Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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But man as the individual self, owing to his ignorant self-identification with the work and the as if that were all his soul and not a pflWtr of his soul, a power proceeding^ from it, is bewildered by the ego-sens e. He thinks that it is He and others who are doing all ; he does not see that Nature is doing all and that he is misrepresent- ing and disfiguring her works to himself by ignorance and attachment. He is enslaved b y the gunas,, now hampered in the dull case of tamas, now blown by the strong winds of rajas, TTSw limited by the partial lights of ^ttw a, not distinguishing himself at all from the nature-mind BEYOND THE MODES OF NATURE which alone is thus modified by the gunas. He is therefore mastered by pain and pleasure , happiness and grief , dggire and passion , attachment and disgust : he has no freedom.
He mu st, to be free, get back from the Nature ^tion to status of the Aki^ara ; he will then Be tugundtitaj beyond the gunas. KnowmgTumselT' as tne Akshara Brahm an, the unchanging Purusha, he will know himself as an immutable impersonal sel f, the Atman, tranquilly otserving ancl impartially supporting the action, but himsel f calm, indifferent, tjntourhed, motionl ess, pure, one with all bSngs in their self, not one with Nature and her workings. This self, though by its presence authorising the works of Nature, though by its all-pervading exist- ence supporting and consenting to them, prabhu j^ibhu , does not itself create works or the state of the doer or the joining of the works to their fruit, na kartr'itvam na karmdni sr*ijati na karma-phala- sanyogam, but only watches nature in the Kshara working out these things, swabhdvas tu pro-vartate; it accepts n gith er the sin no i^tjie virtue of the living creatures born into this bir^ a^its own, nddatte kasyachit pdpam na chaiva sukr^itam ; it preserves its spiritual purity. It is the ego bewttllered by ignorance which attributes these things to itielf, because it assumes the responsibility of the doer and chooses to figure as that and not as the instrument of a greater power, which is all that it really is ; ajndnendvr*itam jndnam tena muhyanti jantavah. By jgoing inm fhf i mpersonal self the soul gets back into a greater self-knowledge and is liberated from the bondag e t he works of Natur e, untouched by her guna s, free from her shows of good and evil, suffering and happiness. The natural oeing,^ the riilnd, body, FiFe, still remain, Nature still works ; but the inner being does not identify himself with these, nor while the gunas play in the natural being, does he rejoice or grieve. He is the calm and free immutable Self observing all.
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