Śabda No. 7
Your own best friend.
“One should raise oneself by one's own mind and not allow oneself to sink.”
The Gītā says you must raise yourself by yourself, because the self is its own friend and its own enemy.
Arjuna asked his. Samvāda answers yours with the Gītā's own verses.
Samvāda is software, an AI companion tuned to the Bhagavad Gītā. It is not a person. It answers from the verse and shows you which one, and it never pretends to be Kṛṣṇa.
उद्धरेदात्मनाऽऽत्मानं नात्मानमवसादयेत्।
आत्मैव ह्यात्मनो बन्धुरात्मैव रिपुरात्मनः।।
uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānam avasādayet ātmaiva hyātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ
One should raise oneself by one's own mind and not allow oneself to sink; for the mind alone is the friend of the self, and the mind alone is the foe of the self.
6.5 is verse 238 of 700, and verse 5 of 47 in chapter 6.
Ātman (the self), in any form, comes 7 times in 6.5.
Chapter 6 has 47 verses. Speakers: Kṛṣṇa 42, Arjuna 5.
Counted by Vāṇi on the 700-verse text at getvani.app/gita.
The self is the subject of chapter 6, and these verses are where it gets personal. 6.4 says that someone who no longer clings to sense objects or to actions, and has given up all desires, is said to have climbed to the heights of yoga. 6.5 turns that into an instruction: raise yourself by your own mind and do not let yourself sink, because the mind alone is the friend of the self and the mind alone is its enemy. 6.6 completes the thought. The mind is a friend to the one who has conquered it, and for the one who has not, it stays hostile like an enemy. In 6.5 the Sanskrit word for the self comes again and again, and the verse uses it for the one who is lifted and the one who lifts. The story calls it your own best friend. The verse says the friend and the enemy are the same one. See chapter 6 and what the Gītā says about knowledge.