Essays on the Gita

Nirvana and Works in the World 237“Sages win Nirvana in the Brahman, they in whom the stainsof sin are effaced and the knot of doubt is cut asunder, mastersof their selves, who are occupied in doing good to all creatures,sarvabhūta-hite ratāḥ.” That would almost seem to mean that tobe thus is to be in Nirvana. But the next verse is quite clear anddecisive, “Yatis (those who practise self-mastery by Yoga andausterity) who are delivered from desire and wrath and havegained self-mastery, for them Nirvana in the Brahman exists allabout them, encompasses them, they already live in it becausethey have knowledge of the Self.” That is to say, to have knowledgeand possession of the self is to exist in Nirvana. This isclearly a large extension of the idea of Nirvana. Freedom from allstain of the passions, the self-mastery of the equal mind on whichthat freedom is founded, equality to all beings, sarvabhūteṣu,and beneficial love for all, final destruction of that doubt andobscurity of the ignorance which keeps us divided from the allunifyingDivine and the knowledge of the One Self within usand in all are evidently the conditions of Nirvana which are laiddown in these verses of the Gita, go to constitute it and are itsspiritual substance.Thus Nirvana is clearly compatible with world-consciousnessand with action in the world. For the sages who possessit are conscious of and in intimate relation by works with theDivine in the mutable universe; they are occupied with the goodof all creatures, sarvabhūta-hite. They have not renounced theexperiences of the Kshara Purusha, they have divinised them; forthe Kshara, the Gita tells us, is all existences, sarvabhūtāni, andthe doing universal good to all is a divine action in the mutabilityof Nature. This action in the world is not inconsistent with livingin Brahman, it is rather its inevitable condition and outward resultbecause the Brahman in whom we find Nirvana, the spiritualconsciousness in which we lose the separative ego-consciousness,is not only within us but within all these existences, exists notonly above and apart from all these universal happenings, butpervades them, contains them and is extended in them. Thereforeby Nirvana in the Brahman must be meant a destructionor extinction of the limited separative consciousness, falsifying