Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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There is another difficulty quite as formidable. Liberation is the object set before itself by this pliilo^opfiy’as by others. This liberatio n is e ffected, we have said, by the P urusha*s with drai ^l of h is consent from the activities of Prakriti which she conducts ofrly for his^j^asure ; but, in sum, this is only a way of speaking. The ^ Purusha is passfre and the a ct of giving or withdra wing cons ent cannot rea dy belong to it, b ut mu st be_ a movement in Prakriti jtself . If we consider, we shall see that it isTso Tar as it is an operation, a movement of reversal dr recoil i n th e principle of Buddhi, the discrimina- tfre will. Bu^dhi h as been lending itself to the peixeptidns of the mind-sense ; it has been busy discriminating and coordinating the operations of the cosmic energy and by the aid of the ego-sense identifying the Witness with her works of thought, sense and action. It arri ves by the process _of discriminating^ things at the acid and dissolvent realisa tion that this identic is a delu sion ; it discriminates finally t he Purusha from Prakriti and perceives that all is mere disturbance of the equilibrium of the gunas ; the Buddhi, at once intelligence and will, recoil s from the falsehood which it has been supporting and the FurusEa, ceasing to be bound, no lon ger’^i^ociafes Ti m^S wItK" the ^Sirest of t he m ind in the cosmic pJax* The iUtimatfi..result \vill be that P rakriti will lose h^r powCT to reflect herself in for fKe effect of The ego-sense is destroyed and the intelligent will becoming indifferent ceases to be the means of her sanction: necessarily then her gunas must fall into a state of eq uil ibriu m, the c osmic play must cease, the Purusha_re^^^ to higi im^bile repose. But if there were only the one JPurusHaT^aihc^^ recoil of the discriminating principle from its delusions took place, all cosmos would cease. As it is, we see that nothing^' the kiucTKa^ens. A few beings among innumerable millions ^tajn to liberation or move towards it ; the rest are in no way affected, nor is cosmic Nature in her play with them one whit inconvenienced by this summary rejection which should be the end of all her processes. Only by the theory of many be explained.
The only at all logical explanation from the point of view of Vedantic monism is that of the Mayavada ; but there the whole thing becomes a dream, both bondage and liberation are circumstances of the unreality, the empirical blunderings of Maya ; in reality there is none freed, none bound. The more realistic^Sankhya^yiew of things does not admit this phantasmagoric iiei of existence and therefore cannot adopt this solution. Here too we see that no SANKHYA AND YOGA the multiplicity of souls is an inevitable co nclusio n fronTthe'^a^df the' Saniya li^y^s existence. The Gita starts from this an^sis and seems at first, eveif in Its setting'FortE of Yoga, to accept it almost wholly. It accepts Prakriti and her thre e gunas and tweni^fqi^ jprTricipfe accepts Tfie Sunbution of all action^ to the Prakriti and the passivity of the Piirusha ; acce pts th£ mult^licity of conscious beings ~ irf the cosmos ; accepts the dissolution of the identifying ego-sense, the dis- criminating action of the intelligent will and the transcendence of the action of the three modes of energy as the means of liberation. The Yoga which Arjuna is asked to practise from the outset TsJ^Qga by the Buddhi, the.ant dligen t will. there is
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