Bhagavadgita -Radhakrishnan 28

The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 7. The Individual Self Reality is, in its own nature, infinite, absolute, untramelled, inalienably possessed of its own unity and bliss. In the cosmic process, dualities and oppositions which obscure the infinite undivided reality arise. In the terms of the Taittiriya Up., the cosmic process has assumed the five stages of matter (anna), life (prana), mind (manas), intelligence (vijnana) and bliss (ananda). There is an inner direction given to things by reason of their participation in the creative onrush of life. The human being is at the fourth stage of vijnana or intelligence. He is not master of his acts. He is aware of the universal reality which is operating in the whole scheme. He seems to know matter, life and mind. He has mastered, to a large extent, the material world, the vital existence and even the obscure workings of mentality but has not yet become the completely illumined consciousness. Even as matter is succeeded by life, life by mind and mind by intelligence, even so the intelligent man will grow into a higher and divine life. Progressive self-enlargement has been the impulse of nature. God's purpose for the world or the cosmic destiny for man is the realization of the immortal aspiration through this mortal frame, the achievement of the Divine life in and through this physical frame and intellectual consciousness. The Divine dwells in the inmost being of man and cannot be extinguished. It is the inner light, the concealed witness, that which endures and is imperishable from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption. It is the principle of the jiva, the psychic person which changes and grows from life to life and when the ego is completely harmonized by the Divine, it ascends into spiritual existence which is its destiny and until this happens it travels between birth and death. All forms of existence are found in each being for, under the well-fixed traits of the human form, are the contours of materiality, organization and animality. The matter, life and mind that fill the world are in us as well. We partake of the forces that work in the outer world. Our intellectual nature produces self-consciousness, it leads to the emergence of the human individual from its original solidarity with nature.