FIFTEEN
The Three Purushas*
THE doctrine of
the Gita from the beginning to the end converges on all its lines and through
all the flexibility of its turns towards one central thought, and to that it is
arriving in all its balancing and reconciliation of the disagreements of
various philosophic systems and its careful synthetising
of the truths of spiritual experience, lights often conflicting or at least divergent
when taken separately and exclusively pursued along their outer arc and curve
of radiation, but here brought together into one focus of grouping vision. This
central thought is the idea of a triple consciousness, three and yet one, present
in the whole scale of existence.
There is a spirit here at work in the world
that is one in innumerable appearances. It is the developer of birth and
action, the moving power of life, the inhabiting and associating consciousness
in the myriad mutabilities of Nature; it is the constituting
reality of all this stir in Time and Space; it is itself Time and Space and
Circumstance. It is this multitude of souls in the worlds; it is the gods and
men and creatures and things and forces and qualities and quantities and powers
and presences. It is Nature, which is power of the Spirit, and objects, which
are its phenomena of name and idea and form, and existences, who are portions
and births and becomings of this single self-existent
spiritual entity, the One, the Eternal. But what we see obviously at work
before us is not this Eternal and his conscious Shakti, but a Nature which in
the blind stress of her operations is ignorant of the spirit within her action.
Her work is a confused, ignorant and limiting play of certain fundamental
modes, qualities, principles of force in mechanical operation and the fixity or
the flux of their consequences. And whatever soul comes to the surface in her
action, is itself in appearance ignorant, suffering, bound to
*Gita, XV.
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the incomplete and unsatisfying play of this
inferior Nature. The inherent Power in her is yet other than what it thus seems
to be; for, hidden in its truth, manifest in its appearances, it is the Kshara, the universal Soul, the spirit in the mutability of
cosmic phenomenon and becoming, one with the Immutable and the Supreme. We have
to arrive at the hidden truth behind its manifest appearances; we have to discover
the Spirit behind these veils and to see all as the One, vāsudevah sarvam iti, individual, universal, transcendent. But this is a
thing impossible to achieve with any completeness of inner reality, so long as
we live concentrated in the inferior Nature. For in this lesser movement Nature
is an ignorance, a Maya; she shelters the Divine within its folds and conceals
him from herself and her creatures. The Godhead is hidden by the Maya of his
own all-creating Yoga, the Eternal figured in transience, Being absorbed and
covered up by its own manifesting phenomena. In the Kshara
taken alone as a thing in itself, the mutable universal apart from the
undivided Immutable and the Transcendent, there is no completeness of knowledge,
no completeness of our being and therefore no liberation.
But then there
is another spirit of whom we become aware and who is none of these things, but
self and self only. This Spirit is eternal, always the same, never changed or
affected by manifestation, the one, the stable, a self-existence undivided and
not even seemingly divided by the division of things and powers in Nature,
inactive in her action, immobile in her motion. It is the Self of all and yet
unmoved, indifferent, intangible, as if all these things which depend upon it
were not-self, not its own results and powers and consequences, but a drama of
action developed before the eye of an unmoved unparticipating
spectator. For the mind that stages and shares in the drama is other than the
Self which indifferently contains the action. This spirit is timeless, though
we see it in Time; it is unextended in space, though
we see it as if pervading space. We become aware of it in proportion as we draw
back from out inward, or look behind the action and motion for something that is
eternal and stable, or get away from time and its creation to the uncreated,
away from phenomenon to being, from the personal to impersonality, from
becoming to
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unalterable self-existence. This
is the Akshara, the immutable in the mutable, the
immobile in the mobile, the imperishable in things perishable. Or rather, since
there is only an appearance of pervasion, it is the immutable, immobile and
imperishable in which proceeds all the mobility of mutable and perishable things.
The Kshara spirit visible to us as all natural existence and
the totality of all existences moves and acts pervadingly
in the immobile and eternal Akshara. This mobile
Power of Self acts in that fundamental stability of Self, as the second
principle of material Nature, Vayu, with its contactual force of aggregation and separation, attraction
and repulsion, supporting the formative force of the fiery (radiant, gaseous
and electric) and other elemental movements, ranges pervadingly
in the subtly massive stability of ether. This 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. This self in its highest status, param dhāma, is an
unmanifest beyond even the unmanifest
principle of the original cosmic Prakriti, Avyakta, and, if the soul turns to this Immutable, the hold
of cosmos and Nature falls away from it and it passes beyond birth to an unchanging
eternal existence. These two then are the two spirits we see in the world; one
emerges in front in its action, the other remains behind it steadfast in that
perpetual silence from which the action comes and in which all actions cease
and disappear into timeless being, Nirvana. Dvāvimau purusau loke ksaraś cāksara eva ca.
The difficulty which baffles our intelligence
is that these two seem to be irreconcilable opposites with no real nexus between
them or any transition from the one to the other except by an intolerant
movement of separation. The Kshara acts, or at least
motives action, separately in the Akshara; the Akshara stands apart, self-centred,
separate in its inactivity from the Kshara. At first
sight it would almost seem better, more logical, more easy of comprehension, if
we admitted with the Sankhyas an original and eternal
duality of Purusha and Prakriti,
if not even
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an eternal
plurality of souls. Our experience of the Akshara
would then be simply the withdrawal of each Purusha
into himself, his turning away from Nature and therefore from all contact with
other souls in the relations of existence; for each is self-sufficient and
infinite and complete in his own essence. But after all the final experience is
that of a unity of all beings which is not merely a community of experience, a
common subjection to one force of Nature, but a oneness in the spirit, a vast
identity of conscious being beyond all this endless variety of determination,
behind all this apparent separativism of relative
existence. The Gita takes its stand in that highest spiritual experience. It
appears indeed to admit an eternal plurality of souls subject to and sustained
by their eternal unity, for cosmos is for ever and manifestation goes on in
unending cycles; nor does it affirm anywhere or use any expression that would
indicate an absolute disappearance, laya, the annullation of the
individual soul in the Infinite. But at the same time it affirms with a strong
insistence that the Akshara is the one self of all
these many souls, and it is therefore evident that these two spirits are a dual
status of one eternal and universal existence. That is a very ancient doctrine;
it is the whole basis of the largest vision of the Upanishads,— as when the Isha tells us that Brahman is both the mobile and the
immobile, is the One and the Many, is the Self and all existences, ātman, sarvabhūtāni,
is the Knowledge and the Ignorance, is the eternal unborn status and also the
birth of existences, and that to dwell only on one of these things to the
rejection of its eternal counterpart is a darkness of exclusive knowledge or a
darkness of ignorance. It too insists like the Gita that man must know and must
embrace both and learn of the Supreme in his entirety — samagram mām, as the Gita puts it—in
order to enjoy immortality and live in the Eternal. The teaching of the Gita and
this side of the teaching of the Upanishads are so far at one; for they look at
and admit both sides of the reality and still arrive at identity as the
conclusion and the highest truth of existence.
But this greater knowledge and experience,
however true and however powerful in its appeal to our highest seeing, has
still to get rid of a very real and pressing difficulty, a practical as well as
a logical contradiction which seems at first sight to persist
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up to the highest heights of
spiritual experience. The Eternal is other than this mobile subjective and
objective experience, there is a greater consciousness, na idam yad upāsate1: and yet at the same time all this is the
Eternal, all this is the perennial self-seeing of the Self, sarvam khalu idam brahma,2 ayam ātmā
brahma.3 The eternal has become all existences, ātmā abhūt sarvabhūtani;4 as the Swetatara puts it, “Thou
art this boy and yonder girl and that old man walking supported on his staff,”
– even as in the Gita the Divine says that he is Krishna and Arjunna and Vyasa and Ushanas, and the lion
and the Ashwattha tree, and consciousness and
intelligence and all qualities and the self of all qualities and the self of
all creatures. But how are these two the same, when they seem not only so opposite
in nature,but so difficult to unify in experience?
For when we live in the mobilityof the becoming, we
may be aware of but hardly live in the immortality of timeless being, Time and
Space and circumstance fall away from us and begin to appear as a trouble dream in the infinite.
The most persuasive conclusion would be,
at first sight, that the mobile of the spirit in Nature is an illusion, a thing real only when we
live in it, but not real in essence, and that is why, when we go back into
self, it falls away from our incorruptible essence. That is the familiar
cutting of the knot of the riddle, brahma satyam jagan mithyā.
The Gita does not take refuge in this
explanation which has enormous difficulties of its own, besides its failure to account
for the illusion,— for it only says that it is all a mysterious and
incomprehensible Maya, and then we might just as well say that it is all a
mysterious and incomprehensible double reality, spirit concealing itself from
spirit. The Gita speaks of Maya, but only as a bewildering partial
consciousness which loses hold of the complete reality, lives in the phenomenon
of mobile Nature and has no sight of the Spirit of which she is the active
Power, me prakrtih.
When we transcend this Maya, the world does not disappear, it only changes its
whole heart of meaning. In the
1Kena 2Upanishad.
Chhandogya Upanishad: Verily all this that is is the Brahman.
3 Mandukya Upanishad: The
Self is the Brahman. 4Isha
Upanishad.
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spiritual vision we find not that
all this does not really exist, but rather that all is, but with a sense quite
other than its present mistaken significance: all is self and soul and nature
of the Godhead, all is Vasudeva. The world for the
Gita is real, a creation of the Lord, a power of the Eternal, a manifestation
from the Parabrahman, and even this lower nature of
the triple Maya is a derivation from the supreme divine Nature. Nor can we take
refuge altogether in this distinction that there is a double, an inferior
active and temporal and a superior calm, still and eternal reality beyond
action and that our liberation is to pass from this partiality to that
greatness, from the action to the silence. For the Gita insists that we can and
should, while we live, be conscious in the self and its silence and yet act
with power in the world of Nature. And it gives the example of the Divine
himself who is not bound by necessity of birth, but free, superior to the
cosmos, and yet abides eternally in action, varta eva ca karmani.
Therefore it is by putting on a likeness of the divine nature in its
completeness that the unity of this double experience becomes entirely possible.
But what is the principle of that oneness?
The Gita finds
it in its supreme vision of the Purushottama; for
that is the type, according to its doctrine, of the complete and the highest
experience, it is the knowledge of the whole-knowers,
krtsnavidah.
The Akshara is para, supreme in relation to the elements and action of cosmic Nature. It
is the immutable Self of all, and the immutable Self of all is the Purushottama. The Akshara is he
in the freedom of his self-existence unaffected by the action of his own power
in Nature, not impinged on by the urge of his own becoming, undisturbed by the
play of his own qualities. But this is only one aspect though a great aspect of
the integral knowledge. The Purushottama is at the
same time greater than the Akshara, because he is
more than this immutability and he is not limited even by the highest eternal
status of his being, param dhāma.
Still, it is through whatever is immutable and eternal in us that we arrive at
that highest status from which there is no returning to birth, and that was the
liberation which was sought by the wise of old, the ancient sages. But when
pursued through the Akshara alone, this attempt at
liberation becomes the seeking of the Indefinable, a thing hard for our na
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ture embodied
as we are here in Matter. The Indefinable, to which the Akshara,
the pure intangible self here in us rises in its separative
urge, is some supreme Unmanifest, parah
avyaktah,
and that highest unmanifest Akshara
is still the Purushottama. Therefore, the Gita has
said, those also who follow after the Indefinable, come to me, the eternal
Godhead. But yet is he more even than a highest unmanifest
Akshara, more than any negative Absolute, neti neti, because
he is to be known also as the supreme Purusha who
extends this whole universe in his own existence. He is a supreme mysterious
All, an ineffable positive Absolute of all things here. He is the Lord in the Kshara, Purushottama not only
there, but here in the heart of every creature, Ishwara.
And there too even in his highest eternal status, parah avyaktah, he is the supreme Lord, Parameshwara, no aloof and unrelated Indefinable, but the
origin and father and mother and first foundation and eternal abode of self and
cosmos and Master of all existences and enjoyer of askesis
and sacrifice. It is by knowing him at once in the Akshara
and the Kshara, it is by knowing him as the Unborn
who partially manifests himself in all birth and even himself descends as the
constant Avatar, it is by knowing him in his entirety, samagram mām, that the soul is easily
released from the appearances of the lower Nature and returns by a vast sudden
growth and broad immeasurable ascension into the divine being and supreme
Nature. For the truth of the Kshara too is a truth of
the Purushottama. The Purushottama
is in the heart of every creature and is manifested in his countless Vibhutis; the Purushottama is the
cosmic spirit in Time and it is he that gives the command to the divine action
of the liberated human spirit. He is both Akshara and
Kshara, and yet he is other because he is more and
greater than either of these opposites. Uttamah purusas tvanyah paramātmetyudāhrtah, yo
lokatrayam āviśya,
“But other than these two is that highest spirit called the supreme Self, who
enters the three worlds and upbears them, the
imperishable Lord.” This verse is the keyword of the Gita's
reconciliation of these two apparently opposite aspects of our existence.
The idea of the Purushottama
has been prepared, alluded to,
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adumbrated, assumed even from the
beginning, but it is only now in the fifteenth chapter that it is expressly
stated and the distinction illuminated by a name. And it is instructive to see
how it is immediately approached and developed. To ascend into the divine
nature, we have been told, one must first fix oneself in a perfect spiritual
equality and rise above the lower nature of the three gunas.
Thus transcending the lower Prakriti we fix ourselves
in the impersonality, the imperturbable superiority to all action, the purity
from all definition and limitation by quality which is one side of the
manifested nature of the Purushottama, his manifestation
as the eternity and unity of the self, the Akshara.
But there is also an ineffable eternal multiplicity of the Purushottama,
a highest truest truth behind the primal mystery of soul manifestation. The
Infinite has an eternal power, an unbeginning and
unending action of his divine Nature, and in that action the miracle of soul
personality emerges from a play of apparently impersonal forces, prakrtir jīvabhūtā.
This is possible because personality too is a character of the Divine and finds
in the Infinite its highest spiritual truth and meaning. But the Person in the
Infinite is not the egoistic, separative, oblivious
personality of the lower Prakriti; it is something
exalted, universal and transcendent, immortal and divine. That mystery of the
supreme Person is the secret of love and devotion. The spiritual person, purusa, the
eternal soul in us offers itself and all it has and is to the eternal Divine,
the supreme Person and Godhead of whom it is a portion, amśa. The completeness of
knowledge finds itself in this self-offering, this uplifting of our personal
nature by love and adoration to the ineffable Master of our personality and its
acts; the sacrifice of works receives by it its consummation and perfect sanction.
It is then through these things that the soul of man fulfils itself most
completely in this other and dynamic secret, this other great and intimate
aspect of the divine nature and possesses by that fulfilment the foundation of
immortality, the supreme felicity and the eternal Dharma. And having so stated
this double requisite, equality in the one self, adoration of the one Lord, at
first separately as if they were two different ways of arriving at the Brahmic status, brahma bhūyāya,—one taking the form of quietistic sannyāsa, the other a form of divine love and
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divine action,—the Gita proceeds
now to unite the personal and the impersonal in the Purushottama
and to define their relations. For the object of the Gita is to get rid of
exclusions and separative exaggerations and fuse
these two sides of knowledge and spiritual experience into a single and perfect
way to the supreme perfection.
First there comes a description of cosmic
existence in the Vedantic image of the aswattha tree.
This tree of cosmic existence has no beginning and no end, nānto na cādih,
in space or in time; for it is eternal and imperishable, avyaya.
The real form of it cannot be perceived by us in this material world of man's
embodiment, nor has it any apparent lasting foundation here; it is an infinite
movement and its foundation is above in the supreme of the Infinite. Its
principle is the ancient sempiternal urge to action, pravrtti, which
for ever proceeds without beginning or end from the original Soul of all existence,
ādyam purusam yatah pravrttih prasrtā purānī.
Therefore its original source is above, beyond Time in the Eternal, but its
branches stretch down below and it extends and plunges its other roots,
well-fixed and clinging roots of attachment and desire with their consequences
of more and more desire and an endlessly developing action, plunges them downward
here into the world of men. The hymns of the Veda are compared to its leaves
and the man who knows this tree of the cosmos is the Veda-knower. And here we
see the sense of that rather disparaging view of the Veda or at least of the Vedavada, which we had to notice at the beginning. For the
knowledge the Veda gives us is a knowledge of the gods, of the principles and
powers of the cosmos, and its fruits are the fruits of a sacrifice which is
offered with desire, fruits of
enjoyment and lordship in the
nature of the three worlds, in earth and heaven and the world between earth and
heaven. The branches of this cosmic tree extend both below and above, below in the
material, above in the supraphysical planes; they
grow by the gunas of Nature, for the triple guna is all the subject of the Vedas, traigunya-visayā vedāh.
The Vedic rhythms, chandāmsi,
are the leaves and the sensible objects of desire supremely gained by a right
doing of sacrifice are the constant budding of the foliage. Man, therefore, so
long as he enjoys the play of the gunas and is
attached to desire, is held in the coils of Pravritti,
in the move-
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ment of
birth and action, turns about constantly between the earth and the middle
planes and the heavens and is unable to get back to his supreme spiritual infinitudes.
This was perceived by the sages. To achieve liberation they followed the path
of Nivritti or cessation from the original urge to
action, and the consummation of this way is the cessation of birth itself and a
transcendent status in the highest supracosmic reach
of the Eternal. But for this purpose it is necessary to cut these long-fixed
roots of desire by the strong sword of detachment and then to seek for that
highest goal whence, once having reached it, there is no compulsion of return
to mortal life. To be free from the bewilderment of this lower Maya, without
egoism, the great fault of attachment conquered, all desires stilled, the
duality of joy and grief cast away, always to be fixed in wide equality, always
to be firm in a pure spiritual consciousness, these are the steps of the way to
that supreme Infinite. There we find the timeless being which is not illumined
by sun or moon or fire, but is itself the light of the presence of the eternal Purusha. I turn away, says the Vedantic verse, to seek that
original Soul alone and to reach him in the great passage. That is the highest
status of the Purushottama, his supracosmic
existence.
But it would seem that this can be attained
very well, best even, pre-eminently, directly, by the quiescence of Sannyasa. Its appointed path would seem to be the way of
the Akshara, a complete renunciation of works and
life, an ascetic seclusion, an ascetic inaction. Where is the room here, or at least
where is the call, the necessity, for the command to action, and what has all
this to do with the maintenance of the cosmic existence, lokasangraha, the slaughter of Kurukshetra, the ways of the Spirit in Time, the vision of
the million-bodied Lord and his high-voiced bidding, “Arise, slay the foe,
enjoy a wealthy kingdom”? And what then is this soul in Nature? This spirit
too, this Kshara, this enjoyer of our mutable
existence, is the Purushottama; it is he in his
eternal multiplicity, that is the Gita's answer. “It
is an eternal portion of me that becomes the Jiva in
a world of Jivas.” This is an epithet, a statement of
immense bearing and consequence. For it means that each soul, each being in its
spiritual reality is the very Divine, however partial its actual manifestation
of him in Nature. And it means too, if words have any sense, that each
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manifesting spirit, each of the many,
is an eternal individual, an eternal unborn and undying power of the one
Existence. We call this manifesting spirit the Jiva,
because it appears here as if a living creature in a world of living creatures,
and we speak of this spirit in man as the human soul and think of it in the
terms of humanity only. But in truth it is something greater than its present appearance
and not bound to its humanity: it was a lesser manifestation than the human in
its past, it can become something much greater than mental man in its future.
And when this soul rises above all ignorant limitation, then it puts on its
divine nature of which its humanity is only a temporary veil, a thing of
partial and incomplete significance. The individual spirit exists and ever existed
beyond in the Eternal, for it is itself everlasting, sanātana. It is evidently
this idea of the eternal individual which leads the Gita to avoid any
expression at all suggestive of a complete dissolution, laya,
and to speak rather of the highest state of the soul as a dwelling in the Purushottama, nivasisyasi mayyeva. If when speaking of the one Self of all it
seems to use the language of Adwaita, yet this enduring truth of the eternal
individual, mamāmśah
sanātanah,
adds something which brings in a qualification and appears almost to accept the
seeing of the Visishtadwaita,—though we must not
therefore leap at once to the conclusion that that alone is the Gita's philosophy or that its doctrine is identical with
the later doctrine of Ramanuja. Still this much is
clear that there is an eternal, a real and not only an illusive principle of
multiplicity in the spiritual being of the one divine Existence.
This eternal individual is not other than or
in any way really separate from the Divine Purusha.
It is the Lord himself, the Ishwara who by virtue of
the eternal multiplicity of his oneness—is not all existence a rendering of
that truth of the Infinite?—exists for ever as the immortal soul within us and
has taken up this body and goes forth from the transient framework when it is
cast away to disappear into the elements of Nature. He brings in with him and
cultivates for the enjoyment of the objects of mind and sense the subjective
powers of Prakriti, mind and the five senses, and in
his going forth too he goes taking them as the wind takes the perfumes from a
vase. But the identity of the Lord and
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the soul in mutable Nature is
hidden from us by outward appearance and lost in the crowding mobile deceptions
of that Nature. And those who allow themselves to be governed by the figures of
Nature, the figure of humanity or any other form, will never see it, but will ignore
and despise the Divine lodged in the human body. Their ignorance cannot
perceive him in his coming in and his going forth or in his staying and
enjoying and assumption of quality, but sees only what is there visible to the
mind and senses, not the greater truth which can only be glimpsed by the eye of
knowledge. Never can they have sight of him, even if they strive to do so,
until they learn to put away the limitations of the outward consciousness and
build in themselves their spiritual being, create for it, as it were, a form in
their nature. Man, to know himself, must be krtātmā, formed and
complete in the spiritual mould, enlightened in the spiritual vision. The Yogins who have this eye of knowledge, see the Divine Being
we are in their own endless reality, their own eternity of spirit. Illumined,
they see the Lord in themselves and are delivered from the crude material
limitation, from the form of mental personality, from the transient life
formulation: they dwell immortal in the truth of the self and spirit. But they
see him too not only in themselves, but in all the cosmos. In the light of the
sun that illumines all this world they witness the light of the Godhead which
is in us; the light in the moon and in fire is the light of the Divine. It is
the Divine who has entered into this form of earth and is the spirit of its material
force and sustains by his might these multitudes. The Divine is the godhead of
Soma who by the rasa,
the sap in the Earth-mother, nourishes the plants and trees that clothe her
surface. The Divine and no other is the flame of life that sustains the physical
body of living creatures and turns its food into sustenance of their vital
force. He is lodged in the heart of every breathing thing; from him are memory
and knowledge and the debates of the reason. He is that which is known by all
the Vedas and by all forms of knowing; he is the knower of Veda and the maker
of Vedanta. In other words, the Divine is at once the Soul of matter and the
Soul of life and the Soul of mind as well as the Soul of the supramental light
that is beyond mind and its limited reasoning intelligence.
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Thus the Divine
is manifest in a double soul of his mystery, a twofold power, dvāvimau purusau; he
supports at once the spirit of mutable things that is all these existences, ksarah sarvāni bhūtāni, and the immutable spirit that stands
above them in his imperturbable immobility of eternal silence and calm. And it
is by the force of the Divine in them that the mind and heart and will of man
are so powerfully drawn in different directions by these two spirits as if by
opposing and incompatible attractions one insistent to annul the other. But the
Divine is neither wholly the Kshara, nor wholly the Akshara. He is greater than the immutable Self and he is
much greater than the Soul of mutable things. If he is capable of being both at
once, it is because he is other than they, anyah, the Purushottama
above all cosmos and yet extended in the world and extended in the Veda, in
self-knowledge and in cosmic experience. And whoever thus knows and sees him as
the Purushottama, is no longer bewildered whether by
the world-appearance or by the separate attraction of these two apparent contraries.
These at first confront each other here in him as a positive of the cosmic
action and as its negative in the Self who has no part in an action that
belongs or seems to belong entirely to the ignorance of Nature. Or again they
challenge his consciousness as a positive of pure, indeterminable, stable,
eternal self-existence and as its negative of a world of elusive determinations
and relations, ideas and forms, perpetual unstable becoming and the creating
and uncreating tangle of action and evolution, birth and
death, appearance and disappearance. He embraces and escapes them, overcomes
their opposition and becomes all-knowing, sarvavid, a
whole-knower. He sees the entire sense both of the self and of things; he
restores the integral reality of the Divine;1he unites the Kshara and the Akshara in the Purushottama. He loves, worships, cleaves to and adores the
supreme Self of his and all existence, the one Lord of his and all energies,
the close and far-off Eternal in and beyond the world. And he does this too
with no single side or portion of himself, exclusive spiritualised
mind, blinding light of the heart intense but divorced from largeness, or sole
aspiration of the will in works, but in all the perfectly illumined ways of his
being and his becoming, his soul and his nature. Divine in the equality of
1samagram mām.
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his imperturbable self-existence,
one in it with all objects and creatures, he brings that boundless equality,
that deep oneness down into his mind and heart and life and body and founds on it
in an indivisible integrality the trinity of divine love, divine works and
divine knowledge. This is the Gita's way of
salvation.
And is that not
too after all the real Adwaita which makes no least scission in the one eternal
Existence? This utmost undividing Monism sees the one
as the one even in the multiplicities of Nature, in all aspects, as much in the
reality of self and of cosmos as in that greatest reality of the supracosmic which is the source of self and the truth of
the cosmos and is not bound either by any affirmation of universal becoming or
by any universal or absolute negation. That at least is the Adwaita of the
Gita. This is the most secret Shastra, says the
Teacher to Arjuna; this is the supreme teaching and
science which leads us into the heart of the highest mystery of existence.
Absolutely to know it, to seize it in knowledge and feeling and force and
experience is to be perfected in the transformed understanding, divinely
satisfied in heart and successful in the supreme sense and objective of all
will and action and works. It is the way to be immortal, to rise towards the
highest divine nature and to assume the eternal Dharma.
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