Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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results, the will of Nature in us ; our personal will, we say, but our ego personafity is a creation of Nat ure, it is not and cannot be our free self, dffr independent bemg. The whole is the action of the niodes of Nature. It may be a tamasic action, alid then we have an inerf personality subject to and satisfied with the mechanical round of things, incapable of any strong effort at a freer action and mastery. Or it may be the rajasi^action, and then we have the restless active personality which throws itself upon Nature and tries to make her serve its needs and desires, but does not see that its apparent mastery is a servitude, since its needs and desires are those of Nature, and while we are subject to them, there can be for us no freedom. Or it may be a s attwi c action, and then we have the enlightened personality which tries to live by reason or to_ realise some preferred ideal of good, truth or beauty ; but this reason is still subject to the appearances of Natur e and these ideals are only changing phases of our personality in which we find in the end no sure rule or permanent satisfaction. We are still carried on a wheel of mutation, obeying in our oiel Tngs tTirough the ego some iPower within us ^and within all this, but not ourselves that Pow er or jn union „and comiriuriioh with it. Still There is no freed om, no real mastery. “
Yet freedom is possible. For that we have to get first away into ourselves from the action of the external world upon our senses ; that is to say, we ha ve to live inward ly and be able to hold back the natural running of the senses after their external objects, A mastery of the senses, an ability to do without all that" they hanker after, is the_ first condition of the true soul-life ; only so can we begin to feel that there is a soul within us which is other than the mutations of mind in its reception of the touches of outward things, a soul which in its depths goes back to something self-existent, immutable, tranquil, self-possessed, grandiose, serene and august, master of itself and unaffected by the eager runnings of our external nature. But this cannot be done so long as we are subject to desire. For it is desire, the principle of all our superficial life, whic h satisfies i^elf with the life of the senses and finds its wlmle account in the play of the passions. We must get rid then of desire and, that propensity of our natuml being destroyed, the passions which are its emotional results will fall into quietude ; for the joy and grief of possession and of loss, success and failure, pleasant and unpleasant touches, which entertain them, will pass out of our souls. A calm equality jivill then be gained. And since we have still to live and act in the world and our nature in works is to seek for the fruits of our works, we^ must change that natuxe and do works without attachment to their fruits, otherwise desire and all its results remain? But how can we change this nature of the doer of works in us? By di^odating works from ego and personality, bj jseeing through the reason that all this is only the play of the gunas of Nature, and by dissociating our soul from the play, ^
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