Gita Rahasya -Tilak 399

Srimad Bhagavadgita-Rahasya OR Karma-Yoga-Sastra -Bal Gangadhar Tilak

CHAPTER XII THE STATE AND THE ACTIVITIES OF THE SIDDHA (PERFECT) When it is admitted that (i) the deletion of Knowledge-full (jnana-yukta) Action from the world will result in the world becoming blind and being destroyed ; and that ! ii even Jnanins must desirelessly perform all the duties of worldly life, and so give to ordinary people a living example of a good and pure life, since it is the desire of the Blessed Lord that the world should not be so destroyed and that its activities should go on without a hitch . and that (iii) this path is the most excellent and acceptable of all, it becomes necessary to consider in what way such a Jnanin performs the activities of his worldly life; because, as the life of such a Jnanin is nothing but an example set by him to other people, the consideration of that example auto matically discloses to us the device sought by us for making a true discrimination between morality (dharma) and im morality (ardharma), between the doable (karya) and the non doable (akarya) and between the duty (kartavya) and the non duty (akartavya). This is the important difference between the Path of Renunciation and the Path of Karma-Yoga. That man whose Pure Reason (vyavasayatmika buddhih) has become capable of realising the identity, that "there is only one Atman in all created things", on account of its having become steady by means of mental control, must also possess a Desire (vasana) which is pure. And when his Practical Reason (vasanatmika buddhih) has in this way become pure, equable,, mine-less (nirmama) and sinless, it is impossible that he should commit any sin or any Action obstructive of Release; because, (i) whatever Action is prompted by a pure desire, is bound to be pure, seeing that in the usual order of things, there is first a desire, and that suoh desire is followed by appropriate action; and (ii) whatever is pure, is promotive of Release. We have, therefore, in this way found such a preceptor as will, give to us a visible reply, in the form of his own life, to the difficult question of the discrimination between what should be done and what should not be done (karmakarma-vicikitsa), or, between what is a duty and what is not a duty (karyakarya vyavasthiti),. Such a preceptor was standing in life before Arjuna in the form of Sri Krsna : and this preceptor has, after clearing the doubt in the mind of Arjuna that a Jnanin must abandon such Action as warfare etc. because it created bondage, given to Arjuna clear advice as to the device by which one can lead his life in this world, without committing sin and consistently with the- science of the Absolute Self (adhyatma), and induced him to- fight. But, it is not possible for everyone to get such preceptors ; and one also ought not to entirely depend on the external activities of such saints, as has been mentioned by me towards the end of the third chapter, when I was consider- ing the proverb "mahajano yena gatah sa panthah" (i, e., "follow the path which has been followed by the great").