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

We have always to keep in mind the two great doctrines which stand behind all the Gita’s teach- ings with regard to the soul and Nature, — the Sankhva truth of the Pu rusha and Prakrit i corrected and c ompleted by the Vedantic truth of the three- fold Purusha and the double Prakriti o f which the lower form is the Maya of the three gunas and the higher is the divine nature and the true soul-nature. T his is the kev which reconciles and explains wh at we might have otherwis e to l eave as contradictions and inconsistencies. l Tiere_are, in tact, difter^^d^ pl anes of our conscious existence, and what is practical truth og one plane ceases to be true, because it assumes a quite different appearance, a s soon as we rise to a higher Icv^l from which we can see things more in the whole. " Recent scientific discovery has shown, that man, animal, plant and even the metal have essentially the same vital re- actions and they would, therefore, if each has a certain kind of what for want of a better word we THE DETERMINISM OF NATURE 2must call nervous consciousness, possess the same basis of mechanical psychology. Yet if e^|i of these could give its own mental account of what it experiences, we should have four quite different and largely contradictory statements of the same reactions and the same natural principles, because they get, as we rise in the scale of being, a different meaning and value and have to be judged by a different outlook. So it is with the levels of the human soul, ^hat we now call i n our ordinary mentality our f ree will and have a certain limited justification for so calling it, yet appears to the Yogin who has climbed beyond and to whom our night i s day>.apd o ur da j;^ night , not free will at all, but a su biec t ion to the modes of Natur e. He regards“l:he same facts, but from the higher outlook of the whole knower, kr'itsnamt, while we view it altogether from the more limited mentality of our partial knowledge, akrHtsnavidah , which is an ignorance. What we vaunt of as our freedoii ^is tojiim hoodie. ^ The perception of the ignorance of our assump- tion of freedoin while one is all the time in the mfflhes of this lower nature^ is the view-point at ^hich the Gita arrives and it is in contradiction to this ignorant claim that it affirms the complete sub- jertinn o f the ego-soul on this plane to the gunas. ** While the actions are entirely done by the 3modfes of Nature,*' it <Mtys, '*he whose self is be- \ ^dei^d by eg oism thinks that IrtT nis 'l' wh ictils CTDm ^tnem . T^uf one wno knows the true principles of the divisions of the modes and of works, realises that ^ is the modes which are actin g a nd react ing on each odier and is lidt caught in them by attach- ment. Those who are bewildered by the modes, not knowers of the whole, let not the knower of the whole disturb in their mental standpoint. Giving up thv wo rks t o Me . free from desire and egoism . Ig ht de livered fro m th e fever of thv soul. ** Here there is the clear distinction between t wo levels of conscious ness, t wg standpoints of action , that of* the soul caught in the web of its egoistic nature and doing works with the ide a, but not the reality of free vnlL u nder the impulsion of Natur e, and that of the soul delive red from its identification with the ego , ^ser ving, sanctioning and gover ning the works o f Natur e f rom above her.