Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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w ith tliis^'truth of th e determini sm of Nature ; it will be mis^seen and misused, as those misuse it who declare that a man is what his nature has made him and cannot do otherwise than as his nature compels him. It is true in a sense, but not in the sense which is attached to it, not in the sense that the ego-self can claim irresponsibility and impunity for itself in its works ; for it jias will and it has des ire and so long as it acts according to its will and desire, even though that be its nature, it must bear the reactions of its Karma. It is in a net, if you will, a snare which may well seem perplexing, illogica l, unjust, terri ble to its present experience, to i ts TTrffTtecT^selhknowledge, but a snare of its own choice, a net of “Hr own weaving. The Gita says, indeed, “All existences follow t heir riatS fe^nd what shalh "coercing it avail?*^ wliidi seems, if we take it by itself, a hopelessly absolute assertion of the omnipotence of Nature over the soul ; “even t he man of kno wledge acts according to his ow n nature T** And oiTthis it founds the injunction to follow faithfully in our action the law of our nature. “ Better is one*s own law of work s, swadharm a, though f n_jtseif faulty than^an alien law well wrought out ; death in one*s own l aw of being is better, peril ous is it to follox^ an THE DETERMINISM OF NATURE alien law /* What is precisely meant by this ^ina ^arma we have to wait to see untrTwe get to the more elaborate disquisition in the closing chapters about Purusha and Prakriti and the gunas ; but certainly it does not mean that we are to follow any impulse, even though evil, which what we call our nature dictates to us. For between these two verses the Gita throws in this further injunction. “In the object of this or that sense liking and disliking are set in ambush ; fall not into their power, for they are the besetters of the soul in it^ path.” And immediately after this, in answer to Arjpna*s objection who asks him, if there is no fault in following ou r Nature, what are we then to say of that in us which drives a man to sin, as if by force, even a^inst his own struggling will, the T eacher replie s that this is desire and its companion OTath, children of rajas, the second guna, the principle of passion, and this desire is the soul's great enemy and has to be slain. Abstention fro m evi ldoing it declares to be the first conditioirT or liberation and always it enioins selt-mastery , sgl£^ ^iitrol , ^ sa?t\ama, control o f the mind , sens es, all the l ower being .
There is therefore a distinction to be m^de between what is essential in the nature, its native and inevitable action, which it avails noj: at all to repress, su ppress , coerce, and what is accidental to it, its wanderings, confusions, perversions, over which we must certainly get control. There is a distinction implied too between coercion and sup- V
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