Chapter 5: Karma Sannyāsa Yoga – Yoga of Inner Renunciation / Verse 17

Explanation of verses 5.16 and 5.17:

In spiritual pursuit, the sole emphasis is in removing ignorance and delusion by acquiring true knowledge.

Ignorance inheres in the mind and intelligence. And so, the effort to remove it has to be mento-intellectual, as Krishna and Arjuna jointly do. For, intelligence alone can act on the mind and bring necessary changes and improvements, to make life smooth, natural, peaceful and harmonious. It is a wonderful state of wisdom and inner splendour, dispelling all kinds of imbalance and disharmony.

Krishna’s disclosure and Arjuna’s absorption are a mento- intellectual effort. It reforms and refines the mind instantly, making it purer. Intelligence becomes more perceptive. The whole sādhanā is inner.

Knowledge is about the ignorance at work and the supreme Self shining within. By gaining the knowledge the Teacher imparts, when ignorance is destroyed, the Self begins to shine without hindrance, and the supreme Truth becomes clearer.

The seeker identifies with the Self, the real Subject within, giving rise to a niṣṭhā, intense pursuit as: “I am the Self. I must reflect Selfhood in all I think, speak and act.”

Self should become the sole refuge. Everything in life should come under the Self. This knowledge will remove all blemishes of the mind and intelligence. The Knower will become purity, sublimity and homogeneity incarnate.

All seeds for further birth, ideas relating to it, will be burnt off. Birth and death are merely ideas, not facts or realities. Likewise re-birth and further death also become fictitious notions, lingering in the impure mind. No doubt about either life here or hereafter will linger. Clarity becomes full, comprehensive.