Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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INTELLIGENT WILL I HAVE had to deviate in the last two essays and to drag the reader with me into the arid tracts of metaphysical dogma, — ^however cursorily and with a very insufficient and superficial treatment, — so that we might understand why the Gita follows the peculiar line of development it has taken, working out first a partial truth with only subdued hints of its deeper meaning, then returning upon its hints and bringing out their significance until it rises to its last great suggestion, its supreme mystery which it does not work out at all, but leaves to be lived out, as the later ages of Indian spirituality tried to live it out in great waves of love, of surrender, of ecstasy. Its eye is always on its synthesis and all its strains are the gradual preparation of the mind for its high closing note. I have declared to you the poise of a self- liberating intelligence in Sankhya, says the divine Teacher to Arjuna. I will now declare to you another poise in Yoga. You are shrinking from the results of your works, you desire other results and turn from your right path in life because it does not lead you to them. But this idea of works and their result, desire of result as the motive, the work as a means for the satisfaction of desire, is the bondage of the ignorant who know not what works are, nor their true source, nor their real operation, nor their high utility. My Yoga will free you from all bondage of the soul to its works, karmabandham prahdsy asi. You are afraid of many things, afraid 5 afraid of suffering, afraid of hell and punishment, afraid of God, afraid of this world, afraid of the hereafter, afraid of yourself. What is it that you are not afraid of at this moment, you the Aryan fighter, the world's chief hero? But this is the great fear which besieges humanity, its fear of sin and sufferi ngjiow and hereafter, its fear in a*lv6rld of whose true nature k i gnor am^ of a God-Jwhose tru^Jbeing also it has not seen and whose cosmic purpose it does not understand. My Yoga will deliver, you from the great fear and even a little of it will bring deliverance. When you have once set out on this path, you will find that no step is lost ; every least movement will be a gain ; you will find there no obstacle that can baulk you of your advance. A bold and absolute promise and one to which the fearful and hesitating mind beset and stumbling in all its paths cannot easily lend an assured trust ; nor is the large and full truth of it apparent unless with these first words of the message of the Gita we read also the last, “Abandon all laws of conduct and take refuge in Me alone; I will deliver you from all sin and evil ; do not grieve."
THE YOGA OF THE INTELLIGENT WILL But it is not with this deep and moving word of God to man, but rather with the first necessary rays of light on the path, directed not like that to the soul, but to the mtel lect, that the expos itio n begins. Not the Fnend and Lover of man speaks first, but the guide and teacher who has to re move from him his i gnorance of his true se lf and of the nature of the world and of the sp rings o f his own action^ For it is because he acts ignorantly, with a intellig ence and therefore a wrong will in these matters, that man is or seems to be bound ^ his, w orks ; otherwise works are no bondage to the free soul. It is because of this wrong intelligence that he has hope and fear, wrath and grief and transient joy ; otherwise works are possible with a perfect serenity and freedom. Therefore it is the Yoga of the buddhi, the intelligence, that is first eiyoipdjbnTSrjuna. ' To act with righ t intdliggnce and, therefore^ a" tigh t will, fixed in th e One, a^re qLthcL-Oiie-JSfilf ft .all and acting out of its equal serenity, not running about in different directions under the thousand impulses of our superficial mental self, is the Yoga of the intelligent will.
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