{"id":1419,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1419"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","slug":"21-equality-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\/21-equality-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-21_Equality.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

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

\n <\/font>Equality<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nS<\/font><\/b>INCE
\n<\/b><\/font>
\nknowledge, desirelessness, impersonality, equality, the inner self-existent
\npeace and bliss, freedom from or at least superiority to the tangled
\ninterlocking of the three modes of Nature are the signs of the liberated soul,
\nthey must accompany it in all its activities. They are the condition of that
\nunalterable calm which this soul preserves in all the movement, all the shock,
\nall the clash of forces which surround it in the world. That calm reflects the
\nequable immutability of the Brahman in the midst of all mutations, and it
\nbelongs to the indivisible and impartial Oneness which is for ever immanent in
\nall the multiplicities of the universe. For an equal and all-equalising spirit
\nis that Oneness in the midst of the million differences and inequalities of the
\nworld; and equality of the spirit is the sole real equality. For in all else in
\nexistence there can only be similarity, adjustment and balance; but even in the
\ngreatest similarities of the world we find difference of inequality and difference
\nof unlikeness and the adjusted balancings of the world can only come about by a
\npoising of combined unequal weights. <\/p>\n

Hence the
\nimmense importance attached by the Gita in its elements of Karmayoga to
\nequality; it is the nodus of the free spirit’s free relations with the world.
\nSelf-knowledge, desirelessness, impersonality, bliss, freedom from the modes of
\nNature, when withdrawn into themselves, self-absorbed, inactive, have no need
\nof equality; for they take no cognisance of the things in which the opposition
\nof equality and inequality arises. But the moment the spirit takes cognisance
\nof and deals with the multiplicities, personalities, differences, inequalities
\nof the action of Nature, it has to effectuate these other signs of its free
\nstatus by this one manifesting sign of equality. Knowledge is the consciousness
\nof unity with the One; and in relation with the many different beings and
\nexistences of the universe it must show itself <\/p>\n

\nPage 179<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 by an equal oneness with all. Impersonality
\nis the one immutable spirit’s superiority to the variations of its multiple personality
\nin the world; in its dealings with the personalities of the universe it must
\nshow itself in the equal and impartial spirit of its action with regard to all,
\nhowever various that action may be made by the variety of relations into which
\nit is moulded or of the conditions under which it has to take place. So Krishna
\nin the Gita says that none is dear to him, none hated, to all he is equal in
\nspirit; yet is the God-lover the special receiver of his grace, because the
\nrelation he has created is different and the one impartial Lord of all yet
\nmeets each soul according to its way of approach to him. Desirelessness is the illimitable
\nSpirit’s superiority to the limiting attraction of the separate objects of
\ndesire in the world; when it has to enter into relations with those objects, it
\nmust show it either by an equal and impartial indifference in their possession
\nor by an equal and impartial unattached delight in all and love for all which,
\nbecause it is self-existent, does not depend upon possession or non-possession,
\nbut is in its essence unperturbed and immutable. For the spirit’s bliss is in
\nitself, and if this bliss is to enter into relations with things and creatures,
\nit is only in this way that it can manifest its free spirituality. Traigunātītya<\/i>, transcendence
\nof the Gunas, is the unperturbed spirit’s superiority to that flux of action of
\nthe modes of Nature which is in its constant character perturbed and unequal;
\nif it has to enter into relations with the conflicting and unequal activities
\nof Nature, if the free soul is to allow its nature any action at all, it must
\nshow its superiority by an impartial equality towards all activities, results
\nor happenings. <\/p>\n

Equality is the
\nsign and also for the aspirant the test. Where there is inequality in the soul,
\nthere there is in evidence some unequal play of the modes of Nature, motion of
\ndesire, play of personal will, feeling and action, activity of joy and grief or
\nthat disturbed and disturbing delight which is not true spiritual bliss but a
\nmental satisfaction bringing in its train inevitably a counterpart or recoil of
\nmental dissatisfaction. Where there is inequality of soul, there there is
\ndeviation from knowledge, loss of steadfast abiding in the all-embracing and
\nall-reconciling oneness of the Brahman and unity of things. By his equality the <\/p>\n

\nPage 180<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 Karmayogin knows in the midst of
\nhis action that he is free. <\/p>\n

It is the
\nspiritual nature of the equality enjoined, high and universal in its character
\nand comprehension, which gives its distinctive note to the teaching of the Gita
\nin this matter. For otherwise the mere teaching of equality in itself as the
\nmost desirable status of the mind, feelings and temperament in which we rise
\nsuperior to human weakness, is by no means peculiar to the Gita. Equality has
\nalways been held up to admiration as the philosophic ideal and the
\ncharacteristic temperament of the sages. The Gita takes up indeed this
\nphilosophic ideal, but carries it far beyond into a higher region where we find
\nourselves breathing a larger and purer air. The Stoic poise, the philosophic
\npoise of the soul are only its first and second steps of ascension out of the
\nwhirl of the passions and the tossings of desire to a serenity and bliss, not
\nof the Gods, but of the Divine himself in his supreme self-mastery. The Stoic
\nequality, making character its pivot, founds itself upon self-mastery by
\naustere endurance; the happier and serener philosophic equality prefers
\nself-mastery by knowledge, by detachment, by a high intellectual indifference seated
\nabove the disturbances to which our nature is prone, udāsīnavad āsīnah<\/i>, as the Gita
\nexpresses it; there is also the religious or Christian equality which is a
\nperpetual kneeling or a prostrate resignation and submission to the will of
\nGod. These are the three steps and means towards divine peace, heroic
\nendurance, sage indifference, pious resignation, titiksā, udāsīnatā, namas <\/i>or nati<\/i>. The Gita takes them all in its
\nlarge synthetic manner and weaves them into its upward soul-movement, but it
\ngives to each a profounder root, a larger outlook, a more universal and
\ntranscendent significance. For to each it gives the values of the spirit, its
\npower of spiritual being beyond the strain of character, beyond the difficult
\npoise of the understanding, beyond the stress of the emotions. <\/p>\n

The ordinary
\nhuman soul takes a pleasure in the customary disturbances of its nature-life;
\nit is because it has this pleasure and because, having it, it gives a sanction
\nto the troubled play of the lower nature that the play continues perpetually;
\nfor the Prakriti does nothing except for the pleasure and with the sanction of
\nits lover and enjoyer, the Purusha. We do not recognise <\/p>\n

\nPage 181<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 this truth because under the
\nactual stroke of the adverse disturbance, smitten by grief, pain, discomfort, misfortune,
\nfailure, defeat, blame, dishonour, the mind shrinks back from the blow, while
\nit leaps eagerly to the embrace of the opposite and pleasurable disturbances,
\njoy, pleasure, satisfactions of all kinds, prosperity, success, victory, glory,
\npraise; but this does not alter the truth of the soul’s pleasure in life which
\nremains constant behind the dualities of the mind. The warrior does not feel
\nphysical pleasure in his wounds or find mental satisfaction in his defeats; but
\nhe has a complete delight in the godhead of battle which brings to him defeat
\nand wounds as well as the joy of victory, and he accepts the chances of the
\nformer and the hope of the latter as part of the mingled weft of war, the thing
\nwhich the delight in him pursues. Even, wounds bring him a joy and pride in
\nmemory, complete when the pain of them has passed, but often enough present
\neven while it is there and actually fed by the pain. Defeat keeps for him the
\njoy and pride of indomitable resistance to a superior adversary, or, if he is
\nof a baser kind, the passions of hatred and revenge which also have their
\ndarker and crueler pleasures. So it is with the pleasure of the soul in the
\nnormal play of our life. <\/p>\n

The mind recoils
\nby pain and dislike from the adverse strokes of life; that is Nature’s device
\nfor enforcing a principle of self-protection, jugupsā<\/i>, so that the vulnerable nervous and bodily parts of us
\nmay not unduly rush upon self-destruction to embrace it: it takes joy in the
\nfavourable touches of life; that is Nature’s lure of rajasic pleasure, so that
\nthe force in the creature may overcome the tamasic tendencies of inertia and
\ninactivity and be impelled fully towards action, desire, struggle, success, and
\nby its attachment to these things her ends may be worked out. Our secret soul
\ntakes a pleasure in this strife and effort, and even a pleasure in adversity
\nand suffering, which can be complete enough in memory and retrospect, but is present
\ntoo behind at the time and often even rises to the surface of the afflicted
\nmind to support it in its passion; but what really attracts the soul is the
\nwhole mingled weft of the thing we call life with all its disturbance of
\nstruggle and seeking, its attractions and repulsions, its offer and its menace,
\nits varieties of every kind. To the rajasic <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 182<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 desire-soul in us a monotonous pleasure,
\nsuccess without struggle, joy without a shadow must after a time become
\nfatiguing, insipid, cloying; it needs a background of darkness to give full
\nvalue to its enjoyment of light: for the happiness it seeks and enjoys is of
\nthat very nature, it is in its very essence relative and dependent on the
\nperception and experience of its opposite. The joy of the soul in the dualities
\nis the secret of the mind’s pleasure in living. <\/p>\n

Ask it to rise
\nout of all this disturbance to the unmingled joy of the pure bliss-soul which
\nall the time secretly supports its strength in the struggle and makes its own
\ncontinued existence possible, \u2013 it will draw back at once from the call. It
\ndoes not believe in such an existence; or it believes that it would not be
\nlife, that it would not be at all the varied existence in the world around it
\nin which it is accustomed to take pleasure; it would be something tasteless and
\nwithout savour. Or it feels that the effort would be too difficult for it; it
\nrecoils from the struggle of the ascent, although in reality the spiritual
\nchange is not at all more difficult than the realisation of the dreams the
\ndesire-soul pursues, nor entails more struggle and labour in the attainment
\nthan the tremendous effort which the desire-soul expends in its passionate
\nchase after its own transient objects of pleasure and desire. The true cause of
\nits unwillingness is that it is asked to rise above its own atmosphere and
\nbreathe a rarer and purer air of life, whose bliss and power it cannot realise
\nand hardly even conceives as real, while the joy of this lower turbid nature is
\nto it the one thing familiar and palpable. Nor is this lower satisfaction in
\nitself a thing evil and unprofitable; it is rather the condition for the upward
\nevolution of our human nature out of the tamasic ignorance and inertia to which
\nits material being is most subject; it is the rajasic stage of the graded
\nascent of man towards the supreme self-knowledge, power and bliss. But if we
\nrest eternally on this plane, the madhyamā
\ngatih<\/i> of the Gita, our ascent remains unfinished, the evolution of
\nthe soul incomplete. Through the sattwic being and nature to that which is
\nbeyond the three Gunas lies the way of the soul to its perfection. <\/p>\n

The movement
\nwhich will lead us out of the disturbances of the lower nature must be
\nnecessarily a movement towards equality <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 183<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\n in the mind, in the emotional
\ntemperament, in the soul. But it is to be noted that, although in the end we
\nmust arrive at a superiority to all the three gunas of the lower nature, it is
\nyet in its incipience by a resort to one or other of the three that the
\nmovement must begin. The beginning of equality may be sattwic, rajasic or
\ntamasic; for there is a possibility in the human nature of a tamasic equality.
\nIt may be purely tamasic, the heavy equability of a vital temperament rendered
\ninertly irresponsive to the shocks of existence by a sort of dull insensibility
\nundesirous of the joy of life. Or it may result from a weariness of the
\nemotions and desires accumulated by a surfeit and satiety of the pleasure or
\nelse, on the contrary, a disappointment and a disgust and shrinking from the
\npain of life, a lassitude, a fear and horror and dislike of the world: it is then
\nin its nature a mixed movement, rajaso-tamasic, but the lower quality
\npredominates. Or, approaching the sattwic principle, it may aid itself by the
\nintellectual perception that the desires of life cannot be satisfied, that the
\nsoul is too weak to master life, that the whole thing is nothing but sorrow and
\ntransient effort and nowhere in it is there any real truth or sanity or light
\nor happiness; this is the sattwo-tamasic principle of equality and is not so
\nmuch equality, though it may lead to that, as indifference or equal refusal.
\nEssentially, the movement of tamasic equality is a generalisation of Nature’s
\nprinciple of jugupsā<\/i> or
\nself-protecting recoil extended from the shunning of particular painful effects
\nto a shunning of the whole life of Nature itself as in sum leading to pain and
\nself-tormenting and not to the delight which the soul demands. <\/p>\n

In tamasic
\nequality by itself there is no real liberation; but it can be made a powerful
\nstarting-point, if, as in Indian asceticism, it is turned into the sattwic by
\nthe perception of the greater existence, the truer power, the higher delight of
\nthe immutable Self above Nature. The natural turn of such a movement, however,
\nis towards Sannyasa, the renunciation of life and works, rather than to that
\nunion of inner renunciation of desire with continued activity in the world of
\nNature which the Gita advocates. The Gita, however, admits and makes room for
\nthis movement; it allows as a recoiling starting-point the perception of the
\ndefects of the world-existence, birth and disease and death and old age<\/p>\n

\n Page 184<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and sorrow, the historic
\nstarting-point of the Buddha, janma-mrtyu-jarā-vyādhi-duhkha-dosānudarśanam<\/i>,
\nand it accepts the effort of those whose self-discipline is motived by a desire
\nfor release, even in this spirit, from the curse of age and death, jarā-marana-moksāya
\nmām āśritya yatanti ye<\/i>. But that, to be of any profit, must
\nbe accompanied by the sattwic perception of a higher state and the taking
\ndelight and refuge in the existence of the Divine, mām āśritya<\/i>. Then the soul by its recoil comes to a
\ngreater condition of being, lifted beyond the three gunas and free from birth
\nand death and age and grief, and enjoys the immortality of its self-existence, janma-mrtyu-jarā-duhkhair
\nvimukto ‘mrtam aśnute<\/i>. The tamasic unwillingness to accept the
\npain and effort of life is indeed by itself a weakening and degrading thing,
\nand in this lies the danger of preaching to all alike the gospel of asceticism and
\nworld-disgust, that it puts the stamp of a tamasic weakness and shrinking on
\nunfit souls, confuses their understanding,
\nbuddhibhedam janayet<\/i>, diminishes the sustained aspiration, the confidence
\nin living, the power of effort which the soul of man needs for its salutary,
\nits necessary rajasic struggle to master its environment, without really
\nopening to it \u2013 for it is yet incapable of that \u2013 a higher goal, a greater endeavour,
\na mightier victory. But in souls that are fit this tamasic recoil may serve a
\nuseful spiritual purpose by slaying their rajasic attraction, their eager
\npreoccupation with the lower life which prevents the sattwic awakening to a
\nhigher possibility. Seeking then for a refuge in the void they have created,
\nthey are able to hear the divine call, \u201cO soul that findest thyself in this
\ntransient and unhappy world, turn and put thy delight in Me,\u201d anityam asukham lokamimam prāpya bhajasva mām<\/i>. <\/p>\n

Still, in this
\nmovement, the equality consists only in an equal recoil from all that
\nconstitutes the world; and it arrives at indifference and aloofness, but does
\nnot include that power to accept equally all the touches of the world pleasurable
\nor painful without attachment or disturbance which is a necessary element in
\nthe discipline of the Gita. Therefore, even if we begin with the tamasic
\nrecoil, \u2013 which is not at all necessary, \u2013 it can only be as a first incitement
\nto a greater endeavour, not as a permanent pessimism. The real discipline
\nbegins with the movement to mastery <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 185<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

over these things from which we
\nwere first inclined merely to flee. It is here that the possibility of a kind
\nof rajasic equality comes in, which is at its lowest the strong nature’s pride
\nin self-mastery, self-control, superiority to passion and weakness; but the
\nStoic ideal seizes upon this point of departure and makes it the key to an
\nentire liberation of the soul from subjection to all weakness of its lower
\nnature. As the tamasic inward recoil is a generalisation of Nature’s principle
\nof jugupsā<\/i> or self-protection
\nfrom suffering, so the rajasic upward movement is a generalisation of Nature’s
\nother principle of the acceptance of struggle and effort and the innate impulse
\nof life towards mastery and victory; but it transfers the battle to the field
\nwhere alone complete victory is possible. Instead of a struggle for scattered
\noutward aims and transient successes, it proposes nothing less than the
\nconquest of Nature and the world itself by a spiritual struggle and an inner
\nvictory. The tamasic recoil turns from both the pains and pleasures of the
\nworld to flee from them; the rajasic movement turns upon them to bear, master
\nand rise superior to them. The Stoic self-discipline calls desire and passion
\ninto its embrace of the wrestler and crushes them between its arms, as did old
\nDhritarashtra in the epic the iron image of Bhima. It endures the shock of
\nthings painful and pleasurable, the causes of the physical and mental
\naffections of the nature, and breaks their effects to pieces; it is complete
\nwhen the soul can bear all touches without being pained or attracted, excited
\nor troubled. It seeks to make man the conqueror and king of his nature. <\/p>\n

The Gita, making
\nits call on the warrior nature of Arjuna, starts with this heroic movement. It
\ncalls on him to turn on the great enemy desire and slay it. Its first
\ndescription of equality is that of the Stoic philosopher. \u201cHe whose mind is
\nundisturbed in the midst of sorrows and amid pleasures is free from desire,
\nfrom whom liking and fear and wrath have passed away, is the sage of settled
\nunderstanding. Who in all things is without affection though visited by this
\ngood or that evil and neither hates nor rejoices, his intelligence sits firmly
\nfounded in wisdom.\u201d If one abstains from food, it says, giving a physical
\nexample, the object of sense ceases to affect, but the affection itself of the
\nsense, the rasa, remains; it is only when, even in the exercise of the <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 186<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 sense, it can keep back from
\nseeking its sensuous aim in the object, artha<\/i>,
\nand abandon the affection, the desire for the pleasure of taste, that the
\nhighest level of the soul is reached. It is by using the mental organs on the
\nobjects, \u201cranging over them with the senses,\u201d visayān indriyaiś caran<\/i>, but with senses subject
\nto the self, freed from liking and disliking, that one gets into a large and
\nsweet clearness of soul and temperament in which passion and grief find no
\nplace. All desires have to enter into the soul, as waters into the sea, and yet
\nit has to remain immovable, filled but not disturbed: so in the end all desires
\ncan be abandoned. To be freed from wrath and passion and fear and attraction is
\nrepeatedly stressed as a necessary condition of the liberated status, and for
\nthis we must learn to bear their shocks, which cannot be done without exposing
\nourselves to their causes. \u201cHe who can bear here in the body the velocity of
\nwrath and desire, is the Yogin, the happy man.\u201d Titiksā<\/i>, the will and power to endure, is the means.
\n\u201cThe material touches which cause heat and cold, happiness and pain, things
\ntransient which come and go, these learn to endure. For the man whom these do
\nnot trouble nor pain, the firm and wise who is equal in pleasure and suffering,
\nmakes himself apt for immortality.\u201d The equal-souled has to bear suffering and
\nnot hate, to receive pleasure and not rejoice. Even the physical affections are
\nto be mastered by endurance and this too is part of the Stoic discipline. Age,
\ndeath, suffering, pain are not fled from, but accepted and vanquished by a high
\nindifference.\u00b9 <\/span>lower masks,
\nbut to meet and conquer her is the true instinct of the strong nature, purusarsabha<\/i>, the
\nleonine soul among men. Thus compelled, she throws aside her mask and reveals
\nto him his true nature as the free soul, not her subject but her king and lord,
\nsvarāt<\/i>, samrāt<\/i>. <\/p>\n

But the Gita
\naccepts this Stoic discipline, this heroic philosophy, on the same condition
\nthat it accepts the tamasic recoil, \u2013 it must have above it the sattwic vision
\nof knowledge, at its root the aim at self-realisation and in its steps the
\nascent to the<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9<\/span>Dhīras tatra na muhyati<\/i>, says the Gita; the strong and wise soul
\nis not perplexed, troubled or moved by them. But still they are accepted only
\nto be conquered, jarā-marana-moksāya
\nyatanti<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>Not to flee appalled from
\nNature in her <\/p>\n

\nPage 187<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 divine Nature. A Stoic discipline
\nwhich merely crushed down the common affections of our human nature, \u2013 although
\nless dangerous than a tamasic weariness of life, unfruitful pessimism and
\nsterile inertia, because it would at least increase the power and self-mastery
\nof the soul, \u2013 would still be no unmixed good, since it might lead to
\ninsensibility and an inhuman isolation without giving the true spiritual
\nrelease. The Stoic equality is justified as an element in the discipline of the
\nGita because it can be associated with and can help to the realisation of the
\nfree immutable Self in the mobile human being, param<\/i> drstvā<\/i>,
\nand to status in that new self-consciousness, eśā brāhmī sthitih<\/i>. \u201cAwakening by the
\nunderstanding to the Highest which is beyond even the discerning mind, put
\nforce on the self by the self to make it firm and still, and slay this enemy
\nwho is so hard to assail, Desire.\u201d Both the tamasic recoil of escape and the
\nrajasic movement of struggle and victory are only justified when they look
\nbeyond themselves through the sattwic principle to the self-knowledge which legitimizes
\nboth the recoil and the struggle. <\/p>\n

The pure
\nphilosopher, the thinker, the born sage not only relies upon the sattwic
\nprinciple in him as his ultimate justification, but uses it from the beginning
\nas his instrument of self-mastery. He starts from the sattwic equality. He too observes
\nthe transitoriness of the material and external world and its failure to
\nsatisfy the desires or to give the true delight, but this causes in him no
\ngrief, fear or disappointment. He observes all with an eye of tranquil
\ndiscernment and makes his choice without repulsion or perplexity. \u201cThe
\nenjoyments born of the touches of things are causes of sorrow, they have a
\nbeginning and an end; therefore the sage, the man of awakened understanding, budhah, <\/i>does not place his
\ndelight in these.\u201d \u201cThe self in him is unattached to the touches of external
\nthings; he finds his happiness in himself.\u201d He sees, as the Gita puts it, that
\nhe is himself his own enemy and his own friend, and therefore he takes care not
\nto dethrone himself by casting his being into the hands of desire and passion, nātmānam avasādayet, <\/i>but
\ndelivers himself out of that imprisonment by his own inner power, uddhared<\/i> ātmanātmānam<\/i>; for whoever has conquered his lower
\nself, finds in his higher self his best friend and ally. He becomes satisfied
\nwith <\/p>\n

\nPage 188<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 knowledge, master of his senses,
\na Yogin by sattwic equality, \u2013 for equality is Yoga, samatvam yoga ucyate<\/i>, \u2013 regarding alike clod and stone and gold,
\ntranquil and self-poised in heat and cold, suffering and happiness, honour and
\ndisgrace. He is equal in soul to friend and enemy and to neutral and
\nindifferent, because he sees that these are transitory relations born of the
\nchanging conditions of life. Even by the pretensions of learning and purity and
\nvirtue and the claims to superiority which men base upon these things, he is
\nnot led away. He is equal-souled to all men, to the sinner and the saint, to
\nthe virtuous, learned and cultured Brahmin and the fallen outcaste. All these
\nare the Gita’s descriptions of the sattwic equality, and they sum up well
\nenough what is familiar to the world as the calm philosophic equality of the
\nsage. <\/p>\n

Where then is
\nthe difference between this and the larger equality taught by the Gita? It lies
\nin the difference between the intellectual and philosophic discernment and the
\nspiritual, the Vedantic knowledge of unity on which the Gita founds its teaching.
\nThe philosopher maintains his equality by the power of the buddhi, the
\ndiscerning mind; but even that by itself is a doubtful foundation. For, though
\nmaster of himself on the whole by a constant attention or an acquired habit of
\nmind, in reality he is not free from his lower nature, and it does actually
\nassert itself in many ways and may at any moment take a violent revenge for its
\nrejection and suppression. For, always, the play of the lower nature is a
\ntriple play, and the rajasic and tamasic qualities are ever lying in wait for
\nthe sattwic man. \u201cEven the mind of the wise man who labours for perfection is
\ncarried away by the vehement insistence of the senses.\u201d Perfect security can
\nonly be had by resorting to something higher than the sattwic quality,
\nsomething higher than the discerning mind, to the Self, \u2013 not the philosopher’s
\nintelligent self, but the divine sage’s spiritual self which is beyond the
\nthree Gunas. All must be consummated by a divine birth into the higher
\nspiritual nature. <\/p>\n

And the
\nphilosopher’s equality is like the Stoic’s, like the world-fleeing ascetic’s,
\ninwardly a lonely freedom, remote and aloof from men; but the man born to the
\ndivine birth has found the Divine not only in himself, but in all beings. He
\nhas realised
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage 189<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

his unity with all and his
\nequality is therefore full of sympathy and oneness. He sees all as himself and
\nis not intent on his lonely salvation; he even takes upon himself the burden of
\ntheir happiness and sorrow by which he is not himself affected or subjected.
\nThe perfect sage, the Gita more than once repeats, is ever engaged with a large
\nequality in doing good to all creatures and makes that his occupation and
\ndelight, sarvabhūtahite ratah<\/i>.
\nThe perfect Yogin is no solitary musing on the Self in his ivory tower of
\nspiritual isolation, but yuktah<\/i>
\nkrtsnakarmakrt<\/i>, a
\nmany-sided universal worker for the good of the world, for God in the world.
\nFor he is a bhakta, a lover and devotee of the Divine, as well as a sage and a Yogin,
\na lover who loves God wherever he finds Him and who finds Him everywhere; and
\nwhat he loves, he does not disdain to serve, nor does action carry him away
\nfrom the bliss of union, since all his acts proceed from the One in him and to
\nthe One in all they are directed. The equality of the Gita is a large synthetic
\nequality in which all is lifted up into the integrality of the divine being and
\nthe divine nature. <\/p>\n

\nPage 190<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NINETEEN  Equality   SINCE knowledge, desirelessness, impersonality, equality, the inner self-existent peace and bliss, freedom from or at least superiority to the tangled interlocking of…<\/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-1419","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\/1419","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=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}