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

It is not an external asceticism, the physical renunciation of the objects of sense that I am teach- ing, suggests Krishna immediately to avoid a mis^ understanding which is likely at once to arise. Not the renunciation of the Sankhyas or ti^ austeritiS of the rigid ascetic jyith his fasts, his maceration of the body, his attempt to abstain even from food ; that is not the self-discipline or the abstinence which I mean, for I speak of an inner withdrawal, a renun- j 145 2ciatio n of_desire. The embodied soul, having a body, has to support it normally by food for its normal physical action ; by abstention from food it simply removes from itself the physical contact with the object of sense, but does not get rid of the inner relation which makes that contact hurtful. It retains the pleasure of the sense in the object, the rasa, the liking and disliking, — for rasa has two sides ; the ioul must, on the contrary, be capable of enduring the physical contact without suffering inwardly this sensuous reaction. Otherwise there is mvritti, :essati on o f th e obje ct, vishayd vinivartante, but no subjective cessation, no nivritti of the mind ; but the senses are of the mind, subjective, and sub jective cessation of the rasa is the only real sig n of mastery^ BuTTiow is thii desirelcM contact with objects, this unsensuous use of the senses possible? jh is possib^, param drishtwd, by_.l. h £. v is io n -.of the supreme, — param, th^^ul, the Purusha_i— an^ by living in the Yoga, in_unfon or pheness-of the v^^le subf ectiye .bctng . wth ttet, through the Y oga of the intelligence^for the one Soul is calm, satisfied in its own delightTand that delight free from duality_ can take, once we see this supreme^mg in us and fix the mind and will on that, the place of the sensuous object-ridden pleasures and repulsions of the mind. This^is the true way of lib er ation .