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

What is that real fact ? that hi ghest aim? This, that human life and death repeatecPtfirough the aeons in the great cycles of the world are^only a long progress by ^idbuthe human being prep^s and makes himself fit for immortality. And how shall he prepare himself? who is the man that is fit? The man who r ises aboy e the conc eptio n of himieli^ a life a nd a body, who does ooL-accept the material and se nsationa l tou ches o f the world at their own value or at the value which the physical man attaches to them, who knows him self ^d all as souls, learns himself to liye_in_his..sfiul and not in his body and deals with others too as souls and not as mere physical beings. For by immortality is meant not the survivaj^ of d eath,— that is already given to every creature born with a mind,— ;:bu|; the tran^endence of Jife _Rad.. death. It means that ascension^ by which man ceases to live as a mind- informed body and lives at last as a spirit and in the Spirit. Whoever is subject to grief and sorrow, a slave to the sensations and emotions, occupied by the touches of things transient cannot become fit for immortality. These things must be borne until they are conquered, till they can give no pain to the liberated man, till he is able to receive all ibe materi^^ happenings of the world whether joyf ul or sorrowful wi th a wise and calm _eqixaJitv, even as the tranquil eternal Spirit secret within us receives 2them. To be disturbed by sorrow and horror as Arjuna has been disturbed, to be deflected by them from the path that has to be travelled, overcome by self-pity and intolcv^ce of sorrow and rgcoO from the unavoidable and trivial circuimtance o^i^e death of tfie body, this is un- Aryan ignorance, ft is not the way of the AryarTclimbing in calm strength towards the immortal life. [ Ther e is no such thing as death, for it is the body that dies and the body^ j:^^the That 3wEich really is, cannot go out of existence, though it may change the forms through which it appears, just as that which is non-existent cannot come into being. The soul Js and cannot^cease. to be^ This opposition of is and is not, this balance of being and becomirig which is the mind’s view of existence, finds Its end in the realisation of the soul as the one imperishable self by whom all this universe has been extended. Finite bodies have an end, but t^jt. which posses^s and uses the body, is ii^finite, illimitabj^. eternal, indestructible. It casts away old and takes up new bodies as a man changes worn- out raiment for new ; and what is there in this to grieve at and recoil and shrink? This is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that comes into being once and passing away will never come into being again. It is uiiborn, ^cient, s empit ernal ; it is not slain with the slaying of the body. Who can slay the immortal spirit? Weapons cannot cleave it, nor th^fire binrn, nor do the waters d ren^ it, no r the win d jSy:. Eternally stable, immobile. go THE CREED OF THE ARYAN FIGHTER