MIND CONTROL

Verily, the mind is unsteady, tumultuous, powerful, obstinate! O Krishna, I consider the mind as difficult to master as the wind!
—The Bhagavad Gita VI:34

Arjuna compares the mind to the wind. Here the deeper meaning of "wind" is breath; for the changeableness and waywardness of the human mind is ineluctably bound up with man's breathing patterns. The glory of India's ancient sages is that they discovered the liberating truth: to control the breath is to control the mind.

Evenmindedness

The state of constant calmness (neutralization of restless thoughts) is attained by the continuous practice of meditation and by keeping the attention fixed at the point between the eyebrows. In this state of calmness, man witnesses the thoughts and emotions and their workings without being disturbed at all, reflecting in his consciousness only the unchangeable image of Spirit. (Chapter II, God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda)

The Nature of Right Action

That man of action is free from karma who receives with contentment whatever befalls him, who is poised above the dualities, who is devoid of jealousy or envy or enmity, and who looks equally on gain and loss.
—The Bhagavad Gita IV:22

Whether a yogi meets gain or loss in the course of performing dutiful actions, he remains evenminded. Both success and failure are bound to come at various times in response to the inherent duality in the structure of the body, mind, and world; the devotee who constantly reminds himself of his soul has little temptation to identify himself with the physical and mental phantasmagoria. (Chapter IV, God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda)

Detachment

He who is free from hatred toward all creatures, is friendly and kind to all, is devoid of the consciousness of "I-ness" and possessiveness; is evenminded in suffering and joy, forgiving, ever contented; a regular yoga practitioner, constantly trying by yoga to know the Self and to unite with Spirit, possessed of firm determination, with mind and discrimination surrendered to Me—he is My devotee, dear to Me.
—The Bhagavad Gita XII:13-14

Possessing the evenminded blessedness of Spirit, a yogi is unruffled by material sufferings and pleasures. Finding the joy of the Divine, he is ever contented under all conditions of physical existence. He attends to his meager bodily necessities, but is wholly detached from any sense of my body or my possessions; he considers himself to be serving God in his own body and in the bodies of all who cross his path. (Chapter XII, God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda)

Practice a Neutral Attitude

O Flower among Men (Arjuna)! he who cannot be ruffled by these (contacts of the senses with their objects), who is calm and evenminded during pain and pleasure, he alone is fit to attain everlastingness!
—The Bhagavad Gita II:15

The basic principle of creation is duality. If one knows pleasure he must know pain. One who cognises heat must cognise cold also. If creation had manifested only heat or only cold, only sorrow or only pleasure, human beings would not be the irritated victims of the pranks of duality. But then, what would life be like in a monotone existence? Some contrast is necessary; it is man's response to dualities that causes his trouble. So long as one is slavishly influenced by the dualities, he lives under the domination of the changeful phenomenal world. (...)

In order to attain mental aboveness, man must practice a neutral attitude to all earthly changes.

The saints have found that happiness lies in a constant mental state of unruffled peace during all the experiences of earthly dualities. A changeable mind perceives a changeable creation, and is easily disturbed; the unchangeable soul and the unruffled mind, on the other hand, behold, behind the masks of change, the Eternal Spirit. The man whose mind is like an oscillating mirror beholds all creation as distorted into waves of change; but the man who holds his mental mirror steady beholds there naught but the reflections of the Sole Unity—God. Through realization, not mere imagination, he sees that his body and all things are the condensed consciousness of Spirit. The mind, free of artificial excitation, remains centered in its native state of inner peace and soul joy.

When the mind by deep spiritual development manifests its aboveness to the suggestions born of the external activity of the senses, the advancing yogi, like Arjuna, finds that before he can attain the promised state of everlastingness he must also neutralize, by meditation, the effects of the inner action of the sensory powers. (Chapter II, God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda)

Ephemeral Expressions of the Divine Dream-stuff

Self-realized sages behold with an equal eye a learned and humble Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and an outcaste.
—The Bhagavad Gita V:18

Objects in the phenomenal world are called relative because they exist only in relation to each other. Man's ordinary consciousness is relativity consciousness—i.e., he apprehends one thing only by interpreting it relative to something else. He cannot perceive the One, the Absolute, through that relative consciousness; it was given to him in order to appreciate the nature of the many. Ordinary waking consciousness, subconsciousness, super-subconsciousness—all forms of ego consciousness—share this characteristic: they are relative. The pure superconsciousness of the soul can apprehend Spirit, the Life and Substance underlying and pervading everything in the universe. (...)

Another illustration will explain how a true devotee actually sees equality in inanimate and animate objects. A sleeping man, beholding a dream drama, may cry out: "There's a low pariah! And there's my friend the priest! How noisy it is here—dogs barking, cows lowing, and elephants trumpeting!" Yet, on awakening, he realizes (if he remembers the dream) that the various "living" creatures possessed no inherent differences, all being unreal mind-spinnings. Similarly, the animate and inanimate objects of this world are nothing but the sheer dreams of God. The man who is awake in wisdom realizes all objects of mundane experience to be ephemeral expressions of the divine dream-stuff. When a devotee can view the earth with all its vast variety and perceive the unity of its underlying God-structure, then and not until then does he rightly know this world to be a dream creation. (Chapter V, God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda)

How The Sage Of Self-Realization Views The World

He is a supreme yogi who regards with equal-mindedness all men—patrons, friends, enemies, strangers, mediators, hateful beings, relatives, the virtuous and the ungodly.
—The Bhagavad Gita VI:9

In this stanza, the Bhagavad Gita defines a great yogi as he who similarly regards all human beings—friends and enemies, saints and sinners alike—as dream images made of the one consciousness of God.

The exalted yogi, however, does not treat gold and earth, saint and sinner, with impartial indifference! He wisely recognizes their dramatic differences on the mundane plane as perceived by other material beings. Even though all beings and objects in the cosmos are made of the divine light and the shadows of delusion, the yogi recognizes relative values. He endorses the activities of the virtuous who serve as harbingers of good to their fellowmen, and he denounces the activities of the evil who harm themselves and others. (Chapter VI, God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda)