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XIV]
Gitā and Yoga
453
the moral conflict in man and thinks that it is only by our efforts to come into touch with our higher self that the littleness of passions and desires for fruits of actions and the preference of our smaller self-interests can be transcended. For, once man is in touch with his highest, he is in touch with God. He has then a broader and higher vision of man and his place in nature, and so he identifies himself with God and finds that he has no special interest of his own to serve. The low and the high, the sinful and the virtuous, are the same in his eyes; he perceives God in all things and all things in God, and it is this state of communion that is the real yoga of the Gītā; and it is because in this state all inequalities of race, creed, position, virtue and vice, high and low vanish, that this superior realization of universal equality is also called yoga. Not only is this union with God called yoga, but God Himself is called Yogesvara, or the Lord of communion. As a result of this union, the yogin enjoys supreme bliss and ecstatic joy, and is free from the least touch of sorrow or pain; and this absolute freedom from pain or the state of bliss, being itself a result of yoga, is also called yoga. From the above survey it is clear that the yoga of the Gitā is quite different from the yoga of Patanjali, and it does not seem at all probable that the Gitā was aware of Patanjali's yoga or the technical terms used by him1.
The treatment of yoga in the Gita is also entirely different from its treatment in almost all the Upanisads. The Katha Upanisad speaks of sense-control as being yoga; but sense-control in the Gītā is only a preliminary to yoga and not itself yoga. Most of the yoga processes described in the other Upanisads either speak of voga with six accessories (sad-anga yoga) or of yoga with eight accessories (aṣṭānga-yoga), more or less after the manner of Patanjali. They introduce elaborate details not only of breathcontrol or prāṇāyāma, but also of the nervous system of the body, iḍā, pingalā and suşumņā, the nerve plexus, mūlädhāra and other similar objects, after the manner of the later works on the Sat
or buddhi. But Sridhara considers this object to be God, and in II. 53 Sankara and Sridhara are unanimous that the object, or the support of the union or communion of the mind, is God.
1 pasya me yogam aiśvaram, 1X. 5, etām vibhutim yogam ca, x. 7. In the above two passages the word yoga seems to have a different meaning, as it is used there in the sense of miraculous powers; but even there the commentators Sankara and Sridhara take it to mean "association" (yukti) and interpret aisvaram yogam as "association of miraculous powers.'
