Essays on the Gita

The Gunas, Mind and Works 495of us. The success, the failure are in his hands and he will regulatethem according to his omniscient will and inscrutable purpose.Action, all action has indeed to be given up in the end, notphysically by abstention, by immobility, by inertia, but spirituallyto the Master of our being by whose power alone canany action be accomplished. There has to be a renunciation ofthe false idea of ourselves as the doer; for in reality it is theuniversal Shakti that works through our personality and ourego. The spiritual transference of all our works to the Masterand his Shakti is the real Sannyasa in the teaching of theGita.The question still arises, what works are to be done? Thoseeven who stand for a final physical renunciation are not atone in this difficult matter. Some would have it that all worksmust be excised from our life, as if that were possible. But itis not possible so long as we are in the body and alive; norcan salvation consist in reducing our active selves by trance tothe lifeless immobility of the clod and the pebble. The silenceof Samadhi does not abrogate the difficulty, for as soon as thebreath comes again into the body, we are once more in action andhave toppled down from the heights of this salvation by spiritualslumber. But the true salvation, the release by an inner renunciationof the ego and union with the Purushottama remainssteady in whatever state, persists in this world or out of it orin whatever world or out of all world, is self-existent, sarvathāvartamāno’pi, and does not depend upon inaction or action.What then are the actions to be done? The thoroughgoing asceticanswer, not noted by the Gita — it was perhaps not altogethercurrent at the time — might be that solely begging, eating andmeditation are to be permitted among voluntary activities andotherwise only the necessary actions of the body. But the moreliberal and comprehensive solution was evidently to continue thethree most sattwic activities, sacrifice, giving and askesis. Andthese certainly are to be done, says the Gita, for they purify thewise. But more generally, and understanding these three thingsin their widest sense, it is the rightly regulated action, niyataṁkarma, that has to be done, action regulated by the Shastra, the