Essays on the Gita

The Lord of the Sacrifice 129the impermanent, mutable, multiple activity of the world findsabove itself its base of permanence, security and peace, is theimmobile Self, the Akshara, the Brahman. If we see this, weshall see that to raise one’s consciousness and the poise of one’sbeing out of limited personality into this infinite and impersonalBrahman is the first spiritual necessity. To see all beings in thisone Self is the knowledge which raises the soul out of egoisticignorance and its works and results; to live in it is to acquirepeace and firm spiritual foundation.The way to bring about this great transformation followsa double path; for there is the way of knowledge and thereis the way of works, and the Gita combines them in a firmsynthesis. The way of knowledge is to turn the understanding,the intelligent will away from its downward absorption in theworkings of the mind and the senses and upward to the self, thePurusha or Brahman; it is to make it dwell always on the oneidea of the one Self and not in the many-branching conceptionsof the mind and many-streaming impulses of desire. Taken byitself this path would seem to lead to the complete renunciationof works, to an immobile passivity and to the severance of thesoul from Nature. But in reality such an absolute renunciation,passivity and severance are impossible. Purusha and Prakritiare twin principles of being which cannot be severed, and solong as we remain in Nature, our workings in Nature mustcontinue, even though they may take a different form or rathera different sense from those of the unenlightened soul. The realrenunciation — for renunciation, sannyāsa, there must be — isnot the fleeing from works, but the slaying of ego and desire.The way is to abandon attachment to the fruit of works evenwhile doing them, and the way is to recognise Nature as theagent and leave her to do her works and to live in the soulas the witness and sustainer, watching and sustaining her, butnot attached either to her actions or their fruits. The ego, thelimited and troubled personality is then quieted and merged inthe consciousness of the one impersonal Self, while the worksof Nature continue to our vision to operate through all these“becomings” or existences who are now seen by us as living