Commentary
Indeed, there are stages in the seeker's life
when he should be involved in certain external practices and there are
stages when he becomes engaged in internal practices. In the highest
stages, however, the sage is completely quiescent, at rest in the self,
which is cosmic consciousness.
Until the state that is known as yoga is
reached, one should not renounce external practices, for premature
renunciation would prevent progress. This is true even of worldly
objects and duties. It is more sensible and wiser to cultivate the
proper attitude to them and to establish in oneself the correct scale of
values, so that the objects drop away, their values deflated, and the
"duties" are seen in their true light as the ego's excuse to
cling to the world. The ego does not initiate action. Action comes from
somewhere else. Correct scale of values, the correct sense of proportion
is itself samnyasa, usually translated as
"renunciation." Physically pushing the world away might only
drive it deeper within oneself, psychologically.
Yet this should not be interpreted to mean
undue emphasis on action. A stage comes in the life of every seeker when
the external and later the internal action is no longer necessary; then,
resting in the peace of the self, he realizes that that is both the doer
of all actions and the witness of all passing phenomena! This is not a
state to be presumed; it has its own criteria - complete non-attachment
and the absence of selfish desires and worldly (and heavenly!) dreams
and schemes, which are inwardly and actually "seen" as
haunting phantoms. At that stage a false sense of duty or the need for
demonstrative practices drop away unnoticed.
