Detachment, Liberation and Mastery

The question of detachment, renunciation, is frequently interpreted as one of avoidance and a rejection of the exte
al life in the world. It most often turns to austerity. If one follows this line of approach to its logical conclusion, the only solution is to renounce all action, renounce all desires, and live an isolated life focused solely in realisation, liberation and eventually the opportunity to merge the consciousness into the divine source. Such an approach necessarily gives very little, if any, value to the development and perfection of the outer life, the powers of the body, the life energy and the mind, or the enhancement of the exte
al social life or environment within which we live. All the sciences, all the social developments, all the arts and all the developments of technology, from this viewpoint, are treated as virtually worthless. This brings about generally an attempt to reject activity to the greatest extent possible.

The Bhagavad Gita, in particular, takes a totally different view of the matter. It does not counsel asceticism or austerity as the path of liberation; rather, it looks upon the inner relation the individual has to the actions he undertakes and the motivations that drive his actions, as the key to liberation. Sri Aurobindo translates Chapter 2, Verse 47 as an illustration of the Gita’s approach: “Thou hast a right to action, but only to action, never to its fruits; let not the fruits of they works be thy motive, neither let there be in thee any attachment to inactivity.”

Sri Aurobindo comments on the Gita’s position as follows, in Bhagavad Gita and Its Message: Once we are possessed of the Self, we are in possession of all things. And yet he does not cease from work and action. There is the originality and power of the Gita, that having affirmed this static condition, this superiority to Nature, this emptiness even of all that constitutes ordinarily the action of Nature for the liberated soul, it is still able to vindicate for it, to enjoin on it even the continuance of works and thus avoid the great defect of the merely quietistic and ascetic philosophies, — the defect from which we find them today attempting to escape.”

This provides the foundation for a spiritual practice that reconciles liberation with development and transformation, and thus, presents the seeker with the opportunity, and indeed the need, to both free oneself from the bondage of the ego-personality and the lure of the desire-soul, while working on uplifting and transforming the action and development of the exte
al world that we are participants in.

In this context, detachment does not lead to ascetic avoidance, but rather, from an inner freeing of oneself from desire. This derives from the Gita’s exhortation to act, but not be attached to the results, the fruits of the action. The Isha Upanishad also provides insight in this regard: “All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man’s possession.” The Reality is omnipresent, the Divine pervades, permeates, develops and controls the manifestation of the universe. The individual is an element of this manifestation and once he identifies with that universal consciousness, he can attain mastery, not just renunciation. The lack of reaction is by the ego-personality as it widens into the universal consciousness where all things have their place, their role and their significance, and the individual’s action is determined by that wider, infinite, immeasurable reality and its purposes in the creation.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Detachment is the beginning of mastery, but for complete mastery there should be no reactions at all. When there is something within undisturbed by the reactions that means the inner being is free and master of itself, but it is not yet master of the whole nature. When it is master, it allows no wrong reactions — if any come they are at once repelled and shaken off, and finally none come at all.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 151