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

We start from this foundation that the pres ent inner life of man, almost entirely d^enSent as it is upon his vital and physical nature, only lifted beyoHTTt by a limited play of mental energy, is^not the whole of his possible existen£e, not even the whole^liis j^sent real existence. There is wit hin him a^ hidden .Self, of which his present nature is either only an outer appearance or is a partial dyhaffiic_ result. The Gita seems throughout to admit its dynamic reality and not to adopt the severer view of the extreme Ve^ntists that it is only a n appearance, a'^ view which strikes at the very roots of all works and action. Its way of formulating this element of its philosophical thought, — it might be done in a different way, — is to admit the Sankhya distinction between the Soul and Nature, the power that knows, supports and informs and the power that works, acts, provides all the variations of instrument, medium and process. Only it takes the free and immutable Soul of the S^khyas, calls it in Vedantic language th£ one immutable omnipresent ^If or Birman, and disHhguishes it from this other sbulTinvi^yed in Nature, which is our mutable and dynamic being, tSeTnultiple soul of things, the basis of variation and personality. But in what then con sist s this action of Nature?

iTconsists in a power of process, Pratoi, which is the interplay of three fund amen tal modes of jts worki ng, three qualities, gunas. And what is the yiedium. ? It is the complex system of existence created by a graded evolution of the instruments of Prakriti, which, as they are reflected here in the souPs experience of her workings, we may call successively the reason and the ego, the jnind, the senses and the elements oT material ener^ whiBi are the basis of its form s. Thes p are all^ mechanical, a complex engine of Namre, yantra ; and from our modern point of view we may say that they are all involved in material energy and manifest them- selves in it as the soul in Nature becomes aware of itself by an upward evolution of each instrument, but in the inverse order to that which we have stated, matter first, then ^en^tion, then mi nd, next reason, last spirjijtual consciousness. Reason, which is at ^st_ only preoccupied with the workings of Natu re, then detect their ultimate character, may see them o nly as a play of the three guilds in wtich the soul is entangled, may distinguish between Ae soul and these workings ; then the soul gets a chance of dSnta^ling itself and of going back to its original freedom and immutable exist^ce. In Vedantic laiiguage, it_^es the spirit, the being ; it ceases to i<^ntify itself with the instruments^ and working^f Nature, with its becoming ; it i dentifi es itsel f wit h its true Self and being and recoyers-JILi mmutable

THE GIST OF THE KARMA YOGA spiritual self-existence. It is then froni this spiritual self-existence, accorHing to the Gita, that it can freely and as the master of its being, the Ishwara, support the action of its becomiiig. Looking only at the psychological facts on which these philosophical distinctions are founded, — philosophy is only a way of formulating to ourselves intellectually in their essential significance the psychological and physical facts of existence and their relation to any ultimate reality that may exist, — we may say that there are twp_ lives we can lead, the life of the soul engrossed in the workings of its active nature, identified with its psychological and physical instruments, limited by them, bound by its personality, subject to hlature, and the life pf die Spirit, superior to these things, large, impersonal, universal, free, unlimited, transcendent, supporting mflT an infinke equality its natural being and aSion, but exceeding them by its freedom and mfinity. We may live in what is now our natural being or we may live in our greater and spiritual being. This is the first great distinction on which the Karmayoga of the Gita is founded.