XX   SWABHAVA AND SWADHARMA*   IT is then by a liberating development of the soul out of this lower nature of the triple gunas into the supreme divine nature beyond the three gunas that we can best arrive at spiritual perfection and freedom. And this again can best be brought about by an anterior development of the predominance of the highest sattwic quality to a point at which sattwa also is overpassed, mounts beyond its own limitations and breaks up into a supreme freedom, absolute light, serene power of the conscious spirit in which there is no determination by conflicting gunas. A highest sattwic faith and aim newshaping what we are according t

V   KURUKSHETRA   BEFORE WE can proceed, following in the large steps or the Teacher of the Gita, to watch his tracing or the triune path of man,—the path which is that of his will, heart, thought raising themselves to the Highest and into the being of that which is the supreme object of all action, love and knowledge, we must consider once more the situation from which the Gita arises, but now in its largest bearings as a type of human life and even of all world-existence. For although Arjuna is himself concerned only with his own situation, his inner struggle and the law of action he must follow, yet, as we have seen, the particular question he raises, in the man

II   THE DIVINE TEACHER   THE PECULIARITY of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to i

 ESSAYS ON THE GITA   Glossary of Words and Phrases Used in the Text   abhayam— fearlessness abhito vartate—is all around abhūt sarva-bhūtāni—be has become all existences dbhyāsa—practice of a method, repetition of an effort and experience acalam (,or Achalam)—motionless acara— method of self-discipline; rigid custom acintya (also Achintya)—uncognisable, unthinkable acintyam avyavahāryam—unthinkable and incommunicable acintya-rūpa—of an unthinkable form or ima

XIX   EQUALITY   SINCE KNOWLEDGE, desirelessness, impersonality, equality, the inner self-existent peace and bliss, freedom from or at least superiority to the tangled interlocking of the three modes of Nature are the signs of the liberated soul, they must accompany it in all its activities. They are the condition of that unalterable calm which this soul preserves in all the movement, all the shock, all the clash of forces which surround it in the world. That calm reflects the equable immutability of the Brahman in the midst of all mutations, and it belongs to the indivisible and impartial Oneness which is for ever immanent in all the multiplicities of the un

XVIII   THE GUNAS, FAITH AND WORKS*   THE GITA has made a distinction between action according to the license of personal desire and action done according to the Shastra. We must understand by the latter the recognised science and art of life which is the outcome of mankind's collective living, its culture, religion, science, its progressive discovery of the best rule of life,—but mankind still walking in the ignorance and proceeding in a half light towards knowledge. The action of personal desire belongs to the unregenerated state of our nature and is dictated by ignorance or false knowledge and an unregulated or ill-regulated kinetic or raj

Chapter XXII   THE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION         Our normal conduct of life, whether the individual or the social, is actually governed by the balance between two complementary powers,—first, an implicit will central to the life and inherent in the main power of its action and, secondly, whatever modifying will can come in from the Idea in mind—for man is a mental being—and operate through our as yet imperfect mental instruments to give this Life-Force a conscious orientation and a conscious method. Life normally finds its own centre in our vital- and physical being, in its cravings and its needs, in its demand for persistence, growth, expansion, enjoyment, in

Chapter IV   THE DISCOVERY OF THE NATION-SOUL         The primal law and purpose of the individual life is to seek its own self-development. Consciously or half-consciously or with an obscure unconscious groping it strives always and rightly strives at self-formulation,— to find itself, to discover within itself the law and power of its own being and to fulfil it. This aim in it is funda-mental, right, inevitable because, even after all qualifications have been made and caveats entered, the individual is not merely the ephemeral physical creature, a form of mind and body that aggregates and dissolves, but a being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifesting spirit. In the

Chapter XIX   THE CURVE OF THE RATIONAL AGE         The  present age of mankind may be characterised from this point of view of a graded psychological evolution of the race as a more and more rapidly accelerated attempt to discover and work out the right principle and secure foundations of a rational system of society. It has been an age of progress; but progress is of two kinds, adaptive, with a secure basis in an unalterable social principle and constant change only in the circumstances and machinery of its application to suit fresh ideas and fresh needs, or else radical, with no long-secure basis, but instead a constant root questioning of the practical foundations and even the

Chapter VI   THE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE VIEWS OF LIFE         The principle of individualism is the liberty of the human being regarded as a separate existence to develop himself and fulfil his life, satisfy his mental tendencies, emotional and vital needs and physical being according to his own desire governed by his reason; it admits no other limit to this right and this liberty except the obligation to respect the same individual liberty and right in others. The balance of this liberty and this obligation is the principle which the individualistic age adopted in its remodelling of society; it adopted in effect a harmony of compromises between rights and duties, liberty and law,