{"id":2238,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2238"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:18","slug":"37-the-field-and-its-knower-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/19-essays-on-the-gita\/37-the-field-and-its-knower-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","title":{"rendered":"-37_The Field and its Knower.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"100%\" valign=\"top\">\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<p><b><font size=\"4\">PART II <\/font><\/b><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<p><b><font size=\"4\">THE SUPREME SECRET<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<p><b><font size=\"4\">XIII <\/font><\/b><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<p><b><font size=\"4\">The Field and its Knower <\/font><sup><font size=\"2\">1<\/font><\/sup><font size=\"4\"><br \/>\n<\/font><\/b><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/p>\n<p><b><font size=\"5\">T<\/font>HE GITA<\/b> in its last six chapters, in order to found on a clear and complete knowledge the way of the soul&#8217;s rising<br \/>\nout of the lower into the divine nature, restates in another form the enlightenment the Teacher has already imparted to<br \/>\nArjuna. Essentially it is the same knowledge, but details and relations are now made prominent and assigned their entire significance, thoughts and truths brought out in their full value that were alluded to only in passing or generally stated in the light<br \/>\nof another purpose. Thus in the first six chapters the knowledge necessary for the distinction between the immutable self and the<br \/>\nsoul veiled in nature was accorded an entire prominence. The references to the supreme Self and Purusha were summary and<br \/>\nnot at all explicit; it was assumed in order to justify works in the world and it was affirmed to be the Master of being, but<br \/>\nthere was otherwise nothing to show what it was and its relations to the rest were not even hinted at, much less developed.<br \/>\nThe remaining chapters are devoted to the bringing out of this suppressed knowledge in a conspicuous light and strong preeminence. It is to the Lord, the Ishwara, it is to the distinction of the higher and the lower nature and to the vision of the<br \/>\nall-originating and all-constituting Godhead in Nature, it is to the One in all beings that prominence has been assigned in the next<br \/>\nsix Adhyayas (7-12) in order to found a root-unity of works and love with knowledge. But now it is necessary to bring out more<br \/>\ndefinitely the precise relations between the supreme Purusha, the immutable self, the Jiva and Prakriti in her action and her gun<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#61477;<\/font>as. Arjuna is therefore made to put a question which shall evoke a clearer elucidation of these still ill-lighted matters. He<br \/>\nasks to learn of the Purusha and the Prakriti; he inquires of the<br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">1<br \/>\nGita, XIII. &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 409<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\">field of being and the knower of the field and of knowledge and the object of knowledge. Here is contained the sum of all the<br \/>\nknowledge of self and the world that is still needed if the soul is to throw off its natural ignorance and staying its steps on a<br \/>\nright use of knowledge, of life, of works and of its own relations with the Divine in these things ascend into unity of being with<br \/>\nthe eternal Spirit of existence. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">The essence of the Gita&#8217;s ideas in these matters has already,<br \/>\nanticipating the final evolution of its thought, been elucidated in a certain measure; but, following its example, we may state<br \/>\nthem again from the point of view of its present preoccupation. Action being admitted, a divine action done with self-knowledge<br \/>\nas the instrument of the divine Will in the cosmos being accepted as perfectly consistent with the Brahmic status and an indispensable part of the Godward movement, that action being uplifted inwardly as a sacrifice with adoration to the Highest, how does<br \/>\nthis way practically affect the great object of spiritual life, the rising from the lower into the higher nature, from mortal into<br \/>\nimmortal being? All life, all works are a transaction between the soul and Nature. What is the original character of that transaction? what does it become at its spiritual culminating point? to what perfection does it lead the soul that gets free from its<br \/>\nlower and external motives and grows inwardly into the very highest poise of the Spirit and deepest motive-force of the works<br \/>\nof its energy in the universe? These are the questions involved, \u2014 there are others which the Gita does not raise or answer, for<br \/>\nthey were not pressingly present to the human mind of that day, \u2014 and they are replied to in the sense of the solution drawn<br \/>\nfrom a large-sighted combination of the Vedantic, Sankhya and Yoga views of existence which is the starting-point of the whole<br \/>\nthought of the Gita. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">The Soul which finds itself here embodied in Nature has a<br \/>\ntriple reality to its own self-experience. First it is a spiritual being apparently subjected by ignorance to the outward workings of<br \/>\nPrakriti and represented in her mobility as an acting, thinking, mutable personality, a creature of Nature, an ego. Next when<br \/>\nit gets behind all this action and motion, it finds its own higher &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 410<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">reality to be an eternal and impersonal self and immutable spirit which has no other share in the action and movement than to<br \/>\nsupport it by its presence and regard it as an undisturbed equal witness. And last, when it looks beyond these two opposite<br \/>\nselves, it discovers a greater ineffable Reality from which both proceed, the Eternal who is Self of the self and the Master of all<br \/>\nNature and all action, and not only the Master, but the origin and the spiritual support and scene of these workings of his own energy in Cosmos, and not only the origin and spiritual container, but the spiritual inhabitant in all forces, in all things and in all<br \/>\nbeings, and not only the inhabitant but, by the developments of this eternal energy of his being which we call Nature, himself<br \/>\nall energies and forces, all things and all beings. This Nature itself is of two kinds, one derived and inferior, another original<br \/>\nand supreme. There is a lower nature of the cosmic mechanism by association with which the soul in Prakriti lives in a certain<br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; ignorance born of Maya, <i>traigun&#61477;yamay&#299; m&#257;y&#257;<\/i>, conceives of itself <\/p>\n<p> as an ego of embodied mind and life, works under the power of<br \/>\nthe modes of Nature, thinks itself bound, suffering, limited by personality, chained to the obligation of birth and the wheel of<br \/>\naction, a thing of desires, transient, mortal, a slave of its own nature. Above this inferior power of existence there is a higher<br \/>\ndivine and spiritual nature of its own true being in which this soul is for ever a conscious portion of the Eternal and Divine,<br \/>\nblissful, free, superior to its mask of becoming, immortal, imperishable, a power of the Godhead. To rise by this higher nature to<br \/>\nthe Eternal through divine knowledge, love and works founded on a spiritual universality is the key of the complete spiritual<br \/>\nliberation. This much has been made clear; and we have to see now more in detail what farther considerations this change of<br \/>\nbeing involves and especially what is the difference between these two natures and how our action and our soul-status are affected<br \/>\nby the liberation. For that purpose the Gita enters largely into certain details of the highest knowledge which it had hitherto<br \/>\nkept in the background. Especially it dwells on the relation between Being and becoming, Soul and Nature, the action of the<br \/>\nthree gun<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#61477;<\/font>as, the highest liberation, the largest fullest self-giving &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 411<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\">of the human soul to the Divine Spirit. There is in all that it says in these closing six chapters much of the greatest importance,<br \/>\nbut it is the last thought with which it closes that is of supreme interest; for in it we shall find the central idea of its teaching, its<br \/>\ngreat word to the soul of man, its highest message. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">First, the whole of existence must be regarded as a field of<br \/>\nthe soul&#8217;s construction and action in the midst of Nature. The Gita explains the<br \/>\n<i>ks&#61477;etram<\/i>, field, by saying that it is this body <\/p>\n<p> which is called the field of the spirit, and in this body there<br \/>\n is someone who takes cognizance of the field, <i>ks&#61477;etraj\u00f1a<\/i>, the <\/p>\n<p> knower of Nature. It is evident, however, from the definitions<br \/>\nthat succeed that it is not the physical body alone which is the field, but all too that the body supports, the working of nature,<br \/>\nthe mentality, the natural action of the objectivity and subjectivity of our being.<sup><font size=\"2\">2<\/font><\/sup> This wider body too is only the individual<br \/>\nfield; there is a larger, a universal, a world-body, a world-field of the same Knower. For in each embodied creature there is this<br \/>\none Knower: in each existence he uses mainly and centrally this single outward result of the power of his nature which he has     formed for his habitation,<br \/>\n<i><font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#299;&#347;&#257;<\/font> v<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#257;<\/font>syam sarvam yat<br \/>\nki\u00f1ca,<\/i> makes each<br \/>\nseparate sustained knot of his mobile Energy the first base<br \/>\nand scope of his developing harmonies. In Nature he knows the world as it affects and is reflected by the consciousness in this<br \/>\none limited body; the world exists to us as it is seen in our single mind, \u2014 and in the end, even, this seemingly small embodied<br \/>\nconsciousness can so enlarge itself that it contains in itself the  <\/p>\n<p>whole universe, <i>&#257;tmani vi<font face=\"Times New Roman\">&#347;<\/font>va-dar&#347;anam<\/i>. But, physically, it is a microcosm in a macrocosm, and the macrocosm too, the large<br \/>\nworld too, is a body and field inhabited by the spiritual knower. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">That becomes evident when the Gita proceeds to state the<br \/>\ncharacter, nature, source, deformations, powers of this sensible embodiment of our being. We see then that it is the whole working of the lower Prakriti that is meant by the<br \/>\n<i>ks&#61477;etra<\/i>. That totality <\/p>\n<p>is the field of action of the embodied spirit here within us, the<br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">2<br \/>\nThe Upanishad speaks of a fivefold body or sheath of Nature, a physical, vital, mental, ideal and divine body; this may be regarded as the totality of the field,<br \/>\n<i>ks&#61477;etram<\/i>. <\/p>\n<p> &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/font><br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 412<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">field of which it takes cognizance. For a varied and detailed knowledge of all this world of Nature in its essential action as<br \/>\nseen from the spiritual view-point we are referred to the verses of the ancient seers, the seers of the Veda and Upanishads, in<br \/>\nwhich we get the inspired and intuitive account of these creations of the Spirit, and to the Brahma Sutras which will give us the<br \/>\nrational and philosophic analysis. The Gita contents itself with a brief practical statement of the lower nature of our being in the<br \/>\nterms of the Sankhya thinkers. First there is the indiscriminate unmanifest Energy; out of that has come the objective evolution of the five elemental states of matter; as also the subjective evolution of the senses, intelligence and ego; there are too five<br \/>\nobjects of the senses, or rather five different ways of sense cognizance of the world, powers evolved by the universal energy<br \/>\nin order to deal with all the forms of things she has created from the five elemental states assumed by her original objective<br \/>\nsubstance, \u2014 organic relations by which the ego endowed with intelligence and sense acts on the formations of the cosmos:<br \/>\nthis is the constitution of the kshetra. Then there is a general consciousness that first informs and then illumines the Energy<br \/>\nin its works; there is a faculty of that consciousness by which the Energy holds together the relations of objects; there is too a<br \/>\ncontinuity, a persistence of the subjective and objective relations of our consciousness with its objects. These are the necessary<br \/>\npowers of the field; all these are common and universal powers at once of the mental, vital and physical Nature. Pleasure and<br \/>\npain, liking and disliking are the principal deformations of the kshetra. From the Vedantic point of view we may say that pleasure and pain are the vital or sensational deformations given by the lower energy to the spontaneous Ananda or delight of<br \/>\nthe spirit when brought into contact with her workings. And we may say from the same view-point that liking and disliking<br \/>\nare the corresponding mental deformations given by her to the reactive Will of the spirit that determines its response to her<br \/>\ncontacts. These dualities are the positive and negative terms in which the ego soul of the lower nature enjoys the universe. The<br \/>\nnegative terms, pain, dislike, sorrow, repulsion and the rest, are &nbsp; <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 413<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\">perverse or at the best ignorantly reverse responses: the positive terms, liking, pleasure, joy, attraction, are ill-guided responses<br \/>\nor at the best insufficient and in character inferior to those of the true spiritual experience.<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">All these things taken together constitute the fundamental character of our first transactions with the world of Nature, but<br \/>\nit is evidently not the whole description of our being; it is our actuality but not the limit of our possibilities. There is something<br \/>\n beyond to be known, <i>j\u00f1eyam<\/i>, and it is when the knower of the field turns<br \/>\nfrom the field itself to learn of himself within it and of all that is behind<br \/>\nits appearances that real knowledge begins, <i>j\u00f1&#257;nam<\/i>, \u2014 the true knowledge of the field no less than of the<br \/>\nknower. That turning inward alone delivers from ignorance. For the farther we go inward, the more we seize on greater and fuller<br \/>\nrealities of things and grasp the complete truth both of God and the soul and of the world and its movements. Therefore,<br \/>\nsays the divine Teacher, it is the knowledge at once of the field  &nbsp; and its knower,<br \/>\n<i>ks&#61477;etra-ks&#61477;etraj\u00f1ayor<br \/>\nj\u00f1&#257;nam,<\/i> a united and even <\/p>\n<p>unified self-knowledge and world-knowledge, which is the real illumination and the only wisdom. For both soul and nature are<br \/>\nthe Brahman, but the true truth of the world of Nature can only be discovered by the liberated sage who possesses also the truth<br \/>\nof the spirit. One Brahman, one reality in Self and Nature is the object of all knowledge.<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">The Gita then tells us what is the spiritual knowledge or rather it tells us what are the conditions of knowledge, the<br \/>\nmarks, the signs of the man whose soul is turned towards the inner wisdom. These signs are the recognised and traditional<br \/>\ncharacteristics of the sage, \u2014 his strong turning away of the heart from attachment to outward and worldly things, his inward and brooding spirit, his steady mind and calm equality, the settled fixity of his thought and will upon the greatest inmost<br \/>\ntruths, upon the things that are real and eternal. First, there comes a certain moral condition, a sattwic government of the<br \/>\nnatural being. There is fixed in him a total absence of worldly pride and arrogance, a candid soul, a tolerant, long-suffering<br \/>\nand benignant heart, purity of mind and body, tranquil firmness &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 414<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">and steadfastness, self-control and a masterful government of the lower nature and the heart&#8217;s worship given to the Teacher,<br \/>\nwhether to the divine Teacher within or to the human Master in whom the divine Wisdom is embodied,<br \/>\n\u2014 for that is the sense<br \/>\nof the reverence given to the Guru. Then there is a nobler and freer attitude towards the outward world, an attitude of perfect<br \/>\ndetachment and equality, a firm removal of the natural being&#8217;s attraction to the objects of the senses and a radical freedom<br \/>\nfrom the claims of that constant clamorous ego-sense, ego-idea, ego-motive which tyrannises over the normal man. There is no<br \/>\nlonger any clinging to the attachment and absorption of family and home. There is instead of these vital and animal movements<br \/>\nan unattached will and sense and intelligence, a keen perception of the defective nature of the ordinary life of physical man with<br \/>\nits aimless and painful subjection to birth and death and disease and age, a constant equalness to all pleasant or unpleasant<br \/>\nhappenings, \u2014 for the soul is seated within and impervious to the shocks of external events,<br \/>\n\u2014 and a meditative mind turned<br \/>\ntowards solitude and away from the vain noise of crowds and the assemblies of men. Finally, there is a strong turn within towards<br \/>\nthe things that really matter, a philosophic perception of the true sense and large principles of existence, a tranquil continuity of<br \/>\ninner spiritual knowledge and light, the Yoga of an unswerving devotion, love of God, the heart&#8217;s deep and constant adoration<br \/>\nof the universal and eternal Presence. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">The one object to which the mind of spiritual knowledge<br \/>\nmust be turned is the Eternal by fixity in whom the soul clouded here and swathed in the mists of Nature recovers and enjoys<br \/>\nits native and original consciousness of immortality and transcendence. To be fixed on the transient, to be limited in the<br \/>\nphenomenon is to accept mortality; the constant truth in things that perish is that in them which is inward and immutable.<br \/>\nThe soul when it allows itself to be tyrannised over by the appearances of Nature, misses itself and goes whirling about<br \/>\nin the cycle of the births and deaths of its bodies. There, passionately following without end the mutations of personality<br \/>\nand its interests, it cannot draw back to the possession of its &nbsp; <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 415<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\">impersonal and unborn self-existence. To be able to do that is to find oneself and get back to one&#8217;s true being, that which assumes<br \/>\nthese births but does not perish with the perishing of its forms. To enjoy the eternity to which birth and life are only outward<br \/>\ncircumstances, is the soul&#8217;s true immortality and transcendence. That Eternal or that Eternity is the Brahman. Brahman is That<br \/>\nwhich is transcendent and That which is universal: it is the free spirit who supports in front the play of soul with nature<br \/>\nand assures behind their imperishable oneness; it is at once the mutable and the immutable, the All that is the One. In his highest<br \/>\nsupracosmic status Brahman is a transcendent Eternity without origin or change far above the phenomenal oppositions of existence and non-existence, persistence and transience between which the outward world moves. But once seen in the substance<br \/>\nand light of this eternity, the world also becomes other than it seems to the mind and senses; for then we see the universe no<br \/>\nlonger as a whirl of mind and life and matter or a mass of the determinations of energy and substance, but as no other than this<br \/>\neternal Brahman. A spirit who immeasurably fills and surrounds all this movement with himself<br \/>\n\u2014 for indeed the movement too<br \/>\nis himself \u2014 and who throws on all that is finite the splendour of his garment of infinity, a bodiless and million-bodied spirit<br \/>\nwhose hands of strength and feet of swiftness are on every side of us, whose heads and eyes and faces are those innumerable<br \/>\nvisages which we see wherever we turn, whose ear is everywhere listening to the silence of eternity and the music of the worlds,<br \/>\nis the universal Being in whose embrace we live. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">All relations of Soul and Nature are circumstances in the<br \/>\neternity of Brahman; sense and quality, their reflectors and constituents, are this supreme Soul&#8217;s devices for the presentation of<br \/>\nthe workings that his own energy in things constantly liberates into movement. He is himself beyond the limitation of the senses,<br \/>\nsees all things but not with the physical eye, hears all things but not with the physical ear, is aware of all things but not with the<br \/>\nlimiting mind \u2014 mind which represents but cannot truly know. Not determined by any qualities, he possesses and determines in<br \/>\nhis substance all qualities and enjoys this qualitative action of &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 416<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">his own Nature. He is attached to nothing, bound by nothing, fixed to nothing that he does; calm, he supports in a large and<br \/>\nimmortal freedom all the action and movement and passion of his universal Shakti. He becomes all that is in the universe;<br \/>\nthat which is in us is he and all that we experience outside ourselves is he. The inward and the outward, the far and the<br \/>\nnear, the moving and the unmoving, all this he is at once. He is the subtlety of the subtle which is beyond our knowledge, even<br \/>\nas he is the density of force and substance which offers itself to the grasp of our minds. He is indivisible and the One, but seems<br \/>\nto divide himself in forms and creatures and appears as all these separate existences. All things can get back in him, can return<br \/>\nin the Spirit to the indivisible unity of their self-existence. All is eternally born from him, upborne in his eternity, taken eternally<br \/>\nback into his oneness. He is the light of all lights and luminous beyond all the darkness of our ignorance. He is knowledge and<br \/>\nthe object of knowledge. The spiritual supramental knowledge that floods the illumined mind and transfigures it is this spirit<br \/>\nmanifesting himself in light to the force-obscured soul which he has put forth into the action of Nature. This eternal Light is in<br \/>\nthe heart of every being; it is he who is the secret knower of the  field,<br \/>\nks&#61477;etraj\u00f1a, and presides as the Lord in the heart of things  <\/p>\n<p>over this province and over all these kingdoms of his manifested becoming and action. When man sees this eternal and universal<br \/>\nGodhead within himself, when he becomes aware of the soul in all things and discovers the spirit in Nature, when he feels all the<br \/>\nuniverse as a wave mounting in this Eternity and all that is as the one existence, he puts on the light of Godhead and stands free<br \/>\nin the midst of the worlds of Nature. A divine knowledge and a perfect turning with adoration to this Divine is the secret of the<br \/>\ngreat spiritual liberation. Freedom, love and spiritual knowledge raise us from mortal nature to immortal being.<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">The Soul and Nature are only two aspects of the eternal Brahman, an apparent duality which founds the operations of<br \/>\nhis universal existence. The Soul is without origin and eternal, Nature too is without origin and eternal; but the modes<br \/>\nof Nature and the lower forms she assumes to our conscious &nbsp; <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 417<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\">experience have an origin in the transactions of these two entities. They come from her, wear by her the outward chain of<br \/>\ncause and effect, doing and the results of doing, force and its workings, all that is here transient and mutable. Constantly they<br \/>\nchange and the soul and Nature seem to change with them, but in themselves these two powers are eternal and always the<br \/>\nsame. Nature creates and acts, the Soul enjoys her creation and action; but in this inferior form of her action she turns this enjoyment into the obscure and petty figures of pain and pleasure. Forcibly the soul, the individual Purusha, is attracted by her<br \/>\nqualitative workings and this attraction of her qualities draws him constantly to births of all kinds in which he enjoys the<br \/>\nvariations and vicissitudes, the good and evil of birth in Nature. But this is only the outward experience of the soul mutable in<br \/>\nconception by identification with mutable Nature. Seated in this body is her and our Divinity, the supreme Self,<br \/>\nParamatman, the<br \/>\nsupreme Soul, the mighty Lord of Nature, who watches her action, sanctions her operations, upholds all she does, commands<br \/>\nher manifold creation, enjoys with his universal delight this play of her figures of his own being. That is the self-knowledge to<br \/>\nwhich we have to accustom our mentality before we can truly know ourselves as an eternal portion of the Eternal. Once that is<br \/>\nfixed, no matter how the soul in us may comport itself outwardly in its transactions with Nature, whatever it may seem to do or<br \/>\nhowever it may seem to assume this or that figure of personality and active force and embodied ego, it is in itself free, no longer<br \/>\nbound to birth because one through impersonality of self with the inner unborn spirit of existence. That impersonality is our<br \/>\nunion with the supreme egoless I of all that is in cosmos. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">This knowledge comes by an inner meditation through<br \/>\nwhich the eternal self becomes apparent to us in our own self-existence. Or it comes by the Yoga of the Sankhyas, the<br \/>\nseparation of the soul from nature. Or it comes by the Yoga of works in which the personal will is dissolved through the<br \/>\nopening up of our mind and heart and all our active forces to the Lord who assumes to himself the whole of our works<br \/>\nin nature. The spiritual knowledge may be awakened by the &nbsp; <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 418<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">urging of the spirit within us, its call to this or that Yoga, this or that way of oneness. Or it may come to us by hearing of the<br \/>\ntruth from others and the moulding of the mind into the sense of that to which it listens with faith and concentration. But<br \/>\nhowever arrived at, it carries us beyond death to immortality. Knowledge shows us high above the mutable transactions of<br \/>\nthe soul with the mortality of nature our highest Self as the supreme Lord of her actions, one and equal in all objects and<br \/>\ncreatures, not born in the taking up of a body, not subject to death in the perishing of all these bodies. That is the true seeing,<br \/>\nthe seeing of that in us which is eternal and immortal. As we perceive more and more this equal spirit in all things, we pass<br \/>\ninto that equality of the spirit; as we dwell more and more in this universal being, we become ourselves universal beings;<br \/>\nas we grow more and more aware of this eternal, we put on our own eternity and are for ever. We identify ourselves with<br \/>\nthe eternity of the self and no longer with the limitation and distress of our mental and physical ignorance. Then we see that<br \/>\nall our works are an evolution and operation of Nature and our real self not the executive doer, but the free witness and<br \/>\nlord and unattached enjoyer of the action. All this surface of cosmic movement is a diverse becoming of natural existences<br \/>\nin the one eternal Being, all is extended, manifested, rolled out by the universal Energy from the seeds of her Idea deep in his<br \/>\nexistence; but the spirit even though it takes up and enjoys her workings in this body of ours, is not affected by its mortality<br \/>\nbecause it is eternal beyond birth and death, is not limited by the personalities which it multiply assumes in her because it is<br \/>\nthe one supreme self of all these personalities, is not changed by the mutations of quality because it is itself undetermined by <\/p>\n<p>quality, does not act even in action, <i>kart&#257;ram api akart&#257;ram<\/i>, because it supports natural action in a perfect spiritual freedom<br \/>\nfrom its effects, is the originator indeed of all activities, but in no way changed or affected by the play of its Nature. As the<br \/>\nall-pervading ether is not affected or changed by the multiple forms it assumes, but remains always the same pure subtle original<br \/>\nsubstance, even so this spirit when it has done and become all &nbsp; <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 419<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><\/font><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<p><span lang=\"en-gb\">possible things, remains through it all the same pure immutable subtle infinite essence. That is the supreme status of the soul, <\/p>\n<p><i>par&#257; gatih&#61477;&#61477;,<\/i> that is the divine being and nature, <i>madbh&#257;va<\/i>, and <\/p>\n<p>whoever arrives at spiritual knowledge, rises to that supreme immortality of the Eternal.<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"text-indent: 25pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">This Brahman, this eternal and spiritual knower of the field of his own natural becoming, this Nature, his perpetual energy,<br \/>\nwhich converts herself into that field, this immortality of the soul in mortal nature,<br \/>\n\u2014 these things together make the whole<br \/>\nreality of our existence. The spirit within, when we turn to it, illumines the entire field of Nature with its own truth in all the<br \/>\nsplendour of its rays. In the light of that sun of knowledge the eye of knowledge opens in us and we live in that truth and no longer<br \/>\nin this ignorance. Then we perceive that our limitation to our present mental and physical nature was an error of the darkness,<br \/>\nthen we are liberated from the law of the lower Prakriti, the law of the mind and body, then we attain to the supreme nature of the<br \/>\nspirit. That splendid and lofty change is the last, the divine and infinite becoming, the putting off of mortal nature, the putting<br \/>\non of an immortal existence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"text-indent: 0pt;line-height: 150%;margin-left: 0pt;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0\">\n\t\t\t<span lang=\"en-gb\"><font size=\"2\">Page &#8211; 420<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PART II &nbsp; THE SUPREME SECRET &nbsp; &nbsp; XIII &nbsp; The Field and its Knower 1 &nbsp; THE GITA in its last six chapters, in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19-essays-on-the-gita","wpcat-47-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238","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=2238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}