Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

Again, the sign of the divine worker is that which is central to the divine consciousness itself, a perfect inner joy and peace which depends upon nothing in the world for its source or its 2continuance ; it is innate, it is the very stuff of the soul’s consciousness, it is the very nature of divine being. The ordinary man depends upon outward things for his happiness ; therefore he has desire ; therefore he has anger and passion, pleasure and pain, joy and grief ; therefore he measures all things in the balance of good fortune and evil fortune. None of these things can affect the divine soul ; it is ever satisfied without any kind of dependence, nitya-tripto nirdgrayah ; for its delight, its divine ease, its happiness, its glad light are eternal within, ingrained in itself, dtma-ratih, antah-sukhq ’ntardr- dmas tathdntar-jyoiir eva cha. What joy it takes in outward things is not for their sake, not for things which it seeks in them and can miss, but for the self in them, for their expression of the Divine, for that which is eternal in them and which it cannot miss. It is without attachment to their outward touches, but finds everywhere the same joy that it finds in itself, because its self is theirs, has become one self with the self of all beings, because it is united with the one and equal Brahman in them through all their differences, brahmayoga- yuktdtmd sarvabhUtdtma-bhUtdtmd. It does not rejoice in the touches of the pleasant or feel anguish in the touches of the unpleasant ; neither the wounds of things, nor the wounds of friends, nor the wounds of enemies can disturb the firmness of its outgazing mind or bewilder its receiving heart ; this soul is in its nature, as the Upanishad puts it, awran ’am'rwithout wound or scar. In. Jill things it