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worldly activities and getting to a state beyond the worldly.
“Achieve that transcendent state, Arjuna, and enter the battle not merely as a soldier but as a man of true wisdom, a yogi. These high spiritual teachings are not meant just for the recluse; they are intended for active people like you, immersed in the hustle and bustle of the world.
     
    52  “When your mind crosses the mire of delusion and your intellect clears itself of its confusion about the truth of who you really are, your True Self, then you will become dispassionate about the results of all your actions.
    53  “At present, Arjuna, your mind is bewildered by conflicting ideas and philosophies. When it can rest steady and undistracted in contemplation of the True Self Within, you will be enlightened and completely united in love with the Divine. This is where yoga reaches its culmination: the merging of individual consciousness in Cosmic Consciousness. This is nothing less than the goal of life!”
Description of the Illumined Ones
     
      54  Arjuna, listening attentively, interrupts. “But Krishna, how does one identify the enlightened person you describe, the one absorbed in the Divine? How would such a one speak, sit, or move about, for example? If I knew that I could better strive for it.”
      55  Krishna answers, “Old friend, you should strive to become such a person! This person is called an Illumined One, a Sthithaprajna (literally, one who is established in wisdom). This is the one who abandons all selfish desires, cravings, and torments of the heart; who is satisfied with the True Self (Atma) and wants nothing outside the Self. This one knows that real bliss is only found within.
      56  “This is the man or woman whose mind is unperturbed by sorrow and adversity, who doesn’t thirst for pleasures, and is free of the three traits that most tarnish the mind — namely attachment, fear, and anger. Such a one is an Illumined One, a Sthithaprajna.
    57  “The person who is detached, desireless, who neither rejoices nor gets depressed when faced with good fortune or bad — that person is poised in wisdom above worldly turmoil and is therefore an Illumined One.
    58  “The Illumined One has learned to deftly withdraw the senses from the attractions of the world, just as the turtle naturally pulls in its limbs to protect itself. This is very important, Arjuna. Let Me explain further.
    59-60  “When people pull back from worldly pleasures their knowledge of the Divine grows, and this knowing causes the yearning for pleasure to gradually fade away. But inside, they may still hanker for pleasures. Even those minds that know the path can be dragged away from it by unruly senses.
“Much of one’s spiritual discipline must therefore focus on taming wayward senses and being ever vigilant against the treacherousness of the senses. The refinement of an individual or a society is measured by the yardstick of how well greed and desires are controlled.
     
    61  “The Illumined Ones subdue their senses and hold them in check by keeping their minds ever intent on achieving the overarching goal of union with God. They get in the habit of substituting Divine thoughts for attractions of the senses.
    62-63  “The downward spiral to one’s ruin consists of the following process: Brooding on (or merely thinking about) worldly attractions develops attachments to them. From attachments to sense objects come selfish desires. Thwarted desires cause anger to erupt. From anger arises delusion. This causes confusion of the mind and makes one forget the lessons of experience. Forgotten lessons of experience cloud the reason, which results in loss of discrimination (between Truth and non-Truth, Real and not-Real). Finally, losing the faculty of discrimination makes one veer from life’sonly purpose, achieving union with the Divinity within. Then, unfortunately, one’s life itself is wasted.
    64-65  “But when you can move about in a world