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Essays on the Gita -Sri Aurobindo
First Series : Chapter 14
The Principle of Divine Works
THIS THEN is the sense of the Gita’s doctrine of sacrifice.
Its full significance depends on the idea of the
Purushottama which as yet is not developed,—we find
it set forth clearly only much later in the eighteen chapters,—
and therefore we have had to anticipate, at whatever cost of
infidelity to the progressive method of the Gita’s exposition,
that central teaching. At present the Teacher simply gives a hint,
merely adumbrates this supreme presence of the Purushottama
and his relation to the immobile Self in whom it is our first
business, our pressing spiritual need to find our poise of perfect
peace and equality by attainment to the Brahmic condition. He
speaks as yet not at all in set terms of the Purushottama, but
of himself,—“I”, Krishna, Narayana, the Avatar, the God in
man who is also the Lord in the universe incarnated in the figure
of the divine charioteer of Kurukshetra. “In the Self, then in
Me,” is the formula he gives, implying that the transcendence
of the individual personality by seeing it as a “becoming” in
the impersonal self-existent Being is simply a means of arriving
at that great secret impersonal Personality, which is thus silent,
calm and uplifted above Nature in the impersonal Being, but
also present and active in Nature in all these million becomings.
Losing our lower individual personality in the Impersonal, we
arrive finally at union with that supreme Personality which is
not separate and individual, but yet assumes all individualities.
Transcending the lower nature of the three gunas and seating
the soul in the immobile Purusha beyond the three gunas, we
can ascend finally into the higher nature of the infinite Godhead
which is not bound by the three gunas even when it acts through
Nature. Reaching the inner actionlessness of the silent Purusha,
nais.karmya, and leaving Prakriti to do her works, we can attain
supremely beyond to the status of the divine Mastery which is
able to do all works and yet be bound by none. The idea of the
Purushottama, seen here as the incarnate Narayana, Krishna,
is therefore the key. Without it the withdrawal from the lower
nature to the Brahmic condition leads necessarily to inaction of
the liberated man, his indifference to the works of the world;
with it the same withdrawal becomes a step by which the works
of the world are taken up in the spirit, with the nature and in
the freedom of the Divine.
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