Essays on the Gita

XIXEqualitySINCE knowledge, desirelessness, impersonality, equality,the inner self-existent peace and bliss, freedom from or atleast superiority to the tangled interlocking of the threemodes of Nature are the signs of the liberated soul, they mustaccompany it in all its activities. They are the condition of thatunalterable calm which this soul preserves in all the movement,all the shock, all the clash of forces which surround it in theworld. That calm reflects the equable immutability of the Brahmanin the midst of all mutations, and it belongs to the indivisibleand impartial Oneness which is for ever immanent in all themultiplicities of the universe. For an equal and all-equalisingspirit is that Oneness in the midst of the million differences andinequalities of the world; and equality of the spirit is the sole realequality. For in all else in existence there can only be similarity,adjustment and balance; but even in the greatest similaritiesof the world we find difference of inequality and difference ofunlikeness and the adjusted balancings of the world can onlycome about by a poising of combined unequal weights.Hence the immense importance attached by the Gita in itselements of Karmayoga to equality; it is the nodus of the freespirit’s free relations with the world. Self-knowledge, desirelessness,impersonality, bliss, freedom from the modes of Nature,when withdrawn into themselves, self-absorbed, inactive, haveno need of equality; for they take no cognisance of the thingsin which the opposition of equality and inequality arises. Butthe moment the spirit takes cognisance of and deals with themultiplicities, personalities, differences, inequalities of the actionof Nature, it has to effectuate these other signs of its freestatus by this one manifesting sign of equality. Knowledge isthe consciousness of unity with the One; and in relation withthe many different beings and existences of the universe it must