Essays on the Gita

The Supreme Secret 547That reconciliation was equally the sense of yet another spiritualexperience, more conscious of a world significance, moreprofound, kindling, richly comprehensive on the side of action,a step nearer to the thought of the Gita: this experience we findor can at least read behind the utterances of the Taoist thinkers.There there seems to be an impersonal ineffable Eternal who isspirit and at the same time the one life of the universe: it supportsand flows impartially in all things, samaṁ brahma; itisaOnethat is nothing, Asat, because other than all that we perceiveand yet the totality of all these existences. The fluid personalitythat forms like foam on this Infinite, the mobile ego with itsattachments and repulsions, its likings and dislikings, its fixedmental distinctions, is an effective image that veils and deformsto us the one reality, Tao, the supreme All and Nothing. Thatcan be touched only by losing personality and its little structuralforms in the unseizable universal and eternal Presence and, thisonce achieved, we live in that a real life and have another greaterconsciousness which makes us penetrate all things, ourselvespenetrable to all eternal influences. Here, as in the Gita, thehighest way would seem to be a complete openness and selfsurrenderto the Eternal. “Your body is not your own,” says theTaoist thinker, “it is the delegated image of God: your life is notyour own, it is the delegated harmony of God: your individualityis not your own, it is the delegated adaptability of God.” Andhere too a vast perfection and liberated action are the dynamicresult of the soul’s surrender. The works of ego personality are aseparative running counter to the bias of universal nature. Thisfalse movement must be replaced by a wise and still passivityin the hands of the universal and eternal Power, a passivity thatmakes us adaptable to the infinite action, in harmony with itstruth, plastic to the shaping breath of the Spirit. The man whohas this harmony may be motionless within and absorbed insilence, but his Self will appear free from disguises, the divineInfluence will be at work in him and while he abides in tranquillityand an inward inaction, naiṣkarmya, yet he will act with anirresistible power and myriads of things and beings will moveand gather under his influence. The impersonal force of the Self