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

a means as long as the disciple is unable so to live or even to seek by practice the gradual development of this higher state. And what is this Divine, whom Krishna declares himself to be? It is the Purushottama beyond the Self that acts not, beyond the Prakriti that acts, foundation of the one, master of the other, the Lord of whom all is the manifesta- tion, who even in our present subjection to Maya sits in the heart of His creatures governing the works of Prakriti, He by whom the armies on the field of Kurukshetra have already been slain while yet they live and who uses Arjuna only as an instrument or immediate occasion of this great slaughter. Prakriti is only His executive force. The disciple has to rise beyond this Force and its three modes or gunas ; he has to become trigundtita. Not to her has he to surrender his actions, over which he has no longer any claim or “right", but into the being of the Supreme. Reposing his mind and understanding, heart and will in Him, with self-knowledge, with God-knowledge, with world-knowledge, with a perfect equality, a perfect devotion, an absolute self-giving, he has to do works as an offering to the Master of all self-energisings and all sacrifice. Identified in will, conscious with that consciousness. That shall decide and initiate the action. This is the solution which the Divine Teacher offers to the disciple.

What the great, the supre;me word of the Gita is, its mahdvdky a, we have not to seek ; for the Gita itself declares it in its last utterance, the crowning THE CORE OF THE TEACHING note of the great diapason. “With the Lord in thy heart take refuge with all thy being ; by His grace thou shalt attain to the supreme peace and the eternal status. So have I expounded to thee a know- ledge more secret than that which is hidden. Further hear the most secret, the supreme word that I shall speak to thee. Become my-minded, devoted to Me, to Me do sacrifice and adoration ; infallibly, thou shalt come to Me, for dear to me art thou. Abandoning all laws of conduct seek refuge in Me alone. I will release thee from all sin ; do not grieve.*’

The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great ste ps by which action rises out of the Kuman into the divine plane leaving the bondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law. Hrst, by the renunciation of desire and a perfect equality works have to be done as a sacrifice by man as the doer, a sacrifice to a deity who is the supreme and only Self though by him not yet realised in his own being. This is the initial step. Secondly, not only the ^sire of the fruit, but the claim t o be t he doer of worksTias to be renounced' in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self ha s to be seen as th e supremTTurusha goyem- ing^Eis Prakrit!, of whom the soul iiT Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To him love and adoration and the sacrifice of works have to be offered ; the whole being has to be surrendered to Him and the whole consciousness raised up to dwell in this divine consciousness so that the human soul may share in His divine tran- scendence of Nature and of His works and act in a perfect spiritual liberty^