By Kamala Rose, published on August 7, 2025
As yoga practitioners, we often speak of peace. The kind that lingers after savasana, that spaciousness between breaths in pranayama, that elusive stillness that sometimes visits us in meditation. But Shanti, as described in the Bhagavad Gita, is not simply a moment of calm – it is a complete and radical reorientation of consciousness. In the final verses of Chapter 2, Krishna offers something deeper than tranquility. He speaks of the absolute state, a state of being that is not just undisturbed by the noise of life but fundamentally free from the delusion that the noise is all there is.
Verse 2.72 declares that this state leads one “from death to immortality.” Not metaphorically, but existentially. From a life rooted in fear, desire, and the small self to one anchored in what the text calls Brahma Nirvana—a condition of complete clarity and absorption in the truth of being. This is not transcendence as escape. It is transcendence as participation.
And it begins, paradoxically, by walking in the opposite direction of the world.
“That which is, night to all beings, in it the sage is awake; where all beings are awake, that is the night for the sage who knows the Self.“(2.69)
This verse – borrowed from the Katha Upanishad – is one of the most haunting and beautiful in the Gita. It suggests that awakening involves a complete reversal of values. What most of us chase – the accolades, the desires, the frantic daylight of worldly striving – is night to the awakened. And what the world ignores or fears – the silence, the interiority, the dark unknown – is where the sage begins to see clearly.
In practice, we taste this. There is a shift that comes with time and devotion. I remember when, early in my path, success meant how long or how still I could sit. But over the years, through discipline and surrender, something softened. My measure of yoga became less about doing and more about being. Less about progress and more about presence. In those moments, I began to understand the sage’s “night vision” – a kind of inner luminosity not dependent on anything external. The Upanishads call it the unflickering flame in the heart cave of all beings. That is where this journey takes us.
Krishna speaks of peace not as a mood but as an identity shift. In verse 2.71, he describes,“One who lives completely free from desires, without longing, devoid of the sense of “I” “me” and “mine,” attains peace.” (2.71)
The ego does not vanish through suppression – it dissolves in the radiance of a broader awareness. Like watching a sunset and realizing the sun doesn’t actually set – the earth moves. The self doesn’t disappear; it reframes itself within a much greater field. As practice deepens, the breath begins to breathe us. The pose holds us. We start to sense that yoga is not something we perform, but something we are being performed by.
There is a moment in A Woman’s Gita – our podcast – where we ask a question that is both playful and profound: Is the sun conscious? Rupert Sheldrake poses this same question in earnest in his paper by that title. If human consciousness emits an electromagnetic field, and if the heart itself is a broadcaster of measurable energy, what of the sun – billions of times more powerful than any human mind? Could it be that the sun, long revered in the Vedas, is not only the physical source of life but a spiritual presence as well?
When we bow in Surya Namaskar, we do more than stretch and flow. I believe we participate in one of humanity’s most ancient gestures: reverence for light, for clarity, for the central truth that warms, nourishes, and guides. Whether or not the sun salutation asana series dates back to antiquity (historians disagree), the symbolism is timeless. We turn our bodies and breath toward what is eternal. Perhaps the sun is not a metaphor. Perhaps it is kin.
The Bhagavad Gita’s final verse in Chapter 2 introduces Brahma Nirvana – a state in which the limited, individual identity merges with the whole. Not erasure, but expansion. Not detachment, but total integration. Krishna offers this not as some abstract mystical attainment but as a practical realization, something accessible to all who are willing to release the tight grip of “I” and awaken into what serves the whole.In this state, there is:
- No fear of death, because what you are was never born
- No fatigue in service, because you act from the inexhaustible
- No anxiety about outcomes, because you see clearly what is
- No need to control or cling, because you trust the rhythm of dharma
Many of us have already had glimpses – while walking in nature, while sitting in meditation, while holding someone’s hand at just the right moment. These moments come, and they go. What the Gita asks of us is not merely to taste peace, but to become established in it.
This is why we practice. Not to escape the world, but to see it clearly. Not to transcend the body, but to inhabit it as sacred. Not to perfect the pose, but to awaken the flame that was already burning long before we began.
The battlefield where Arjuna receives this teaching is not incidental. It’s a symbol of the complexity of modern life – family obligations, ethical conflicts, personal despair, political firestorms. Shanti is not a luxury. It is the only true clarity from which to act.When we stabilize in this peace:
- We love without possession
- We serve without burnout
- We lead without power struggles
- We create without comparison
- We walk through grief, through beauty, through uncertainty with grace
Each breath, each mantra, each morning you show up—this is how you prepare your body and mind to receive what has always been present.
The light is already within you. Let’s walk toward it together.
→ Learn more about Sutra to Self, my guided immersion into yoga philosophy and practice.
With reverence and clarity,
Kamala Rose