Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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But if this were all, then the o nly remedy w ould be to withdraw altogether tjie sa^^^ suffer or compd all our nature by this withdrawal to fall into a motionless equilibrium of the three gunas and so cease from all action. But this is precisely the remedy, — though it is undoubtedly a remedy, one which abolishes, we might say, the patient along with the disease, — ^which the Git ^ constantly discourage s. Especially, to resort to ^ ^^imasic maction is just what the ignorant , will dcTlf this truth i^thrust upon them ; the discriminating mind in them will fall into a false division, a false THE DETERMINISM OF NATURE opposition, buddhibheda ; their active nature and their intelligence will be divided against each other and produce a disturbance and confusion without true issue, a false and self-deceiving line of action, mithydchdra , or else a mere tamasic inertia, cessation of works, diminution of the will to life and action, not therefore a liberation, but rather a subjection to the lowest of the three gunas, to tamas, the principle of ignorance and of inertia. Or else they will not be able to understand at all, they will find fault with this higher teaching, assert against it their present mental experience, their ignorant idea of free will and, yet more confirmed by the plausibility of their logic in their bewilder- mgjjt and the deception o f ego and desire , losTTEeir chance of liberation in deeper, more obstinate confirmation of the ignorance.
In fact, these higher truths can only be helpful, because there only they are true to experience and can be lived, on a higher and vaster ‘plane of consciousness and being. To view these truths from below is to mis-see, misunderstand and probably to misuse them. It is a higher truth that the distinction of good and evil is indeed a practical fact and law valid for the egoistic hunxac w^iich is the stage of transition from the animal to the divine, but on a higher plane we rise beyond good and evil, are above their duality even as the Godhead is above it. But the unripe mind, seizing on this truth without rising from the lower consciousness where it is not practically valid, will simply make it a convenient excuse for indulging its Ag^uric propensitie s, denying^ the distinction between good and evil altogether and falling by self-indulgence deeper in to the morass of perdi tion^ sarva jndna- vimudhdn nashtdn ac h etasah . ^ too
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