THIRD CHAPTER

II. THE DETERMINISM OF NATURE

The passages in which the Gita lays stress on the subjection of the ego-soul to Nature, have by some been understood as the enunciation of an absolute and a mechanical determinism which leaves no room for any freedom within the cosmic existence. Certainly, the language it uses is emphatic and seems very absolute. But we must take, here as elsewhere, the thought of the Gita as a whole and not force its affirmations in their solitary sense quite detached from each other.

We have always to keep in mind the two great doctrines which stand behind all the Gita's teachings with regard to the soul and Nature,—the Sankhya truth of the Purusha and Prakriti corrected and completed by the Vedantic truth of the threefold Purusha and the double Prakriti of which the lower form is the Maya of the three gunas and the higher is the divine nature and the true soul nature. This is the key which reconciles and explains what we might have otherwise to leave as contradictions and inconsistencies. There are, in fact, different planes of our conscious existence, and what is practical truth on one plane ceases to be true, because it assumes a quite different appearance, as soon as we rise to a higher level from which we can see things more in the whole.)

27. While the actions are being entirely done by the modes of Nature, he whose self is bewildered by egoism thinks that it is his”I” which is doing them.

28. But one, O mighty-armed, who knows the true principles of the divisions of the modes and of works,

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realises that it is the modes which are acting and reacting on each other and is not caught in them by attachment.

29. Those who are bewildered by the modes, not knowers of the whole, let me not knower of the whole disturb in their mental standpoint.¹

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1. Here there is the clear distinction between two levels of consciousness, two standpoints of action, that of the soul caught in the web of its egoistic nature and doing works with the idea, but not the reality of free will, under the impulsion of Nature, and that of the soul delivered from its identification with the ego, observing, sanctioning and governing the works of Nature from above her.

We speak of the soul being subject to Nature; but, on the other hand, the Gita in distinguishing the properties of the soul and Nature affirms that while Nature is the executrix, the soul is always the lord, Ishwara. It speaks here of the self being bewildered by egoism, but the real Self to the Vedantin is the divine, eternally free and self-aware. What then is this self that is bewildered by Nature, this soul that is subject to her ? The answer is that we are speaking here in the common parlance of our lower or mental view of things; we are speaking of the apparent self, or the apparent soul, not of the real self, not of the true Purusha. It is really the ego which is subject to Nature, inevitably, because it is itself part of Nature, one functioning of her machinery; but when. the self-awareness in the mind-consciousness identifies itself with the ego, it creates the appearance of a lower self, an ego-self. And so too what we think of ordinarily as the soul is really the natural personality, not the true Person, the Purusha, but the desire-soul in us which is a reflection of the consciousness of the Purusha in the workings of Prakriti: it is, in fact, itself only an action of the three modes and therefore a part of Nature. Thus there are, we may say, two souls in us, the apparent or desire-soul, which changes with the mutations of the gunas and is entirely constituted and determined by them, and the free and eternal Purusha not limited by Nature and her gunas. We have two selves, the apparent self, which is only the ego, that mental centre in us which takes up this mutable action of Prakriti, this mutable personality, and which says "I am this personality, I am this natural being who am doing these works,"—but the

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30. Giving up thy works to Me, with thy consciousness founded in the Self, free from desire and egoism, fight delivered from the fever of thy soul.

31-32. Who, having faith and not trusting to the critical intelligence, constantly follow this teaching of mine, they too are released from (the bondage of) works.

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natural being is simply Nature, a composite of the gunas,—and the true self which is, indeed, the upholder, the possessor and the lord of Nature and figured in her, but is not itself the mutable natural personality. The way to be free must then be to get rid of the desires of this desire-soul and the false self-view of this ego. This view of our being starts from the Sankhya analysis of the dual principle in our nature, Purusha and Prakriti. Purusha is inactive, akarta; Prakriti is active, kartri: Purusha is the being full of the light of consciousness; Prakriti is the. Nature, mechanical, reflecting all her works in the conscious witness,' the Purusha. Prakriti works by the inequality of her three modes, gunas, in perpetual collision and intermixture and mutation with each other; and by her function of ego-mind she gets the Purusha to identify himself with all this working and so creates the sense of active, mutable, temporal personality in the silent eternity of the Self. But if this were all, then the only remedy would be to withdraw altogether the sanction, suffer or compel all our nature by this withdrawal to fall into a
motionless equilibrium of the three gunas and so cease from all action. But this is precisely the remedy,—though it is undoubtedly a remedy, one which abolishes, we might say, the patient along with the disease,—which the Gita constantly discourages. Especially, to resort to a tamasic inaction is just what the ignorant will do if this truth is thrust upon them; the discriminating mind in them will fall into a false division, a false opposition, buddhibheda; therefore the Gita says "fight with all the fever of thy soul passed away from thee."

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But those who find fault with my teaching and act not thereon, know them to be of' unripe mind, bewildered in all knowledge and fated to be destroyed.¹

33. All existences follow their nature and what shall coercing² it avail? Even the man of knowledge acts according to his own nature.

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1 In fact, these higher truths can only be helpful because there only they are true to experience and can be lived, on a higher and vaster plane of consciousness and being. To view these truths from below is to mis-see, misunderstand and probably to misuse them. It is a higher truth that the distinction of good and evil is indeed a practical fact and law valid for the egoistic human life which is the stage of transition from the animal to the divine, but on a higher plane we rise beyond good and evil, are above their duality even as the Godhead is above it. But the unripe mind, seizing on this truth without rising from the lower consciousness where it is not practically valid, will simply make it a convenient excuse for indulging its Asuric propensities, denying the distinction between good and evil altogether and falling by self-indulgence deeper into the morass of perdition, sarva-jnana-vimudhan nashtan achetasah. So too with this truth of the determinism of Nature; it will be mis-seen and misused, as those misuse it who declare that a roan is what his nature has made him and cannot do otherwise than as his nature compels him. It is true in a sense, but not in the sense which is attached to it, not in the sense that the ego-self can claim irresponsibility and impunity for itself in its works; for it has will and it has desire and so long as it acts according to its will and desire, even though that be its nature, it must bear the reactions of its Karma. It is in a net, if you will, a snare which may well seem perplexing, illogical, unjust, terrible to its present experience, to its limited self-knowledge, but a snare of its own choice, a net of its own weaving.

2 This seems, if we take it by itself, a hopelessly absolute assertion of the omnipotence of Nature over the soul. And on this it founds the injunction to follow faithfully in our action the law of our nature. What is precisely meant by this Swadharma we have to wait to see until we get to the more elaborate disquisition in the closing chapters about Purusha and Prakriti and the gunas; but certainly it does not mean that we are to follow any impulse, even though evil, which

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34. In the object of this or that sense liking and disliking are set in ambush; fall not into their power for they are the besetters of the soul in it path.

35. Better is one's own law of works, swadharma,¹ though in itself faulty than an alien law well wrought out; death in one's own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law.

what we call our nature dictates to us. For between these two verses the Gita throws in this further injunction, "fall not into the power of liking and disliking." There is therefore a distinction to be made between what is essential in the nature, its native and inevitable action, which it avails not at all to repress, suppress, coerce, and what is accidental to it, its wanderings, confusions, perversions, over which we must certainly get control. There is a distinction implied too between coercion and suppression, nigraha, and control with right use and right guidance, sanyama. The former is a violence done to the nature by the will, which in the end depresses the natural powers of the being, atmanam avasadayet; the latter is the control of the lower by the higher self, which successfully gives to those powers their right action and their maximum efficiency,—yogah karmasu kaushalam.

1 Man is not like the tiger or the fire or the storm; he cannot kill and say as a sufficient justification, " I am acting according to my nature," and he cannot do it, because he has not the nature and not, therefore, the law of action, swadharma, of the tiger, storm or fire. He has a conscious intelligent will, a biiddhi, and to that he must refer his actions. If he does not do so, if he acts blindly according to his impulses and passions, then the law of his being is not rightly worked out, swadharmah su-anushthitah, he has not acted according to the full measure of his humanity, but even as might the animal. Man knows more or less imperfectly that he has to govern his rajasic and tamasic by his sattwic nature and that thither tends the perfection of his normal- humanity. The Teacher makes this clear in answering the following practical question of Anuna.

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36. Arjuna said: But (if there is no fault in following our Nature) what is this in us that drives a man to sin, as if by force, even against his own struggling will, O Varshneya?

37. The Blessed Lord said: This is desire ¹ and its companion wrath, children of rajas, all-devouring, all-polluting, know thou this as the soul's great enemy (which has to be slain).

38. As a fire is covered over by smoke, as a mirror by dust, as an embryo is wrapped by the amnion, so this (knowledge) is enveloped by it.

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1 The kinetic man is not satisfied with any ideal which does not depend upon the fulfilment of this cosmic nature, this i play of the three qualities of that nature, this human activity of mind and heart and body. The highest fulfilment of that activity, he might say, is my idea of human perfection, of the divine possibility in man. Each being is bound to his nature and within it he must seek for his perfection. According to i our human nature must be our human perfection; and each ' man must strive for it according to the line of his personality, his swadharma, but in life, in action, not outside life and action. Yes, there is a truth in that, replies the Gita; the fulfilment of God in man, the play of the Divine in life is part of the ideal perfection. But if you seek it only in the external, in life, in the principle of action, you will never find it; for you will then not only act according to your nature, which is in itself a rule of perfection, but you will be—and this is a rule of the imperfection—eternally subject to its modes, its dualities of liking and dislike, pain and pleasure and especially to the rajasic mode with its principle of desire and its snare of wrath and grief and longing.

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39. Enveloped is knowledge, O Kaunteya, by this eternal enemy of knowledge in the form of desire which is an insatiable fire.

40. The senses, mind and intellect are its seat;¹ enveloping knowledge by these it bewilders the embodied soul.

41. Therefore, O Best of the Bharatas controlling first the senses, do thou slay this thing of sin destructive of knowledge (in order to live in the calm, clear, luminous truth of the Spirit).

42. Supreme, they say, (beyond their objects) are the senses, supreme over the senses the mind, supreme over the mind the intelligent will: that which is supreme over the intelligent will, is he (the Pusrusha).²

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1 And yet it is within this sense, mind and intellect, this play of the lower nature that you would limit your search for perfection! The effort is vain. The kinetic side of your nature must first seek to add to itself the quietistic; you must uplift yourself beyond this lower nature to that which is above the three gunas, that which is founded in the highest principle, in the soul. Only when you have attained to peace of soul, can you become capable of a free and divine action.

2 We must remember the psychological order of the Sankhya which the Gita accepts. First in order come Buddhi, discriminative or determinative power evolving out of Nature- force, and its subordinate power of self-discriminative ego.

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43. Thus awakening by the understanding to the Highest¹ which is beyond even the discerning mind, putting force on the self by the self to make it firm and still, slay thou, O mighty-armed, this enemy in the form of desire, who is so hard to assail.

Thus ends the third chapter entitled: the Yoga of Action
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Then as a secondary evolution there arises out of these the power which seizes the discriminations of objects, sense-mind or Manas. As a tertiary evolution out of sense-mind we have the specialising organic senses, ten in number, five of perception, five of action. In the evolution of the soul back from Prakriti towards Purusha, the reverse order has to be taken to the original Nature-evolution, and that is how the Upanishads and the Gita following and almost quoting the Upanishads state the ascending order of our subjective powers.

1 The Akshara is the self higher than the buddhi—it exceeds even that highest subjective principle of Nature in our being, the liberating intelligence, through which man, returning beyond his restless mobile mental to his calm eternal spiritual self, is at last free from the persistence of birth and the long chain of action, of Karma. Therefore, says the Gita, it is this Purusha, this supreme cause of our subjective life which we have to understand and become aware of by the intelligence; in that we have to fix our will,

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