Bhagavadgita -Radhakrishnan 61

The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 13. The Goal Any one who attains this transcendent condition is a yogin, a siddhapuru a, a realized soul, a jitatman a yuktacetas, a disciplined and harmonized being for whom the Eternal is ever present. He is released from divided loyalties and actions. His body, mind and spirit, the conscious, the pre-conscious, and the unconscious, to use Freud's words, work flawlessly together and attain a rhythm expressed in the ecstasy of joy, the illumination of knowledge and the intensity of energy. Liberation is not the isolation of the immortal spirit from the mortal human life but is the transfiguration of the whole man. It is attained not by destroying but by transfiguring the tension of human life. His whole nature is subdued to the universal vision, is wrought to splendour and irradiated by the spiritual light. His body, life and mind are not dissolved but are rendered pure and become the means and mould of the Divine Light, and he becomes his own masterpiece. His personality is raised to its fullness, its maximum expression, pure and free, buoyant and unburdened. All his activities are for the holding together of the world, cikirsur lokasamgraham The liberated souls take upon themselves the burden of the redemption of the whole world. The end of the dynamic of the spirit and its ever new contradictions can only be the end of the world. The dialectic development cannot stop until the whole world is liberated from ignorance and evil. According to the Samkhya system, even those persons who are qualified for the highest wisdom and liberation on account of their solicitousness for the good of others do not give up the world. Merging themselves in the body of prakrti and using its gifts, these preliminarily selves serve the interests of the world. The world is to move forward to its ideal and those who are lost in ignorance and bewilderment are to be redeemed by the effort and example, the illumination and strength of the freed. These elect are the natural leaders of mankind. Anchored in the timeless foundation of our spiritual existence, the freed soul, the eternal individual works for the jivaloka; while possessing individuality of body, life and mind he yet retains the universality of spirit. Whatever action he does, his constant communion with the Supreme is undisturbed.As to what happens if and when the cosmic process reaches its fulfilment, when universal redemption takes place, it is difficult for us to say. The Supreme, which is infinite possibility, may take another possibility for expression.