Bhagavad Gita Chapter 3, Verse 42 (BG 3.42) — Meaning, Translation & Commentary

In the final two verses of the third chapter, Vyasa has pointed toward that complete spiritual practice through which any sincere seeker can successfully discover the enemy desire within and destroy it. Although we cannot expect a detailed exposition of meditation techniques in the opening chapters of the Bhagavad Gita, yet in these verses the Lord presents an outline of the meditation method as a means to Self-realization. The senses are of greater importance to us than the objects of the external world. The faculties of perception are more subtle and superior to the faculties of action. Our common experience shows that the mind governs the senses, and therefore here the mind is said to be more subtle and transcendent than the senses. Undoubtedly, the field of the mind's movement is quite vast, yet it has its own limits. By acquiring one knowledge after another, we expand the boundaries of our mind, and in this conquest, the intellect is the first to cross the boundary of the mind's present knowledge and conquer new realms of understanding for it. From this perspective, the intellect's scope is even more expansive, and therefore the intellect is said to be superior to the mind. That which lies beyond even the intellect is called the atman, the Self. The consciousness that illuminates the functions of the intellect must itself be even more subtle than the intellect. The Upanishads declare that beyond this consciousness in the form of the atman, there is nothing else. In the practice of meditation, one makes a conscious effort to withdraw one's identification from the body, mind, and intellect as limiting conditions, and to establish oneself in the nature of the atman. All these efforts culminate when, turning our attention away from all false objects, we become established as consciousness without objective content. The Lord continues: