Essays on the Gita

284 <strong>Essays</strong> on the Gitaknowledge of the one immutable and impersonal self and thismutable multiple Nature as two opposite entities, but rise to thevery embrace of the Purushottama discovered simultaneouslythrough both of these powers of our being. All three are thespirit, and the two which are apparent opposites prove to beonly confronting faces of the third which is the highest. “Thereis the immutable and impersonal spiritual being (Purusha),” saysKrishna later on, “and there is the mutable and personal spiritualbeing. But there is too another Highest (uttama puruṣa) calledthe supreme self, Paramatman, he who has entered into thiswhole world and upbears it, the Lord, the imperishable. I amthis Purushottama who am beyond the mutable and am greaterand higher even than the immutable. He who has knowledge ofme as the Purushottama, adores me (has bhakti for me, bhajati),with all-knowledge and in every way of his natural being.” Andit is this bhakti of an integral knowledge and integral self-givingwhich the Gita now begins to develop.For note that it is bhakti with knowledge which the Gitademands from the disciple and it regards all other forms ofdevotion as good in themselves but still inferior; they may dowell by the way, but they are not the thing at which it aims inthe soul’s culmination. Among those who have put away thesin of the rajasic egoism and are moving towards the Divine,the Gita distinguishes between four kinds of bhaktas. There arethose who turn to him as a refuge from sorrow and suffering inthe world, ārta. There are those who seek him as the giver ofgood in the world, arthārthī. There are those who come to himin the desire for knowledge, jijñāsu. And lastly there are thosewho adore him with knowledge, jñānī. All are approved by theGita, but only on the last does it lay the seal of its completesanction. All these movements without exception are high andgood, udārāḥ sarva evaite, but the bhakti with knowledge excelsthem all, viśiṣyate. We may say that these forms are successivelythe bhakti of the vital-emotional and affective nature, 3 that of the3 The later bhakti of ecstatic love is at its roots psychic in nature; it is vital-emotionalonly in its inferior forms or in some of its more outward manifestations.