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

egoism and alt ruism and by the increase of his altruis t ic tendenc ies he pre pares the enlargement, o f his own consciousness and being. He b egins to perceive Natu re an d d ivine .Powers Nature, to \^qm he...^.ow.es„ ^crifice, adoration, obe^knc^, because it is by them and by their law that the workings both of the mental and the material world are controlled, and he learns that only ^ increasing their presence and their greatness injiis fought and will and life can he himself increase his powers, knowledge, right action and the satisfactions which these things bring to him. Thus he adds the jeligious and' supraphysica,! to t he material and egoistic sense of life and prepares himself to rise through the finite to the Infinite. But this is only a long intermediate stage. It is still sut)jec_t_JtP the law of desire, to the centrality of all things in the conceptions and needs of his ego and to the control of his being as well as his works by Nature, thougli it is a regulated, and governed jdiesire^ a clarified ego and a Nature more and more subtilised and enlightened by jhe sauwic^ the highest natural princip le. All this is still within the domain, thouglithe very much enlarged i86 THE LORD OF THE SACRIFICE 2domain, of the mutable, finite and personal. The real self-knowledge and consequently the right way ^ works Ties beyondj for the sacrifice done with knowledge is the h^hest sacriffi^ahd that alone Brmgs a perfect working. That can only come when he perceiyes that the sdf in him and the self in others are one l^ing and th is se lj, is ..something high er than the egg, an infinite, an impersonal, a universal existence in whom^ll jnpye and have their being, — when he perceives that aU_the co^ic gods to whom he offers his sacrifice are forms of one infinite Godhead and when again, leaving all his limited and limiting conceptions of that one Godhead, he perceives him to be t he s upreme and ineffable Dj^ky who is at once the finite__and the infinite, the one self and the many, beyond Nature though manifesting himself through Nature, beyond limitation by qualities though formulating the power of his being through infinite quality. This is t he Purushottama to whom the sacrifice has to te^offered, not for any transient personal fruit of works^ but for .the_^ souFs possession of God and in order t ojive in^ har mony and union with the Divine. In other words, man’s way to lib eratio n and perfection lies through an incieasing^impers^