In this class on the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda, a direct disciple of Swami Sivananda, continues his commentary on Chapter 6, Adhyatma Yoga, taking up the 28th and 29th verses — the description of the Yogi whose mind rests always in Samadhi, and the vision that follows from it: the Self beheld in all beings, and all beings in the Self.
The Yogi Whose Mind Rests in Samadhi
Swamiji opens with the chapter’s own description of the advanced state: “Thus a Yogi who maintains his mind always in Samadhi… rises beyond the evil of the world, and readily experiences infinite bliss, of contact with Brahman.” The verse is allegorical and condensed, he notes, and spends the rest of the class unpacking what it actually asks of the practitioner.
The Three Egos: Sattvic, Rajasic, Tamasic
“To make it more simple to understand,” Swamiji says, “your ego is of three types, Sattvic, Rajasic, Tamasic.” Tamasic ego, he explains, “holds on to meaningless anger, hate, jealousy, holds on the crudest sentiment, and mostly not based on any rationality” — the grudge kept for its own sake, long after the occasion for it has passed.
Rajasic ego he illustrates with an old simile: a thirsty man digs for water in one spot, finds none, and moves to dig somewhere else, and then somewhere else again — working hard everywhere, and finding water nowhere. “If he were to work just in one place, a little three times more… he would have had one.” Rajasic ego is the mind kept in permanent distraction, chasing one goal only to invent another the moment it is reached.
Sattvic ego, by contrast, “is the healthy state of ego… you come closer to yourself.” Swamiji is careful here not to let the teaching collapse into a demand for egolessness: “Ego is necessary. Without it, you can’t live for a moment.” What matters is which kind is operating — the ego that “does not create in you conceits,” that carries instead “the aroma of humility.”
Cultivating the Sattvic Ego Through Satsanga
Asked how to cultivate the healthy ego, Swamiji’s answer is practical rather than mystical: “keep yourself involved in being good through satsanga… looking to yourself and saying, what are the defects in you?” He contrasts this with the ordinary habit of mind that is “clever only in detecting defects of others” — pointing out that a person quick to find fault in others’ houses gains nothing from it, while a person who clears the rubbish from their own house comes to “live in a good house, in a good personality.”
Verse 29: Seeing the Self in All Beings
The class turns on Krishna’s next verse: “One whose mind is purified by Yoga, he beholds the Self in all beings, and all beings in the Self.” Swamiji reaches for the simplest available illustration — a dream. Inside a dream, everything encountered feels other: the mountain, the river, the birds. But “even while dreaming, it dawns upon you that I am dreaming” — and once that’s seen, everything in the dream is recognized as one’s own mind. “If this is a dream, then everything I see is I am myself… Ahammedam sarvam, I am all.”
Every Person You Meet Is God
From the dream simile, Swamiji brings the teaching down into ordinary life: “when you are handling any object relating to any person, you must realize deep down every person is the same God.” Two people meeting, on this account, are never simply two personalities — “God within you operating through your personality is mixing with God operating through different personality. God dealing with God, the highest satsanga.” He extends it into the most familiar relationships: “Father loves God in the sun, wife loves God in the husband, and husband loves God in the wife. Friends love each other, God in each other. That is the goal.”
The Buddha and the Wounded Swan
Swamiji tells a parable from the Buddha’s youth, when he was still the young prince Siddhartha. Someone injured a swan and brought it before the court, claiming ownership of the bird. The Buddha looked at the wounded bird, then “takes a stick, pokes pores into his own muscles, feels pain, and says: No. You can’t give life. Life is not under your control” — meaning the man had no true claim to the bird’s life, only to the harm he had caused it. The point, Swamiji says, is to “put yourself in other shoes to know where the shoe picks” — and “do not allow others to suffer from which you don’t want to suffer” yourself.
Sarvay Bhavantu Sukhina — May All Be Happy
The class closes on the Upanishadic prayer that names this compassion directly: Sarvay bhavantu sukhina — may all be happy. Swamiji is careful to locate the practice within each listener’s actual reach, not an abstraction: “whatever is your reach… if your reach is, you will just do a little squirrel which is in misery, put the squirrel back to the tree.” The scope of the prayer grows with the scope of one’s own capacity to act — but the heart behind it, he says, should be like a mother’s toward all her children: “may all my children be happy.”
Scholar’s Corner
Citation: Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 6 (Adhyatma Yoga), verses 28-29. Swamiji states the citation directly in the opening minute of the class: “Srimad Bhagavad Gita, in chapter 6… entitled Adhyatma Yoga… presently in 28th verse.”
Glossary
Sattvic ego — the healthy, transparent quality of ego; brings a person closer to the Self rather than obstructing the way.
Rajasic ego — the restless quality of ego that keeps the mind in perpetual distraction, forever relocating its goal.
Tamasic ego — the dull, crude quality of ego that clings to old grievances without rational basis.
Satsanga — the company of the good; named here as the practical means of cultivating Sattvic ego.
Sarvay Bhavantu Sukhina — “May all beings be happy,” an Upanishadic prayer Swamiji cites as the natural expression of the vision of oneness.
Watch the Full Lecture
This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.