The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 12-4: Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 11, November 2025, 07:00.
Books: Bhagavad Gita
The Relevance of the Bhagavadgita to Humanity 12-4: 
Chapter 12: Control of the Senses: 4.
Swami Krishnananda.

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These are explained in greater detail in the sutras of Patanjali. We have a potential condition; we have a tentatively thinned-out, weakened condition; we have a sleeping condition; and we have an obviously manifest condition. Four conditions of instincts are mentioned in Patanjali. So when instincts do not obviously and actively operate outside like a soldier fighting in the field, it need not mean they are not there. They can be sleeping. A sleeping snake is nevertheless a serpent. A potential thief is a thief, though he is not actually thieving at this moment. There can be an emaciated snake. An emaciated snake which has not eaten for months has the capacity to be what it is when it is fed well. There is a submerged condition, things lying in ambush waiting to find an opportunity to come up.

So our instincts need not necessarily be visible to us. In our conscious life we may not know that they exist at all. I am very fine. What is wrong with me? But the disturbances in the mind, that which we call the tossing of the mind, the inability to concentrate, a feeling of fatigue even in sitting for a while calmly in meditation and an inward restlessness that one feels are outer indications of an inward presence of these potential instincts which are irrational. These prevent us from putting this knowledge into practice.

But there is a way out. All problems are meant to be solved. Every difficulty has to be overcome. This is the picture I have presented before you of things as they are. But things have to be something else. The way out is to put forth effort in the right direction, in the right manner, with the guidance of people who have trodden the path. Gradually these irrationalities, these impulses, have to be subdued. Just as restive horses which will not easily bend and will not listen have to be controlled slowly by operating the reins in the required manner, the higher should control the lower.

Now, when we say that the higher should control the lower, it need not necessarily mean that that we should go to the highest place of support at once. The immediately higher position can be a support. The mind is superior to the sense organs. The mind is filled with instincts, no doubt, yet it is the reservoir of the force which is supplied to the senses for their actions. So you can diminish the supply of power to the senses by blocking the avenues of this supply, which is what we call austerity, tapas, and a life of discipline, abstemious living in a controlled atmosphere. Sadhana, as it is called, is one way of subduing these otherwise very strong impulses.

One has to live an austere life. Do not be too indulgent. Do not pamper your sense organs; do not feed your body beyond the limit. Even animals in a circus are very carefully managed. They are fed to the extent it is necessary; neither are they allowed to die, nor are they allowed to be ferocious. After all, the sense organs are operations within you. You cannot kill them in the name of austerity, but you also cannot allow them to be ferocious and go out of your hand. That state should not take place. The Arab has to control the camel, and the camel should not kick the Arab out of the tent.

So yoga, according to the Bhagavadgita, is not killing the senses. It is also not indulging in the senses. It is harmony that the Bhagavadgita teaches. You are not over-friendly with your sensory irrational instincts, nor are you inimical to them. You are a good teacher, a schoolmaster, as it were, a medical man, a psychologist who is not angry with the patient but understands the condition of the patient.

So here you have to be very cautious in applying a harmonious yardstick of measuring the present condition of your irrational behaviour, potential or otherwise, and your higher reason has to be applied even to subjugate the mind which supplies the energy to the senses. The manas is superior to the indriyas, or the senses, and the buddhi is superior to the manas.

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Continues

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