the food, the play, the putting forth of effort in action are all to be Yukta: moderate, regulated, and done in proper measure.

When the Yoga is attained, all this will be Yukta in a more subtle sense.  In all states, in waking and sleeping, in food and play and action, all activity will be enveloped in the consciousness of the Divine as the Self and as the All and as That which supports and contains our lives and actions.

Desire and personal will and the thoughts in the mind are the motives of action only in the lower nature.  When Yogis become the Self, action arises spontaneously out of That; and a Power other and mightier than the personal will comes out of That to do for them their actions and to bring the fruits.  All has been taken up into the Self and assumed by the Divine.

Sri Eknath Easwaran:

In the early days of meditation, we often seem to hear two tape players running in our consciousness at the same time.  The first tape is the Mantra we are using in meditation.  The second is a distraction expressing in words the thought-waves that the mind habitually dredges into consciousness.

On such occasions, what we need to do is give more and more attention to the Mantra, which means we will be giving less and less attention to the second tape player.  Probably for a long time our meditation will consist of this dreary discipline of bringing the mind back to the Mantra, while staunchly shunning distractions and associations.

If we persist, however, the great day will arrive, through the grace of the Lord, when our mind will not wander even once during meditation.  We will not be aware of the jets roaring overhead, nor the stereo blaring in our neighbor's apartment.  Even if the rapture of this state lasts only for a few minutes, it will be long enough for the Divine Physician to dissolve our tensions, resolve our conflicts and give us the certitude that we can function with a new-found freedom no matter what challenges come our way.