Bhagavad Gita 5.13
सर्वकर्माणि मनसा संन्यस्यास्ते सुखं वशी । नवद्वारे पुरे देही नैव कुर्वन्न कारयन् ॥
sarva-karmāṇi manasā sannyasyāste sukhaṃ vaśī | nava-dvāre pure dehī naiva kurvan na kārayan ||
Translation
The self-controlled embodied being, mentally renouncing all actions, rests happily in the nine-gated city, neither acting nor causing to act.
Reflection
What automatic process of the body have you been congratulating yourself on, as if your management had produced it?
Read this verse in its chapter: Chapter Five
Nava-dvāre pure. In the nine-gated city. The body is named with anatomical precision: nine gates, the seven of the head plus two below. The embodied one lives inside this city without claiming to operate it. Manasā sannyasya, having renounced mentally. Naiva kurvan na kārayan, neither doing nor causing the doing. The verse hands the student the inner address. You live in the city. The city does its work. You do not have to imagine you are the engineer of the breath, the eye, the hand. Aurobindo reads the nine-gated city as the chapter's quiet bridge between cosmology and physiology.