Bhagavagd Gita - Session 19- Track 1908

You have no personal hopes, nirāśī, this is the word, which we had come across in these verses: you are nirāśī,. There is no āśā, not that you becomes pessimist: nirāśī, does not mean that you are pessimist, but there is no personal hope. You don’t say, “I wish, I hope this will happen”. When a yogi says, ‘there is a hope’, it is the Divine Himself saying this: it is not that he has personal hopes. His hopes are no personal hopes; personal hopes are all gone. There is nothing that is personal in his case. He becomes impersonal. All his actions are impersonal; he is above all relationships. For him there is no friend and no foe; nor something near and somebody far: he is equal. These are the characteristics of a divine worker. Now, this is the description that you come across in the 5th chapter of the divine worker.

Then, there is a great enunciation of the state of equality. It is specially emphasised in this chapter, although it is a part of the nature of the divine worker, there is a greater emphasis on this sense of equality. What is equality? It is further defined. You might say that Gita is a Shastra of samatvaṁ.. What is real equality? It is described basically in chapter n°2, and chapter n°5, and latter on to some extent. But basically in chapter n°2, and chapter n°5, you have enunciation of the idea of equality. It is a real Shastra of equality, so that real equality is distinguished of semblances of equality. Many people knowing about the exaltation of the sense of equality, which you find in the Gita, many people like to think that they are already equal minded when they are really not equal minded, but they at least like to congratulate themselves by saying that: ‘we are equal minded’.

It is semblance of equality; it may seem to be equal. When your desires are fulfilled already, you say, “Now I am now equal”, that also happens. When you are very hard in your consciousness, whether this happens or that happens your heart is never moved, so you are equal minded. So, there are many semblances of equality, and which have to be clearly brought out, otherwise people will go in the wrong way. Therefore, Sri Krishna explains equality quite in detail. The equality of which Sri Krishna speaks is an equality, which can arise only when there is no desire, only when you are fully established in Knowledge, and when you have really the Knowledge of Oneness. You must really see brahma samambrahma, ‘the one Brahma in everyone’. True equality arises only when you are founded in a state of desire-less-ness, and when you have perceived oneness.

In fact Sri Aurobindo has described the Bhagavad Gita’s Karma yoga in his great book ‘The Synthesis of Yoga’, and He says, “The essence of Karma yoga, the whole Karma yoga of the Gita consists of combination of two things: equality and oneness.” When you are equal in your consciousness, and when you have seen oneness, and when in your process of action, in the end of action, in the culmination of action, in the fulfilment of action, when these two things remain firmly established then, you can be truly called ‘Karmayogi’. And this is the essence of the Karma yoga of the Bhagavad Gita. That is why, in the Bhagavad Gita, you will see a tremendous emphasis on equality and oneness.