{"id":1417,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1417"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","slug":"29-the-supreme-divine-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13\/29-the-supreme-divine-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-29_The Supreme Divine.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\nTHREE<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 The Supreme Divine*<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nA<\/font><\/span><\/b>LREADY<\/font> what has been said in the seventh chapter provides
\nus with the starting-point of our new and fuller position and fixes it with
\nsufficient precision. Substantially it comes to this that we are to move
\ninwardly towards a greater consciousness and a supreme existence, not by a
\ntotal exclusion of our cosmic nature, but by a higher, a spiritual fulfilment
\nof all that we now essentially are. Only there is to be a change from our
\nmortal imperfection to a divine perfection of being. The first idea on which
\nthis possibility is founded, is the conception of the individual soul in man as
\nin its eternal essence and its original power a ray of the supreme Soul and
\nGodhead, here a veiled manifestation of him, a being of his being, a
\nconsciousness of his consciousness, a nature of his nature, but in the
\nobscurity of this mental and physical existence self-forgetful of its source,
\nits reality, its true character. The second idea is that of the double nature
\nof the Soul in manifestation, \u2013 the original nature in which it is one with its
\nown true spiritual being, and the derived in which it is subject to the
\nconfusions of egoism and ignorance. The latter has to be cast away and the
\nspiritual has to be inwardly recovered, fulfilled, made dynamic and active.
\nThrough an inner self-fulfilment, the opening of a new status, our birth into a
\nnew power, we return to the nature of the Spirit and re-become a portion of the
\nGodhead from whom we have descended into this mortal figure of being. <\/p>\n

There is here at
\nonce a departure from the general contemporary mind of Indian thought, a less
\nnegating attitude, a greater affirmation. In place of its obsessing idea of a
\nself-annulment of Nature we get the glimpse of an ampler solution, the
\nprinciple of a self-fulfilment in divine Nature. There is, even, at least<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Gita, VII. 29-30, VIII.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 275<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

a foreshadowing of the later
\ndevelopments of the religions of Bhakti. Our first experience of what is beyond
\nour normal status, concealed behind the egoistic being in which we live, is
\nstill for the Gita the calm of a vast impersonal immutable self in whose
\nequality and oneness we lose our petty egoistic personality and cast off in its
\ntranquil purity all our narrow motives of desire and passion. But our second
\ncompleter vision reveals to us a living Infinite, a divine immeasurable Being
\nfrom whom all that we are proceeds and to which all that we are belongs, self
\nand nature, world and spirit. When we are one with him in self and spirit, we
\ndo not lose ourselves, but rather recover our true selves in him poised in the
\nsupremacy of this Infinite. And this is done at one and the same time by three
\nsimultaneous movements, \u2013 an integral self-finding through works founded in his
\nand our spiritual nature, an integral self-becoming through knowledge of the
\nDivine Being in whom all exists and who is all, and \u2013 most sovereign and
\ndecisive movement of all \u2013 an integral self-giving through love and devotion of
\nour whole being to this All and this Supreme, attracted to the Master of our
\nworks, to the Inhabitant of our hearts, to the continent of all our conscious
\nexistence. To him who is the source of all that we are, we give all that we
\nare. Our persistent consecration turns into knowledge of him all our knowing
\nand into light of his power all our action. The passion of love in our self-giving
\ncarries us up to him and opens the mystery of his deepest heart of being. Love
\ncompletes the triple cord of the sacrifice, perfects the triune key of the
\nhighest secret, uttamam rahasyam<\/i>. <\/i><\/p>\n

An integral
\nknowledge in our self-giving is the first condition of its effective force. And
\ntherefore we have first of all to know this Purusha in all the powers and
\nprinciples of his divine existence, tattvatah<\/i>,
\nin the whole harmony of it, in its eternal essence and living process. But to
\nthe ancient thought all the value of this knowledge, tattvaj\u00f1āna<\/i>, lay in its power for release out of our mortal
\nbirth into the immortality of a supreme existence. The Gita therefore proceeds
\nnext to show how this liberation too in the highest degree is a final outcome
\nof its own movement of spiritual self-fulfilment. The knowledge of the
\nPurushottama, it says in effect, is the perfect knowledge of the Brahman. Those
\nwho have resort to Me as their refuge, <\/p>\n

\nPage 276<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

mām āśritya<\/i>, their divine light, their deliverer,
\nreceiver and harbourer of their souls, \u2013 those who turn to Me in their
\nspiritual effort towards release from age and death, from the mortal being and
\nits limitations, says Krishna, come to know that Brahman and all the integrality
\nof the spiritual nature and the entirety of Karma. And because they know Me and
\nknow at the same time the material and the divine nature of being and the truth
\nof the Master of sacrifice, they keep knowledge of Me also in the critical
\nmoment of their departure from physical existence and have at that moment their
\nwhole consciousness in union with Me. Therefore they attain to Me. No longer
\nbound to the mortal existence, they reach the very highest status of the Divine
\nquite as effectively as those who lose their separate personality in the
\nimpersonal and immutable Brahman. Thus the Gita closes this important and
\ndecisive seventh chapter. <\/p>\n

Here we have
\ncertain expressions which give us in their brief sum the chief essential truths
\nof the manifestation of the supreme Divine in the cosmos. All the originative
\nand effective aspects of it are there, all that concerns the soul in its return
\nto integral self-knowledge. First there is that Brahman, tad<\/i> brahma<\/i>; adhyātma<\/i>, second, the principle of
\nthe self in Nature; adhibhūta<\/i>
\nand adhidaiva<\/i> next, the objective
\nphenomenon and subjective phenomenon of being; adhiyaj\u00f1a<\/i> last, the secret of the cosmic principle of works and
\nsacrifice. I, the Purushottama (mām<\/i>
\nviduh<\/i>), says in effect
\nKrishna, I who am above all these things, must yet be sought and known through
\nall together and by means of their relations, \u2013 that is the only complete way
\nfor the human consciousness which is seeking its path back towards Me. But
\nthese terms in themselves are not at first quite clear or at least they are
\nopen to different interpretations, they have to be made precise in their
\nconnotation, and Arjuna the disciple at once asks for their elucidation.
\nKrishna answers very briefly, \u2013 nowhere does the Gita linger very long upon any
\npurely metaphysical explanation; it gives only so much and in such a way as
\nwill make their truth just seizable for the soul to proceed on to experience.
\nBy that Brahman, a phrase which in the Upanishads is more than once used for
\nthe self-existent as opposed to the phenomenal being, the Gita intends, it
\nappears, the immutable self-existence <\/p>\n

\nPage 277<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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which is the highest
\nself-expression of the Divine and on whose unalterable eternity all the rest,
\nall that moves and evolves, is founded, aksaram
\nparamam<\/i>. By adhyātma<\/i> it
\nmeans svabhāva<\/i>, the spiritual
\nway and law of being of the soul in the supreme Nature. Karma, it says, is the name
\ngiven to the creative impulse and energy, visargah<\/i>,
\nwhich looses out things from this first essential self-becoming, this Swabhava,
\nand effects, creates, works out under its influence the cosmic becoming of
\nexistences in Prakriti. By adhibhūta<\/i>
\nis to be understood all the result of mutable becoming, ks<\/i>aro<\/i> bhāvah<\/i>. By adhidaiva<\/i> is intended the Purusha, the soul in Nature, the
\nsubjective being who observes and enjoys as the object of his consciousness all
\nthat is this mutable becoming of his essential existence worked out here by
\nKarma in Nature. By adhiyaj\u00f1a<\/i>, the
\nLord of works and sacrifice, I mean, says Krishna,
\nmyself, the Divine, the Godhead, the Purushottama here secret in the body of
\nall these embodied existences. All that is, therefore, falls within this
\nformula.<\/p>\n

The Gita
\nimmediately proceeds from this brief statement to work out the idea of the
\nfinal release by knowledge which it has suggested in the last verse of the
\npreceding chapter. It will return indeed upon its thought hereafter to give
\nsuch ulterior light as is needed for action and inner realisation, and we may
\nwait till then for a fuller knowledge of all that these terms indicate. But
\nbefore we proceed farther, it is necessary to bring out as much of the
\nconnection between these things as we are justified in understanding from this
\npassage itself and from what has gone before. For here is indicated the Gita’s
\nidea of the process of the cosmos. First there is the Brahman, the highest
\nimmutable self-existent being which all existences are behind the play of
\ncosmic Nature in time and space and causality, deśa-kāla-nimitta<\/i>. For by that self-existence alone time and
\nspace and causality are able to exist, and without that unchanging support
\nomnipresent, yet indivisible they could not proceed to their divisions and
\nresults and measures. But of itself the immutable Brahman does nothing, causes
\nnothing, determines nothing; it is impartial, equal, all-supporting, but does
\nnot select or originate. What then originates, what determines, what gives the
\ndivine impulsion of the Supreme? what is it that governs Karma and actively
\nunrolls the cosmic <\/p>\n

\nPage 278<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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becoming in Time out of the
\neternal being? It is Nature as Swabhava. The Supreme, the Godhead, the
\nPurushottama is there and supports on his eternal immutability the action of
\nhis higher spiritual Shakti. He displays the divine Being, Consciousness, Will
\nor Power, yayedam dhāryate jagat<\/i>:
\nthat is the Para Prakriti. The self-awareness of the Spirit in this supreme
\nNature perceives in the light of self-knowledge the dynamic idea, the authentic
\ntruth of whatever he separates in his own being and expresses it in the
\nSwabhava, the spiritual nature of the Jiva. The inherent truth and principle of
\nthe self of each Jiva, that which works itself out in manifestation, the
\nessential divine nature in all which remains constant behind all conversions,
\nperversions, reversions, that is the Swabhava. All that is in the Swabhava is
\nloosed out into cosmic Nature for her to do what she can with it under the
\ninner eye of the Purushottama. Out of the constant svabhāva<\/i>, out of the essential nature and self-principle of
\nbeing of each becoming, she creates the varied mutations by which she strives
\nto express it, unrolls all her changes in name and form, in time and space and
\nthose successions of condition developed one out of the other in time and space
\nwhich we call causality, nimitta<\/i>. <\/p>\n

All this
\nbringing out and continual change from state to state is Karma, is action of
\nNature, is the energy of Prakriti, the worker, the goddess of processes. It is
\nfirst a loosing forth of the svabhāva<\/i>
\ninto its creative action, visargah<\/i>.
\nThe creation is of existences in the becoming, bhāuta<\/i>–karah<\/i>,
\nand of all that they subjectively or otherwise become, bhāva<\/i>–karah<\/i>.
\nAll taken together, it is a constant birth of things in Time, udbhava<\/i>, of which the creative energy of
\nKarma is the principle. All this mutable becoming emerges by a combination of
\nthe powers and energies of Nature, adhibhūta<\/i>,
\nwhich constitutes the world and is the object of the soul’s consciousness. In
\nit all the soul is the enjoying and observing Deity in Nature; the divine powers
\nof mind and will and sense, all the powers of its conscious being by which it
\nreflects this working of Prakriti are its godheads, adhidaiva<\/i>. This soul in Nature is therefore the ksara purusa<\/i>, it is the
\nmutable soul, the eternal activity of the Godhead: the same soul in the Brahman
\ndrawn back from her is the aksara
\npurusa<\/i>, the immutable self, the eternal silence of the Godhead. But
\nin the form and body of the <\/p>\n

\nPage 279<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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mutable being inhabits the
\nsupreme Godhead. Possessing at once the calm of the immutable existence and the
\nenjoyment of the mutable action there dwells in man the Purushottama. He is not
\nonly remote from us in some supreme status beyond, but he is here too in the
\nbody of every being, in the heart of man and in Nature. There he receives the
\nworks of Nature as a sacrifice and awaits the conscious self-giving of the
\nhuman soul: but always even in the human creature’s ignorance and egoism he is
\nthe Lord of his Swabhava and the Master of all his works, who presides over the
\nlaw of Prakriti and Karma. From him the soul came forth into the play of
\nNature’s mutations; to him the soul returns through immutable self-existence to
\nthe highest status of the Divine, param
\ndhāama<\/i>. <\/p>\n

Man, born into
\nthe world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and
\nKarma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks,
\ncontemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined
\nhis present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the
\nmoment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in
\nlives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any
\nmeans a cessation. The body is abandoned, but the soul goes on its way, tyaktvā<\/i> kalevaram<\/i>. Much then depends on what he is at the critical moment
\nof his departure. For whatever form of becoming his consciousness is fixed on
\nat the time of death and has been full of that always in his mind and thought
\nbefore death, to that form he must attain, since the Prakriti by Karma works
\nout the soul’s thoughts and energies and that is in real fact her whole
\nbusiness. Therefore, if the soul in the human being desires to attain to the
\nstatus of the Purushottama, there are two necessities, two conditions which
\nmust be satisfied before that can be possible. He must have moulded towards
\nthat ideal his whole inner life in his earthly living; and he must be faithful
\nto his aspiration and will in his departing. \u201cWhoever leaves his body and
\ndeparts\u201d says Krishna \u201cremembering me at his time of
\nend, comes to my bhāva<\/i>,\u201d that of
\nthe Purushottama, my status of being. He is united with the original being of
\nthe Divine and that is the ultimate becoming of the soul, paro bhāvah<\/i>, the last result of Karma in its return
\nupon itself and <\/p>\n

\nPage 280<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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towards its source. The soul
\nwhich has followed the play of cosmic evolution that veils here its essential
\nspiritual nature, its original form of becoming, svabhāva<\/i>, and has passed through all these other ways of
\nbecoming of its consciousness which are only its phenomena, tam tam bhāvam<\/i>, returns to that
\nessential nature and, finding through this return its true self and spirit,
\ncomes to the original status of being which is from the point of view of the
\nreturn a highest becoming, madbhāvam<\/i>.
\nIn a certain sense we may say that it becomes God, since it unites itself with
\nnature of the Divine in a last transformation of its own phenomenal nature and
\nexistence. <\/p>\n

The Gita here
\nlays a great stress on the thought and state of mind at the time of death, a
\nstress which will with difficulty be understood if we do not recognise what may
\nbe called the self-creative power of the consciousness. What the thought, the
\ninner regard, the faith, śraddhā<\/i>,
\nsettles itself upon with a complete and definite insistence, into that our
\ninner being tends to change. This tendency becomes a decisive force when we go
\nto those higher spiritual and self-evolved experiences which are less dependent
\non external things than is our ordinary psychology, enslaved as that is to
\noutward Nature. There we can see ourselves steadily becoming that on which we
\nkeep our minds fixed and to which we constantly aspire. Therefore there any
\nlapse of the thought, any infidelity of the memory means always a retardation
\nof the change or some fall in its process and a going back towards what we were
\nbefore, \u2013 at least so long as we have not substantially and irrevocably fixed
\nour new becoming. When we have done that, when we have made it normal to our
\nexperience, the memory of it remains self-existently because that now is the
\nnatural form of our consciousness. In the critical moment of passing from the
\nmortal plane of living, the importance of our then state of consciousness
\nbecomes evident. But it is not a death-bed remembrance at variance with or
\ninsufficiently prepared by the whole tenor of our life and our past
\nsubjectivity that can have this saving power. The thought of the Gita here is
\nnot on a par with the indulgences and facilities of popular religion; it has nothing
\nin common with the crude fancies that make the absolution and last unction of
\nthe priest, an edifying \u201cChristian\u201d <\/p>\n

\nPage 281<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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death after an unedifying profane
\nlife or the precaution or accident of a death in sacred Benares
\nor holy Ganges a sufficient machinery of salvation. The
\ndivine subjective becoming on which the mind has to be fixed firmly in the
\nmoment of the physical death, yam smaran
\nbhāvam tyajati ante kalevaram<\/i>, must have been one into which the soul
\nwas at each moment growing inwardly during the physical life, sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitah<\/i>.
\n\u201cTherefore,\u201d says the divine Teacher, \u201cat all times remember me and fight; for
\nif thy mind and thy understanding are always fixed on and given up to Me, mayi arpita-manobuddhih<\/i>, to Me
\nthou shalt surely come. For it is by thinking always of him with a
\nconsciousness united with him in an undeviating Yoga of constant practice that
\none comes to the divine and supreme Purusha.\u201d <\/p>\n

We arrive here
\nat the first description of this supreme Purusha, \u2013 the Godhead who is even
\nmore and greater than the Immutable and to whom the Gita gives subsequently the
\nname of Purushottama. He too in his timeless eternity is immutable and far
\nbeyond all this manifestation and here in Time there dawn on us only faint
\nglimpses of his being conveyed through many varied symbols and disguises, avyakto aksarah<\/i>. Still
\nhe is not merely a featureless or indiscernible existence, anirdeśyam<\/i>; or he is indiscernible only because he is subtler
\nthan the last subtlety of which the mind is aware and because the form of the
\nDivine is beyond our thought, anor
\nanīyāmsam acintya-rūpam<\/i>. This supreme Soul and Self
\nis the Seer, the Ancient of Days and in his eternal self-vision and wisdom the
\nMaster and Ruler of all existence who sets in their place in his being all
\nthings that are, kavim purānam
\nanuśāsitāram sarvasya dhātāram<\/i>. This supreme Soul
\nis the immutable self-existent Brahman of whom the Veda-knowers speak, and this
\nis that into which the doers of askesis enter when they have passed beyond the
\naffections of the mind of mortality and for the desire of which they practise
\nthe control of the bodily passions.\u00b9
\n<\/span>That eternal reality is the highest step, place, foothold of being (padam<\/i>); therefore is it the supreme goal
\nof the soul’s movement in Time, itself no movement but a status original,
\nsempiternal and supreme, param sthānam
\nādyam<\/i>. <\/p>\n

The Gita
\ndescribes the last state of the mind of the Yogin in<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9<\/span>The language here is taken
\nbodily from the Upanishads.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 282<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

which he passes from life through
\ndeath to this supreme divine existence. A motionless mind, a soul armed with the
\nstrength of Yoga, a union with God in bhakti, \u2013 the union by love is not here
\nsuperseded by the featureless unification through knowledge, it remains to the
\nend a part of the supreme force of the Yoga, \u2013 and the life-force entirely
\ndrawn up and set between the brows in the seat of mystic vision. All the doors
\nof the sense are closed, the mind is shut in into the heart, the life-force
\ntaken up out of its diffused movement into the head, the intelligence
\nconcentrated in the utterance of the sacred syllable OM
\nand its conceptive thought in the remembrance of the supreme Godhead, mām anusmaran<\/i>. That is the
\nestablished Yogic way of going, a last offering up of the whole being to the Eternal,
\nthe Transcendent. But still that is only a process; the essential condition is
\nthe constant undeviating memory of the Divine in life, even in action and
\nbattle \u2013 mām anusmara yudhya ca<\/i>
\n\u2013 and the turning of the whole act of living into an uninterrupted Yoga, nitya-yoga<\/i>. Whoever does that, finds Me
\neasy to attain, says the Godhead; he is the great soul who reaches the supreme
\nperfection. <\/p>\n

The condition to
\nwhich the soul arrives when it thus departs from life is supracosmic. The
\nhighest heavens of the cosmic plan are subject to a return to rebirth; but
\nthere is no rebirth imposed on the soul that departs to the Purushottama. Therefore
\nwhatever fruit can be had from the aspiration of knowledge to the indefinable
\nBrahman, is acquired also by this other and comprehensive aspiration through
\nknowledge, works and love to the self-existent Godhead who is the Master of
\nworks and the Friend of mankind and of all beings. To know him so and so to
\nseek him does not bind to rebirth or to the chain of Karma; the soul can
\nsatisfy its desire to escape permanently from the transient and painful condition
\nof our mortal being. And the Gita here, in order to make more precise to the
\nmind this circling round of births and the escape from it, adopts the ancient
\ntheory of the cosmic cycles which became a fixed part of Indian cosmological
\nnotions. There is an eternal cycle of alternating periods of cosmic
\nmanifestation and non-manifestation, each period called respectively a day and
\na night of the creator Brahma, each of equal length in Time, the long aeon of
\nhis working which endures <\/p>\n

\nPage 283<\/span><\/p>\n

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for a thousand ages, the long
\naeon of his sleep of another thousand silent ages. At the coming of the Day all
\nmanifestations are born into being out of the unmanifest, at the coming of the
\nNight all vanish or are dissolved into it. Thus all these existences alternate
\nhelplessly in the cycle of becoming and non-becoming; they come into the
\nbecoming again and again, bhūtvā<\/i>
\nbhūtvā<\/i>, and they go back
\nconstantly into the unmanifest. But this unmanifest is not the original divinity
\nof the Being; there is another status of his existence, bhāvo’nyo<\/i>, a supracosmic unmanifest beyond this cosmic non-manifestation,
\nwhich is eternally self-seated, is not an opposite of this cosmic status of
\nmanifestation but far above and unlike it, changeless, eternal, not forced to
\nperish with the perishing of all these existences. \u201cHe is called the unmanifest
\nimmutable, him they speak of as the supreme soul and status, and those who
\nattain to him return not; that is my supreme place of being, paramam dhāma<\/i>.\u201d For the soul
\nattaining to it has escaped out of the cycle of cosmic manifestation and non-manifestation.\n<\/p>\n

Whether we
\nentertain or we dismiss this cosmological notion, \u2013 which depends on the value
\nwe are inclined to assign to the knowledge of \u201cthe knowers of day and night,\u201d \u2013
\nthe important thing is the turn the Gita gives to it. One might easily imagine
\nthat this eternally unmanifested Being whose status seems to have nothing to do
\nwith the manifestation or the non-manifestation, must be the ever undefined and
\nindefinable Absolute, and the proper way to reach him is to get rid of all that
\nwe have become in the manifestation, not to carry up to it our whole inner
\nconsciousness in a combined concentration of the mind’s knowledge, the heart’s
\nlove, the Yogic will, the vital life-force. Especially, bhakti seems
\ninapplicable to the Absolute who is void of every relation, avyavahārya<\/i>. \u201cBut\u201d insists the
\nGita, \u2013 although this condition is supracosmic and although it is eternally
\nunmanifest, \u2013 still \u201cthat supreme Purusha has to be won by a bhakti which turns
\nto him alone in whom all beings exist and by whom all this world has been extended
\nin space.\u201d In other words, the supreme Purusha is not an entirely relationless
\nAbsolute aloof from our illusions, but he is the Seer, Creator and Ruler of the
\nworlds, kavim
\nanuśāsitāram, dhātāram<\/i>, and it is by knowing and
\nby loving Him as the One and the All, <\/p>\n

\nPage 284<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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vāsudevah<\/i> sarvam
\niti<\/i>, that we ought by a union with him of our whole conscious being in all
\nthings, all energies, all actions to seek the supreme consummation, the perfect
\nperfection, the absolute release. <\/p>\n

Then there comes
\na more curious thought which the Gita has adopted from the mystics of the early
\nVedanta. It gives the different times at which the Yogin has to leave his body
\naccording as he wills to seek rebirth or to avoid it. Fire and light and smoke
\nor mist, the day and the night, the bright fortnight of the lunar month and the
\ndark, the northern solstice and the southern, these are the opposites. By the
\nfirst in each pair the knowers of the Brahman go to the Brahman; but by the second
\nthe Yogin reaches the \u201clunar light\u201d and returns subsequently to human birth.
\nThese are the bright and the dark paths, called the path of the gods and the
\npath of the fathers in the Upanishads, and the Yogin who knows them is not
\nmisled into any error. Whatever psycho-physical fact or else symbolism there
\nmay be behind this notion,\u00b9<\/span>\u2013 it
\ncomes down from the age of the mystics who saw in every physical thing an
\neffective symbol of the psychological and who traced everywhere an interaction
\nand a sort of identity of the outward with the inward, light and knowledge, the
\nfiery principle and the spiritual energy, \u2013 we need observe only the turn by
\nwhich the Gita closes the passage: \u201cTherefore at all times be in Yoga.\u201d <\/p>\n

For that is
\nafter all the essential, to make the whole being one with the Divine, so
\nentirely and in all ways one as to be naturally and constantly fixed in union,
\nand thus to make all living, not only thought and meditation, but action, labour,
\nbattle, a remembering of God. \u201cRemember me and fight,\u201d means not to lose the
\never-present thought of the Eternal for one single moment in the clash of the
\ntemporal which normally absorbs our minds, and that seems sufficiently
\ndifficult, almost impossible. It is entirely possible indeed only if the other
\nconditions are satisfied. If we have become in our consciousness one<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9<\/span>Yogic experience shows in
\nfact that there is a real psycho-physical truth, not indeed absolute in its
\napplication, behind this idea, viz., that in the inner struggle between the
\npowers of the Light and the powers of the Darkness, the former tend to have a
\nnatural prevalence in the bright periods of the day or the year, the latter in
\nthe dark periods, and this balance may last until the fundamental victory is
\nwon.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 285<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

self with all, one self which is
\nalways to our thought the Divine, and even our eyes and our other senses see
\nand sense the Divine Being everywhere so that it is impossible for us at any
\ntime at all to feel or think of anything as that merely which the unenlightened
\nsense perceives, but only as the Godhead at once concealed and manifested in
\nthat form, and if our will is one in consciousness with a supreme will and
\nevery act of will, of mind, of body is felt to come from it, to be its
\nmovement, instinct with it or identical, then what the Gita demands can be
\nintegrally done. The remembrance of the Divine Being becomes no longer an
\nintermittent act of the mind, but the natural condition of our activities and
\nin a way the very substance of the consciousness. The Jiva has become possessed
\nof its right and natural, its spiritual relation to the Purushottama and all
\nour life is a Yoga, an accomplished and yet an eternally self-accomplishing
\noneness. <\/p>\n

\nPage 286<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THREE  The Supreme Divine*   ALREADY what has been said in the seventh chapter provides us with the starting-point of our new and fuller position…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","wpcat-31-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}