Verse 6.6

Verse 6.6: “The self becomes the helpmate of that self who has by his own self conquered his very self; but towards one that has not mastered his own self his very self would act inimically, as would an actual enemy. (71)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

One, who by thought abandons self-conceit and becomes one with the eternal Being of the Supreme Brahman, has settled himself in the highest good. Otherwise, one becomes one’s own enemy, who like the silk-worm, being lured by the elegance of his own body, identifies his self with his bodily being and is encircled and suffocated in it. What a pity it is, the unfortunate one standing on the brink of good luck feels like one blind and closes his eyes though he is yet in possession of the full use of his eyes: or one getting under delusion goes on talking “That is not myself, I am lost, I have been stolen away,” and persists in that fancy. As a matter of fact the soul is himself the Brahman, yet what a pity it is that his mind never inclines in the direction of this truth. Does one meet his death through a stab in a dream? The soul’s condition is verily like that of the parrot in the ‘Parrot & Tube’ story. In that, the parrot sits on the tube (fixed to a tree by the hunter to trap the parrot) and with its own weight the tube begins to revolve. The parrot ought to fly away as soon as the tube begins to revolve in the reverse direction, but terror-stricken as he is, he twists his own neck, wriggles his body and limbs and holds more tightly the tube in his beak and legs and gets his free legs entangled in the trap in the false belief that he is really tied down. Can it be said that anyone else has tied down such a one, who with no reason or rhyme, gets himself tied down of his own accord? But once caught in such a delusion he would not leave the tube even though he be cut in two. Therefore, one who goes on extending his wrong ideas and fancies, becomes his own enemy; while I hold the person as having realised the Self, who has had personal experience of “I am the very Supreme Brahman” and has never soiled his mind with any untrue notion.