TWELVE
The Way and the Bhakta
IN THE eleventh chapter of the Gita the original object of
the teaching has been achieved and brought up to a certain completeness. The command
to divine action done for the sake of the world and in union with the Spirit
who dwells in it and in all its creatures and in whom all its working takes
place, has been given and accepted by the Vibhuti. The disciple has been led
away from the old poise of the normal man and the standards, motives, outlook,
egoistic consciousness of his ignorance, away from all that had finally failed
him in the hour of his spiritual crisis. The very action which on that standing
he had rejected, the terrible function, the appalling labour, he has now been
brought to admit and accept on a new inner basis. A reconciling greater
knowledge, a diviner consciousness, a high impersonal motive, a spiritual
standard of oneness with the will of the Divine acting on the world from the
fountain light and with the motive power of the spiritual nature, – this is the
new inner principle of works which is to transform the old ignorant action. A
knowledge which embraces oneness with the Divine and arrives through the Divine
at conscious oneness with all things and beings, a will emptied of egoism and
acting only by the command and as an instrumentation of the secret Master of
works, a divine love whose one aspiration is towards a close intimacy with the
supreme Soul of all existence, accomplished by the unity of these three
perfected powers an inner all-comprehending unity with the transcendent and
universal Spirit and Nature and all creatures are the foundation offered for
his activities to the liberated man. For from that foundation the soul in him
can suffer the instrumental nature to act in safety; he is lifted above all
cause of stumbling, delivered from egoism and its limitations, rescued from all
fear of sin and evil and consequence, exalted out of that bondage to the
outward nature and the limited
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action which is the knot of the Ignorance. He
can act in the power of the Light, no longer in twilight or darkness, and a
divine sanction upholds every step of his conduct. The difficulty which had
been raised by the antinomy between the freedom of the Spirit and the bondage
of the soul in Nature, has been solved by a luminous reconciliation of Spirit
with Nature. That antinomy exists for the mind in the ignorance; it ceases to
exist for the spirit in its knowledge.
But there is something more to be said in
order to bring out all the meaning of the great spiritual change. The twelfth
chapter leads up to this remaining knowledge and the last six that follow
develop it to a grand final conclusion. This thing that remains still to be
said turns upon the difference between the current Vedantic view of spiritual
liberation and the larger comprehensive freedom which the teaching of the Gita
opens to the spirit. There is now a pointed return to that difference. The
current Vedantic way led through the door of an austere and exclusive
knowledge. The Yoga, the oneness which it recognised as the means and the
absorbing essence of the spiritual release, was a Yoga of pure knowledge and a
still oneness with a supreme Immutable, an absolute Indefinable, – the
unmanifested Brahman, infinite, silent, intangible, aloof, far above all this
universe of relations. In the way proposed by the Gita knowledge is indeed the
indispensable foundation, but an integral knowledge. Impersonal integral works
are the first indispensable means; but a deep and large love and adoration, to
which a relationless Unmanifest, an aloof and immovable Brahman can return no
answer, since these things ask for a relation and an intimate personal
closeness, are the strongest and highest power for release and spiritual
perfection and the immortal Ananda. The Godhead with whom the soul of man has
to enter into this closest oneness, is indeed in his supreme status a
transcendent Unthinkable too great for any manifestation, Parabrahman; but he
is at the same time the living supreme Soul of all things. He is the supreme
Lord, the Master of works and universal nature. He at once exceeds and inhabits
as its self the soul and mind and body of the creature. He is Purushottama,
Parameshwara and Paramatman and in all these equal aspects the same single and
eternal
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Godhead. It is an awakening to this integral
reconciling knowledge that is the wide gate to the utter release of the soul
and an unimaginable perfection of the nature. It is this Godhead in the unity
of all his aspects to whom our works and our adoration and our knowledge have
to be directed as a constant inner sacrifice. It is this supreme soul,
Purushottama, transcendent of the universe, but also its containing spirit,
inhabitant and possessor, even as it is mightily figured in the vision of
Kurukshetra, into whom the liberated spirit has to enter once it has reached to
the vision and knowledge of him in all the principles and powers of his
existence, once it is able to grasp and enjoy his multitudinous oneness, jñātum drastum tattvena pravestum ca.
The liberation of the Gita is not a
self-oblivious abolition of the soul's personal being in the absorption of the
One, sayujya mukti; it is all kinds of union at once. There is an entire
unification with the supreme Godhead in essence of being and intimacy of
consciousness and identity of bliss, sāujya,
– for one object of this Yoga is to become Brahman, brahmabhūta. There is an eternal ecstatic dwelling in the highest
existence of the Supreme, sālokya,
– for it is said, “Thou shalt dwell in me,” nivasisyasi
mayyeva. There is an eternal love and
adoration in a uniting nearness, there is an embrace of the liberated spirit by
its divine Lover and the enveloping Self of its infinitudes, sāmipya. There is an identity of
the soul's liberated nature with the divine nature, sadrsya mukti, – for the perfection of the free spirit is to become
even as the Divine, madbhāvam
āgatāh,
and to be one with him in the law of its being and the law of its works and
nature, sādharmyam āgatāh.
The orthodox Yoga of knowledge aims at a fathomless immergence in the one
infinite existence, sāyujya; it
looks upon that alone as the entire liberation. The Yoga of adoration envisages
an eternal habitation or nearness as the greater release, sālokya, sāmīpya.
The Yoga of works leads to oneness in power of being and nature, sādrśya.
But the Gita envelops them all in its catholic integrality and fuses them all
into one greatest and richest divine freedom and perfection.
Arjuna is made
to raise the question of this difference. It must be remembered that the
distinction between the impersonal immutable Akshara Purusha and the supreme
Soul that is at
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once impersonality and divine Person and much
more than either – that this capital distinction implied in the later chapters
and in the divine “I” of which Krishna has constantly spoken, aham, mām, has as yet not been
quite expressly and definitely drawn. We have been throughout anticipating it
in order to understand from the beginning the full significance of the Gita's
message and not have to go back again, as we would otherwise be obliged, over
the same ground newly seen and prospected in the light of this greater truth.
Arjuna has been enjoined first to sink his separate personality in the calm
impersonality of the one eternal and immutable self, a teaching which agreed
well with his previous notions and offered no difficulties. But now he is
confronted with the vision of this greatest transcendent, this widest universal
Godhead and commanded to seek oneness with him by knowledge and works and
adoration. Therefore he asks the better to have a doubt cleared which might
otherwise have arisen, “Those devotees who thus by a constant union seek after
thee, tvām, and those who seek
after the unmanifest Immutable, which of these have the greater knowledge of
Yoga?” This recalls the distinction made in the beginning by such phrases as
“in the self, then in me,” ātmani
atho mayi: Arjuna points the distinction, tvām, aksaram avyaktam. Thou, he says in
substance, art the supreme Source and Origin of all beings, a Presence immanent
in all things, a Power pervading the universe with thy forms, a Person manifest
in thy Vibhutis, manifest in creatures, manifest in Nature, seated as the Lord
of works in the world and in our hearts by thy mighty world-Yoga. As such I
have to know, adore, unite myself with thee in all my being, consciousness,
thoughts, feelings and actions, satata-yukta. But what then of this Immutable
who never manifests, never puts on any form, stands back and apart from all
action, enters into no relation with the universe or with anything in it, is
eternally silent and one and impersonal and immobile? This eternal Self is the
greater Principle according to all current notions and the Godhead in the
manifestation is an inferior figure: the unmanifest and not the manifest is the
eternal Spirit. How then does the union which admits the manifestation, admits
the lesser thing, come yet to be the greater Yoga-knowledge?
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To this question
Krishna replies with an emphatic decisiveness. “Those who found their mind in
Me and by constant union, possessed of a supreme faith, seek after Me, I hold
to be the most perfectly in union of Yoga.” The supreme faith is that which
sees God in all and to its eye the manifestation and the non-manifestation are
one Godhead. The perfect union is that which meets the Divine at every moment,
in every action and with all the integrality of the nature. But those also who
seek by a hard ascent after the indefinable unmanifest Immutable alone, arrive,
says the Godhead, to Me. For they are not mistaken in their aim, but they
follow a more difficult and a less complete and perfect path. At the easiest,
to reach the unmanifest Absolute they have to climb through the manifest
Immutable here. This manifest Immutable is my own all-pervading impersonality
and silence; vast, unthinkable, immobile, constant, omnipresent, it supports
the action of personality but does not share in it. It offers no hold to the
mind; it can only be gained by a motionless spiritual impersonality and silence
and those who follow after it alone have to restrain altogether and even draw
in completely the action of the mind and senses. But still by the equality of
their understanding and by their seeing of one self in all things and by their
tranquil benignancy of silent will for the good of all existences they too meet
me in all objects and creatures. No less than those who unite themselves with
the Divine in all ways of their existence, sarvabhāvena,
and enter largely and fully into the unthinkable living fountainhead of
universal things, divyam purusam
acintya-rūpam, these seekers too who climb through this more difficult
exclusive oneness towards a relationless unmanifest Absolute find in the end
the same Eternal. But this is a less direct and more arduous way; it is not the
full and natural movement of the spiritualised human nature.
And it must not
be thought that because it is more arduous, therefore it is a higher and more
effective process. The easier way of the Gita leads more rapidly, naturally and
normally to the same absolute liberation. For its acceptance of the divine
Person does not imply any attachment to the mental and sensuous limitations of
embodied Nature. On the contrary it brings
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a swift and effectual unchaining
from the phenomenal bondage of death and birth. The Yogin of exclusive knowledge
imposes on himself a painful struggle with the manifold demands of his nature;
he denies them even their highest satisfaction and cuts away from him even the
upward impulses of his spirit whenever they imply relations or fall short of a
negating absolute. The living way of the Gita on the contrary finds out the
most intense upward trend of all our being and by turning it Godwards uses
knowledge, will, feeling and the instinct for perfection as so many puissant
wings of a mounting liberation. The unmanifest Brahman in its indefinable unity
is a thing to which embodied souls can only arrive and that hardly by a
constant mortification, a suffering of all the repressed members, a stern
difficulty and anguish of the nature, duhkham
avāpyate, kleśo 'dhikataras tesām.
The indefinable Oneness accepts all that climb to it, but offers no help of
relation and gives no foothold to the climber. All has to be done by a severe
austerity and a stern and lonely individual effort. How different is it for
those who seek after the Purushottama in the way of the Gita! When they
meditate on him with a Yoga which sees none else, because it sees all to be
Vasudeva, he meets them at every point, in every movement, at all times, with
innumerable forms and faces, holds up the lamp of knowledge within and floods
with its divine and happy lustre the whole of existence. Illumined, they
discern the supreme Spirit in every form and face, arrive at once through all
Nature to the Lord of Nature, arrive through all beings to the Soul of all
being, arrive through themselves to the Self of all that they are;
incontinently they break through a hundred opening issues at once into that
from which everything has its origin. The other method of a difficult
relationless stillness tries to get away from all action even though that is
impossible to embodied creatures. Here the actions are all given up to the
supreme Master of action and he as the supreme Will meets the will of
sacrifice, takes from it its burden and assumes to himself the charge of the
works of the divine Nature in us. And when too in the high passion of love the
devotee of the Lover and Friend of man and of all creatures casts upon him all
his heart of consciousness and yearning of delight, then swiftly the Supreme
comes to him as the saviour and
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deliverer and exalts him by a
happy embrace of his mind and heart and body out of the waves of the sea of
death in this mortal nature into the secure bosom of the Eternal.
This then is the
swiftest, largest and greatest way. On me, says the Godhead to the soul of man,
repose all thy mind and lodge all thy understanding in me: I will lift them up
bathed in the supernal blaze of the divine love and will and knowledge to
myself from whom these things flow. Doubt not that thou shalt dwell in me above
this mortal existence. The chain of the limiting earthly nature cannot hold the
immortal spirit exalted by the passion, the power and the light of the eternal
love, will and knowledge. No doubt, on this way too there are difficulties; for
there is the lower nature with its fierce or dull downward gravitation which
resists and battles against the motion of ascent and clogs the wings of the
exaltation and the upward rapture. The divine consciousness even when it has
been found at first in a wonder of great moments or in calm and splendid
durations, cannot at once be altogether held or called back at will; there is
felt often an inability to keep the personal consciousness fixed steadily in
the Divine; there are nights of long exile from the Light, there are hours or
moments of revolt, doubt or failure. But still by the practice of union and by
constant repetition of the experience, that highest spirit grows upon the being
and takes permanent possession of the nature. Is this also found too difficult
because of the power and persistence of the outward-going movement of the mind?
Then the way is simple, to do all actions for the sake of the Lord of the
action, so that every outward-going movement of the mind shall be associated
with the inner spiritual truth of the being and called back even in the very
movement to the eternal reality and connected with its source. Then the
presence of the Purushottama will grow upon the natural man till he is filled
with it and becomes a Godhead and a spirit; all life will become a constant
remembering of God and perfection too will grow and the unity of the whole
existence of the human soul with the supreme Existence. But it may be that even
this constant remembering of God and lifting up of our works to him is felt to
be beyond the power of the limited mind, because in its forgetfulness it turns
to the
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act and its outward object and
will not remember to look within and lay our every movement on the divine altar
of the Spirit. Then the way is to control the lower self in the act and do
works without desire of the fruit. All fruit has to be renounced, to be given
up to the Power that directs the work, and yet the work has to be done that is
imposed by It on the nature. For by this means the obstacle steadily diminishes
and easily disappears; the mind is left free to remember the Lord and to fix
itself in the liberty of the divine consciousness. And here the Gita gives an
ascending scale of potencies and assigns the palm of excellence to this Yoga of
desireless action. Abhyāsa,
practice of a method, repetition of an effort and experience is a great and
powerful thing; but better than this is knowledge, the successful and luminous
turning of the thought to the Truth behind things. This thought-knowledge too
is excelled by a silent complete concentration on the Truth so that the
consciousness shall eventually live in it and be always one with it. But more
powerful still is the giving up of the fruit of one's works, because that
immediately destroys all causes of disturbance and brings and preserves
automatically an inner calm and peace, and calm and peace are the foundation on
which all else becomes perfect and secure in possession by the tranquil spirit.
Then the consciousness can be at ease, happily fix itself in the Divine and
rise undisturbed to perfection. Then too knowledge, will and devotion can lift
their pinnacles from a firm soil of solid calm into the ether of Eternity.
What then will
be the divine nature, what will be the greater state of consciousness and being
of the bhakta who has followed this way and turned to the adoration of the
Eternal? The Gita in a number of verses rings the changes on its first
insistent demand, on equality, on desirelessness, on freedom of spirit. This is
to be the base always, – and that was why so much stress was laid on it in the
beginning. And in that equality bhakti, the love and adoration of the
Purushottama must rear the spirit towards some greatest highest perfection of
which this calm equality will be the wide foundation. Several formulas of this
fundamental equal consciousness are given here. First, an absence of egoism, of
I-ness and my-ness, nirmamo
nirahankārah.
The bhakta of the Purushottama is one who has a universal
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heart and mind which has broken
down all the narrow walls of the ego. A universal love dwells in his heart, a
universal compassion flows from it like an encompassing sea. He will have
friendship and pity for all beings and hate for no living thing: for he is
patient, long-suffering, enduring, a well of forgiveness. A desireless content
is his, a tranquil equality to pleasure and pain, suffering and happiness, the
steadfast control of self and the firm unshakable will and resolution of the
Yogin and a love and devotion which gives up the whole mind and reason to the
Lord, to the Master of his consciousness and knowledge. Or, simply, he will be
one who is freed from the troubled agitated lower nature and from its waves of
joy and fear and anxiety and resentment and desire, a spirit of calm by whom
the world is not afflicted or troubled, nor is he afflicted or troubled by the
world, a soul of peace with whom all are at peace.
Or he will be
one who has given up all desire and action to the Master of his being, one pure
and still, indifferent to whatever comes, not pained or afflicted by any result
or happening, one who has flung away from him all egoistic, personal and mental
initiative whether of the inner or the outer act, one who lets the divine will
and divine knowledge flow through him undeflected by his own resolves,
preferences and desires, and yet for that very reason is swift and skilful in
all action of his nature, because this flawless unity with the supreme will,
this pure instrumentation is the condition of the greatest skill in works.
Again, he will be one who neither desires the pleasant and rejoices at its
touch nor abhors the unpleasant and sorrows at its burden. He has abolished the
distinction between fortunate and unfortunate happenings, because his devotion
receives all things equally as good from the hands of his eternal Lover and
Master. The God-lover dear to God is a soul of wide equality, equal to friend
and enemy, equal to honour and insult, pleasure and pain, praise and blame, grief
and happiness, heat and cold, to all that troubles with opposite affections the
normal nature. He will have no attachment to person or thing, place or home; he
will be content and well-satisfied with whatever surroundings, whatever
relation men adopt to him, whatever station or fortune. He will keep a mind
firm in all things, because it is constantly seated
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in the highest self and fixed for
ever on the one divine object of his love and adoration. Equality,
desirelessness and freedom from the lower egoistic nature and its claims are
always the one perfect foundation demanded by the Gita for the great
liberation. There is to the end an emphatic repetition of its first fundamental
teaching and original desideratum, the calm soul of knowledge that sees the one
self in all things, the tranquil egoless equality that results from this
knowledge, the desireless action offered in that equality to the Master of
works, the surrender of the whole mental nature of man into the hands of the
mightier indwelling spirit. And the crown of this equality is love founded on
knowledge, fulfilled in instrumental action, extended to all things and beings,
a vast absorbing and all-containing love for the divine Self who is Creator and
Master of the universe, suhrdam
sarvabhūtānām sarva-lokamaheśvaram.
This is the
foundation, the condition, the means by which the supreme spiritual perfection
is to be won, and those who have it in any way are all dear to me, says the
Godhead, bhaktimān me priyah.
But exceedingly dear, atīva me
priyāh,
are those souls nearest to the Godhead whose love of me is completed by the
still wider and greatest perfection of which I have just shown to you the way
and the process. These are the bhaktas who make the Purushottama their one
supreme aim and follow out with a perfect faith and exactitude the
immortalising Dharma described in this teaching. Dharma in the language of the
Gita means the innate law of the being and its works and an action proceeding
from and determined by the inner nature, svabhāvaniyatam
karma. In the lower ignorant consciousness of mind, life and body there are
many dharmas, many rules, many standards and laws because there are many
varying determinations and types of the mental, vital and physical nature. The
immortal Dharma is one; it is that of the highest spiritual divine
consciousness and its powers, parā
prakrtih.
It is beyond the three gunas, and to reach it all these lower dharmas have to
be abandoned, sarva-dharmān
parityajya. Alone in their place the one liberating unifying consciousness
and power of the Eternal has to become the infinite source of our action, its
mould, determinant and exemplar. To rise out of our lower personal egoism, to
enter into the
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impersonal and equal calm of the
immutable eternal all-pervading Akshara Purusha, to aspire from that calm by a
perfect self-surrender of all one's nature and existence to that which is other
and higher than the Akshara, is the first necessity of this Yoga. In the
strength of that aspiration one can rise to the immortal Dharma. There, made
one in being, consciousness and divine bliss with the greatest Uttama Purusha,
made one with his supreme dynamic nature-force, svā prakrtih, the
liberated spirit can know infinitely, love illimitably, act unfalteringly in
the authentic power of a highest immortality and a perfect freedom. The rest of
the Gita is written to throw a fuller light on this immortal Dharma.
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