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

^When his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future actiof^ How is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience? Wliat are the great manifestations of its self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by meditation? May he not see even now the divine cosmic Form of That which is actually speaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between renimciation of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked io prefer ; the actual difference bety^n Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the-Knower of the Fieidrso important for the practice of deâireJess actFoiT under the drive of the divine Will ; and filially a clear statement of the practical operations and results of the three modes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount.

/To such a disciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his ^vine teaching He seizes him at a moment of his psychological dj^elopment by egoistic action when all the" mental, moral, emotional values of the ordinary 'egoistic and social ' life of pian haye coU^sed^ in a sudden bankruptcy, and ^he has to lift him up put of this lower life into a higher con- sciousness, out of ignorant attachment to action into that which transcends, yet originates and or^s action, out of ^ego ^to Self, out of life , in mind^ vitality ^cT body into that higher nature beyond mind which is the^yftu^ of the DivineJ^ He has at the same time to give hiA/that for whicb he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance THE HUMAN DISCIPLE within him, a new Law o f life and action high al^ye the insufficient rjife of the ori^ary h uman existence with its endless conflicts and oppositions, per- plexities and illusory certainties, /a higher Law by which the soul s hall be free fr om this bonda ge o f worlds and yet p owerful to act and conquer in the vast l ibe rty of its divine being. [^For the_jic^on must be performed, the world must fulfil its cycles and the soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it is here to do. The whole course of the teaching of the Gita is determined and directed, even in its widest wheelings, towards the fulfilment of these three •bjccts.

We know the divine Teacher, we see the human disciple ; it remains to form a clear conception of the doctrine. A clear conception fastening upon the essential idea, the central heart of the teaching is especially necessary here because the Gita with its rich and many-sided thought, its synthetical grasp of diflPerent aspects of the spiritual life and the fluent winding motion of its argument lends itself, even more than other scriptures, to one-sided misrepresentations born of a partisan intellectuality. The unconscious or half-conscious wTesting of fact and word and idea to suit a preconceived notion or the doctrine or principle of one’s preference is recognised by Indian logicians as one of the most fruitful sources of fallacy ; and it is perhaps the one which it is most difficult for even the most con- scientious thinker to avoid. For the human reason is incapable of always playing the detective upon itself in this respect; it is its very nature to seize upon some partial conclusion, idea, principle, become its partisan and make it the key to all truth, and it has an infinite faculty of doubling upon itself so as to avoid detecting in its operations this necessary and cherished weakness. The Gita lends THE CORE OF THE TEACHING