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

inowledge and the pos sessio n of the--divineL,..Qr Brahmic co nsciousness. “So knowing thou shalt Income free.^^ ^ But there are gradations in the range of these various forms of sacrifice, the physical offering the lowest the sacrifice of-. knowledge,, the hig hest Knowledge is that in which all this action THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SACRIFICE culminates, not any lower knowledge, but the highest, self- knowledg e and God-knowledge, that ^ich”we can learn from those who know the true principles of existence, that by possessing which we shall not fall again into the bewilderment of the mind’s ignorance and into its bondage to mere sense-knowledge and to the inferior activity of the desires and passions. The kn owledge in which -all £Ulminat£i_ is that b y w hich ^'th ou sh alt see all existences (beco ming s, bhu tdni) without exception m the Self, tl^inJ^Le," For the S elf is jtha t one, immutable, all-pervading, all-containing, self- existent reality or Brahman hidden behind our mSital being into which our consciousness_.wid«iS. oil t_ when it is liberated from the _egp ; we come to see ail beings as becomings, bhutdni, within that one self-existence.

But this Self or immutable Brahman we see too to be the self-presentation to our essential psychological consciousness of a supreme Being who is the source of our existence and of whom all that is mutable or immutable is the manifestation. He is„.Gpd,L th e Divine, the Purmhottania^ To Him we offer everything_as a sacrifice ; into His hands we give up our act ions ; in His existence we live and move ; unified with Him in our nature and with all existence in Him, we becomp^one^ souL and one powerjof being wk h Him a nd with all bei ngs ; with His supreme reality we identify and unite our bfing: By Ts^ork^dp^T6f‘“^OT desire, we arrive at knowledge and at the soul’s possession of itself ; Jby works done in self- kno w- le<%e and God-knowledge we are libeiated into the unify, peac^ and joy of the divine existence. i8o

We have, before we can proceed further, to gather up all that has been said in its main principles. The whole of the Gita^s gospel of . worjb rests upon its idea of sacrifice and contains in fact the eternal connecting truth of God and the world and worlb. The human mind seizes ordinarily only fragmentary notions and standpoints of a manysided eternal truth of existence and builds upon them its various theories of life and ethics and religion, stressing this or that sign or appearance, but to some entirety of it it must always tend to reawaken whenever it returns in an age of large enlightenment to any entire and synthetic relation of its world-kno wledg e with its^ God-knowledge and .^jf-kngwEge. The gospel of the Gka xeposes upon this fundamental Vedantic tri^ that ah bein^Jxthj^one^rahmn anTaTT c Hs tehce the_^ed^LBrato^^ a divine movement o pe ning out fromLGod and returningjto God. AJj^jxth e expressive activ ity o f Nature ajijd l^jurxjLjgowexpfxhe jL)ivinjej^hic works out the consciousness and will of the divine Soul master of her works and inhabitant of her forms. It is for his satisfaction that she descends into the absorption of the forms of things and the works of life and i8i