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

rather seems often to determine the nature. According to wltat we are, we act, and by our action we develop, we work out what we are. Nature is the action, the mutation, the becoming, and it is the Power that executes all these ; but the Soul is the conscious Being from which that Power proceeds, from 'wliuse'Tummous stuff of consciousness she has drawn the variable will that changes and expresses its changes in her actions. And th is Soul is One ^d M^py ; it is the one Life-being out of”wSIch aliTlife IS constituted and it is all these living beings ; it js the cosmic Exis tent and it is all this multitude of cosmic existences, sarvabhutdni, for all these are One ; all the many PuriisEas are in their orig inal being the one and only Purus ha. But the ntecliaiiism 61 the ego-sense in Nature, which is part of her action, induces the mind to identify the soul’s consciousness with the limited becoming of the moment, with the sum of her active conscious- ness in a given field of space and time, with the result from moment to moment of the sum of her past actions. It is possible to realise in a way the unity of all these beings even in Nature herself and to become aware of a cosmic Soul which is manifest in the whole action of cosmic Nature, Nature manifesting the Soul, the Soul constituting the Nature. But this is to become aware only of the great cosmic Becoming, which is not false or unreal, but tfie knowledge of which alone does not give us the true knowledge of our Self ; for our true Self

V is always something more than this and something beyond it. For, beyond the soul manifest in Nature and bound up witir its action, is another status of the r urusha , wMicn is entirely a status and not at alTan actionT that is_^^e si lent, the i mmutable , the all- pervading, lelf-Saste'nTr^ S€\^^s arva^a^am

' achalam, immutable Being and not Becoming, the ^TcshapT I n the Kshara the Soul is involved in the action of Nature , therefore it is concentrated, loses itself, as it were, in the moments of Time, in the waves of the Becoming, not really, but only in appearance and by following the current: in the Akshara Nature falls to si lence and rest in the Soul, therefore it becomes aware of its inUTTCitable Being. The Kshara is the Sankhya*s Purusha when it reflects the va ried w orkings of the guna s of iN ature, ancT it knows itself as the Saguna, tKe”Tefsonal ; the Akshara is the Sankhya s Purusha when these gunas have fallen into^ state ot equili brium , ahJ itTnows itself as the Nirguna , the Imper^nal. Therefore while the Kshara , associating itself with the work of Prakriti, seems to be the doer of works, kartd , the ^s ^^ara dissociated from all the workings of the gunas is the inactive non-doer, akart d, and witness. The soul of man, when it takes the poise of the Kshara, identifies itself with the play of personality and readily clouds its self-knowledge with the ego-sense in Nature,* so that he thinks of himself as the ego-doer of works ; wbea-it fakes its poise in th e Akshara. it identifies itself with the Imperson al BEYOND THE MODES OF NATURE