Essays on the Gita

252 <strong>Essays</strong> on the Gitaof the extreme Vedantists that it is only an appearance, a viewwhich strikes at the very roots of all works and action. Its way offormulating this element of its philosophical thought, — it mightbe done in a different way, — is to admit the Sankhya distinctionbetween the Soul and Nature, the power that knows, supportsand informs and the power that works, acts, provides all thevariations of instrument, medium and process. Only it takes thefree and immutable Soul of the Sankhyas, calls it in Vedanticlanguage the one immutable omnipresent Self or Brahman, anddistinguishes it from this other soul involved in Nature, whichis our mutable and dynamic being, the multiple soul of things,the basis of variation and personality. But in what then consiststhis action of Nature?It consists in a power of process, Prakriti, which is the interplayof three fundamental modes of its working, three qualities,gunas. And what is the medium? It is the complex system ofexistence created by a graded evolution of the instruments ofPrakriti, which, as they are reflected here in the soul’s experienceof her workings, we may call successively the reason and the ego,the mind, the senses and the elements of material energy whichare the basis of its forms. These are all mechanical, a complexengine of Nature, yantra; and from our modern point of viewwe may say that they are all involved in material energy andmanifest themselves in it as the soul in Nature becomes awareof itself by an upward evolution of each instrument, but in theinverse order to that which we have stated, matter first, thensensation, then mind, next reason, last spiritual consciousness.Reason, which is at first only preoccupied with the workings ofNature, may then detect their ultimate character, may see themonly as a play of the three gunas in which the soul is entangled,may distinguish between the soul and these workings; then thesoul gets a chance of disentangling itself and of going back toits original freedom and immutable existence. In Vedantic language,it sees the spirit, the being; it ceases to identify itself withthe instruments and workings of Nature, with its becoming;it identifies itself with its true Self and being and recovers itsimmutable spiritual self-existence. It is then from this spiritual