Essays on the Gita

Towards the Supreme Secret 531not possible entirely so long as we live in the body. As far asit is possible, it may be done, but such a rigorous diminutionof works is not indispensable: it is not even really or at leastordinarily advisable. The one thing needed is a complete innerquietism and that is all the Gita’s sense of naiṣkarmya.If we ask why this reservation, why this indulgence to thedynamic principle when our object is to become the pure self andthe pure self is described as inactive, akartā, the answer is thatthat inactivity and divorce of self from Nature are not the wholetruth of our spiritual release. Self and Nature are in the end onething; a total and perfect spirituality makes us one with all theDivine in self and in nature. In fact this becoming Brahman,this assumption into the self of eternal silence, brahma-bhūya,is not all our objective, but only the necessary immense basefor a still greater and more marvellous divine becoming, madbhāva.And to get to that greatest spiritual perfection we haveindeed to be immobile in the self, silent in all our members,but also to act in the power, Shakti, Prakriti, the true and highforce of the Spirit. And if we ask how a simultaneity of whatseem to be two opposites is possible, the answer is that that isthe very nature of a complete spiritual being; always it has thisdouble poise of the Infinite. The impersonal self is silent; we toomust be inwardly silent, impersonal, withdrawn into the spirit.The impersonal self looks on all action as done not by it but byPrakriti; it regards with a pure equality all the working of herqualities, modes and forces: the soul impersonalised in the selfmust similarly regard all our actions as done not by itself but bythe qualities of Prakriti; it must be equal in all things, sarvatra.And at the same time in order that we may not stop here, inorder that we may eventually go forward and find a spiritualrule and direction in our works and not only a law of innerimmobility and silence, we are asked to impose on the intelligenceand will the attitude of sacrifice, all our action inwardlychanged and turned into an offering to the Lord of Nature, to theBeing of whom she is the self-power, svā prakṛtiḥ, the supremeSpirit. Even we have eventually to renounce all into his hands,to abandon all personal initiation of action, sarvārambhāḥ, to