Chapter 6, Verse 37
arjuna uvāca
ayatiḥ śraddhayopeto
yogāc-calita-mānasaḥ
aprāpya yoga-saṁsiddhiṁ
kāṁ gatiṁ kṛṣṇa gacchati
Arjuna says: He who takes up yoga with faith, but cannot control himself with the mind, wandering away from yoga, failing to attain perfection in yoga, what is his end, O Krishna?
Here Arjuna is enquiring, “What will happen to me if I try to follow Your instructions, but I don’t achieve that state? The one ‘who takes up yoga’, who is on the spiritual path and has faith, but can’t control one’s wandering mind, what will happen to one’s soul?” Arjuna asks Lord Krishna, “What will happen when such a person dies Even if one makes an effort to control the mind, but the mind is not balanced and is not constantly remembering the Divine at the time of death, what will happen to this person?” Arjuna was thinking like everybody else, “I don’t think that I will attain Realisation in this life. So, what will happen to me if I don’t achieve ‘perfection in yoga’? We hear these beautiful words that You are saying, but due to the outside reality, it could be very difficult. We will try our best, but if we don’t succeed, what will happen at the time of death?”
Arjuna is getting very worried and asks, “If I die now in the war, what will happen? There is not much time to achieve that state! I am standing here in between two armies, that are ready to fight and shoot at each other and you are talking so much! It could be difficult! If I start meditating here, for sure they will shoot arrows at me! The Kauravas will say, ‘Look at this one. Shoot him!’”
Arjuna is already creating all this in his mind. At the beginning, in Chapter 1, we see how he has this image in his mind about what would happen to his ancestors and
how they would all be doomed somewhere in Hell. And he created all these images in his mind of not fighting. Now He is asking, “How can I practise all these spiritual techniques that You are teaching me in such a short time? And how can I achieve the goal?” His eagerness was there, but he was wondering what would happen to him.
Actually, it is beautiful to see this state that he is in, the state where everyone in life asks these questions. For example, when an Atma Kriya teacher is teaching Atma Kriya Yoga to his or her students, they see all the exercises and then the mind starts thinking, “Oh my goodness! Will I have time to do all this practise? The day is too short for all this! If I do all these exercises tonight, it will soon be the next day.” Here Arjuna is asking Krishna, “What will happen if the sadhak has practised, but has not yet reached that level of Realisation? What will happen if one has no control over the mind, yet one has faith, which means that one has tried one’s best? One has faith because one has received Diksha, one has received instruction from the Guru, from the Master. What will happen to this person at the time of death and after death?”
Bhagavad Gita
