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

senses ; but ordinarily it is only advised imperfectly and practised imperfectly in the most limited and insufficient fashion. Even, however, the sage, the man of clear, wise and discerning soul who really labours to acquire complete self-mastery finds him- self hurried and carried away by the senses. That is because the mind naturallyjends itself to the senses ; it observes tli^ objects of sense with an inner interest, set tles up on _ them and makes them the object of absorbing thought for the intelligence and of strong interest for the will. By that attachment con^s, by attachment desire, by desire distress, *^ssion and anger when the desire is not satisfied orTs thwarted or opposed, and by passion the soul is qbscured^^^he intelligence and will forget to see and be seated in the calm observing soul ; there is a fall from the memory of one^s true self, and by that lapse the imelligent will is also obscured, destroyed even. For, for the time Teing, it no longer exists to our memory of ourselves, it disappears in a cloud of passion; we become passion, wrath, grief and cease to be self and iru^lHgence and will. This then must be prevent^ and ailThe sensesHbrought utterly under control ; for only by an absolute control of the senses can the wise and calm intelligence be firmly established in its proper seat.

This cannot be done perfectly by the act of the intelligence itself, by a merely mental self-discipline ; it can onl^y be done by Yoga with someAing which is higTier than itselFand in whrdi“ calm~a^^ self- maSeiy Ire inherent. And this Yoga can only arrive at its success by devothig, by:jConsecratiag, hj giving up the whole sel Tto Th e Divine, ‘‘to Me/' says Krishna ; for the Liberator is within us, but it is not our mind, nor our mtelligence, nor our p^^onal will,^^^^ey are only instr ume nts. It is the Lord in whom, as we are told in the end, we have utterly to take refuge. And for that we must at first make him the object of our whole being and keep in soul-contact with him. This is the sense of the phrase **he must sit firm in Yoga^^ wholly given up. tOLMe” ; 1Sut as yet it is the merest passing hint after jhe manner of the Gita, three words only which contain in seed the whole gist of the highes^secret yet to be developed, yukta d sita ma tparah.

If this is done, then it becomes possible to move among the objects of sense, in contact with them, acting on them, but with the senses entire^^ the control of the subjective self, — not at the mercy of the“ objects and their contacts and reactions, — and that self again obedient to the highest s elf, t he PurusEa. THeiirE'ee from reactions, the senses will Be delivered from the affections of liking and disliking, escape the duality of positive and negative desire, and calm, peace, clearness, happy tranquil- lity, dtmaprasdda, will settle upon the man. That clear tranquillity is the source of the soul’s felicity ; all grief begins to lose its power of touching the tranquil soul ; the intelligence is rapidly established in the peace of the self ; suffering is destroyed. It is this calni^ desirel^^ griefless fixity of the buddhi THE YOGA OF THE INTELLIGENT WILL in and^elf-knowle^e to which the Gita pves the n ame of Samadlii .