{"id":3620,"date":"2013-07-13T01:50:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3620"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:50:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:00","slug":"27-the-supreme-divine-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn\/27-the-supreme-divine-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","title":{"rendered":"-27_The Supreme Divine.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nIII<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nTHE SUPREME DIVINE* <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nA<\/font>LREADY WHAT<\/font> has been said in the seventh chapter provides us
\nwith 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,
\nnot by a total exclusion of our cosmic nature, but by a higher, a spiritual fulfilment of all that we now essentially are. Only there is to be
\na change from our mortal imperfection to a divine perfection of being.
\nThe first idea on which this possibility is founded, is the conception
\nof the individual soul in man as in its eternal essence and its original
\npower a ray of the supreme Soul and Godhead and here a veiled
\nmanifestation of him, a being of his being, a consciousness of his consciousness, a nature of his nature, but in the obscurity of this mental
\nand physical existence self-forgetful of its source, its reality, its true
\ncharacter. The second idea is that of the double nature of the Soul in
\nmanifestation,\u2014the original nature in which it is one with its own
\ntrue spiritual being, and the derived in which it is subject to the confusions of egoism and ignorance. The latter has to be cast away and
\nthe spiritual has to be inwardly recovered, fulfilled, made dynamic
\nand active. Through an inner self-fulfilment, the opening of a new
\nstatus, our birth into a new power, we return to the nature of the
\nSpirit and re-become a portion of the Godhead from whom we have
\ndescended into this mortal figure of being. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThere is here at once a departure from the general contemporary
\nmind of Indian thought, a less negating attitude, a greater affirmation.
\nIn place of its obsessing idea of a self-annulment of Nature we get the
\nglimpse of an ampler solution, the principle of a self-fulfilment in
\ndivine Nature. There is, even, at least a foreshadowing of the later
\ndevelopments of the religions of Bhakti. Our first experience of what
\nis beyond our normal status, concealed behind the egoistic being in
\nwhich we live, is still for the Gita the calm of a vast impersonal immutable <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

\n
\n Page-255<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nself in whose equality and oneness we lose our petty egoistic
\npersonality and cast off in its tranquil purity all our narrow motives of
\ndesire and passion. But our second completer vision reveals to us a
\nliving Infinite, a divine immeasurable Being from whom all that
\nwe are proceeds and to which all that we are belongs, self and
\nnature, world and spirit. When we are one with him in self and
\nspirit, we do not lose ourselves but rather recover our true selves in
\nhim poised in the supremacy of this Infinite. And this is done at one
\nand the same time by three simultaneous movements,\u2014an integral
\nself-finding through works founded in his and our spiritual nature,
\nan integral self-becoming through knowledge of the Divine Being in
\nwhom all exists and who is all, and\u2014most sovereign and decisive movement of all\u2014an integral self-giving through love and devotion of our
\nwhole being to this All and this Supreme, attracted to the Master of
\nour works, to the Inhabitant of our hearts, to the continent of all our
\nconscious existence. To him who is the source of all that we are, we
\ngive all that we are. Our persistent consecration turns into knowledge of him all our knowing and into light of his power all our action.
\nThe passion of love in our self-giving carries us up to him and opens
\nthe mystery of his deepest heart of being. Love completes the triple
\ncord of the sacrifice, perfects the triune key of the highest secret,
\nuttamam rahasyam.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAn integral knowledge in our self-giving is the first condition of its
\neffective force. And therefore we have first of all to know this Purusha in all the powers and principles of his divine existence, tattvatah,
\n<\/i>in the whole harmony of it, in its eternal essence and living process.
\nBut to the ancient thought all the value of this knowledge, tattvaj\u00f1āna,<\/i> lay in its power for release out of our mortal birth into the immortality of a supreme existence. The Gita, therefore, proceeds next
\nto show how this liberation too in the highest degree is a final outcome
\nof its own movement of spiritual self-fulfilment. The knowledge of
\nthe Purushottama, it says in effect, is the perfect knowledge of the
\nBrahman. Those who have resort to Me as their refuge, mām āśritya,
\n<\/i>their divine light, their deliverer, receiver and harbourer of their
\nsouls,\u2014those who turn to Me in their spiritual effort towards release
\nfrom age and death, from the mortal being and its limitations, says
\nKrishna, come to know that Brahman and all the integrality of the
\nspiritual nature and the entirety of Karma. And because they know
\nMe and know at the same time the material and the divine nature of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-256<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nbeing and the truth of the Master <\/b> of sacrifice, they keep knowledge
\nof Me also in the critical moment of their departure from physical
\nexistence and have at that moment their whole consciousness in union
\nwith Me. Therefore they attain to Me. No longer bound to the mortal
\nexistence, they reach the very highest status of the Divine quite as
\neffectively as those who lose their separate personality in the impersonal and immutable Brahman. Thus the Gita closes this important
\nand decisive seventh chapter. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nHere we have certain expressions which give us in their brief
\nsum the chief essential truths of the manifestation of the supreme
\nDivine in the cosmos. All the originative and effective aspects of it
\nare there, all that concerns the soul in its return to integral self-knowledge. First there is that Brahman, tad
\nbrahma; adhyātma,<\/i> second, the principle of the self in Nature; adhibbūta<\/i> and adhidaiva
\n<\/i>next, the objective phenomenon and subjective phenomenon of being; adhiyaj\u00f1a<\/i> last, the secret of the cosmic principle of works and
\nsacrifice. I, the Purushottama (mām viduh),<\/i> says in effect Krishna,
\nI who am above all these things, must yet be sought and known
\nthrough all together and by means of their relations,\u2014that is the
\nOnly complete way for the human consciousness which is seeking its
\npath back towards Me. But these terms in themselves are not at first
\nquite clear or at least they are open to different interpretations, they
\nhave to be made precise in their connotation, and Arjuna the disciple
\nat once asks for their elucidation. Krishna answers very briefly,\u2014nowhere does the Gita linger very long upon any purely metaphysical
\nexplanation; it gives only so much and in such a way as will make
\ntheir truth just seizable for the soul to proceed on to experience.
\nBut that Brahman, a phrase which in the Upanishads is more than
\nonce used for the self-existent as opposed to the phenomenal being,
\nthe Gita intends, it appears, the immutable self-existence which is
\nthe highest self-expression of the Divine and on whose unalterable
\neternity all the rest, all that moves and evolves, is founded, aksaram paramam.<\/i> By adhyātma<\/i> it means svabhāva,<\/i> the spiritual way and law
\nof being of the soul in the supreme Nature. Karma, it says, is the
\nname given to the creative impulse and energy, visargah,<\/i> which
\nlooses out things from this first essential self-becoming, this swabhava,
\nand effects, creates, works out under its influence the cosmic becoming
\nof existences in Prakriti. By adhibhūta is to<\/i> be understood all the
\nresult of mutable becoming, ksaro bhāvah.<\/i> By adhidaiva<\/i> is intended <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-257<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe Purusha, the soul in Nature, the subjective being who observes
\nand enjoys as the object of his consciousness all that is this mutable
\nbecoming of his essential existence worked out here by Karma in
\nNature. By adhiyaj\u00f1a,<\/i> the Lord of works and sacrifice, I mean, says
\nKrishna, myself, the Divine, the Godhead, the Purushottama here
\nsecret in the body of all these embodied existences. All that is, therefore, falls within this formula. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Gita immediately proceeds from this brief statement to work
\nout the idea of the final release by knowledge which it has suggested
\nin the last verse of the preceding chapter. It will return indeed upon its
\nthought hereafter to give such ulterior light as is needed for action and
\ninner realisation, and we may wait till then for a fuller knowledge
\nof all that these terms indicate. But before we proceed farther, it is
\nnecessary to bring out as much of the connection between these
\nthings as we are justified in understanding from this passage itself
\nand from what has gone before. For here is indicated the Gita’s idea of
\nthe process of the cosmos. First there is the Brahman, the highest immutable self-existent being which all existences are behind the play
\nof cosmic Nature in time and space and causality, deśa-kāla-nimitta..
\n<\/i>For by that self-existence alone time and space and causality are able
\nto exist, and without that unchanging support omnipresent, yet indivisible they could not proceed to their divisions and results and
\nmeasures. But of itself the immutable Brahman does nothing, causes
\nnothing, determines nothing; it is impartial, equal, all-supporting, but
\ndoes not select or originate. What then originates, what determines,
\nwhat gives the divine impulsion of the Supreme? what is it that governs Karma and actively unrolls the cosmic becoming in Time out of
\nthe eternal being? It is Nature as Swabhava. The Supreme, the Godhead, the Purushottama is there and supports on his eternal immutability the action of his higher spiritual shakti. He displays the divine
\nBeing, Consciousness, Will or Power, yayedam dhāryate jagat:<\/i> that is
\nthe Para Prakriti. The self-awareness of the Spirit in this supreme
\nNature perceives in the light of self-knowledge the dynamic idea, the
\nauthentic truth of whatever he separates in his own being and expresses it in the swabhava, the spiritual nature of the Jiva. The inherent truth and principle of the self of each Jiva, that which works
\nitself out in manifestation, the essential divine nature in all which
\nremains constant behind all conversions, perversions, reversions, that
\nis the swabhava. All that is in the swabhava is loosed out into cosmic <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-258<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nNature for her to do what she can with it under the inner eye of the
\nPurushottama. Out of the constant svabhāva,<\/i> out of the essential nature and self-principle of being of each becoming, she creates the
\nvaried mutations by which she strives to express it, unrolls all her
\nchanges in name and form, in time and space and those successions of
\ncondition developed one out of the other in time and space which we
\ncall causality, nimitta.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAll this bringing out and continual change from state to state is
\nKarma, is action of Nature, is the energy of Prakriti, the worker, the
\ngoddess of processes. It is first a loosing forth of the svabhāva<\/i> into its
\ncreative action, visargah.<\/i> The creation is of existences in the becoming,
\nbhūta-karah,<\/i> and of all that they subjectively or otherwise become, bhāva-karah.<\/i> All taken together, it is a constant birth of things
\nin Time, udbhava,<\/i> of which the creative energy of Karma is the
\nprinciple. All this mutable becoming emerges by a combination of
\nthe powers and energies of Nature, adhibhūta,<\/i> which constitutes the
\nworld and is the object of the soul’s consciousness. In it all the soul
\nis the enjoying and observing Deity in Nature; the divine powers of
\nmind and will and sense, all the powers of its conscious being by
\nwhich it reflects this working of Prakriti are its godheads, adhidaiva.
\n<\/i>This soul in Nature is therefore the ksara purusa,<\/i> it is the mutable
\nsoul, the eternal activity of the Godhead: the same soul in the Brahman drawn back from her is the aksara
\npurusa,<\/i> the immutable self,
\nthe eternal silence of the Godhead. But in the form and body of the
\nmutable being inhabits the supreme Godhead. Possessing at once the
\ncalm of the immutable existence and the enjoyment of the mutable
\naction there dwells in man the Purushottama. He is not only remote
\nfrom 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
\nreceives the works of Nature as a sacrifice and awaits the conscious
\nself-giving of the human soul: but always even in the human creature’s ignorance and egoism he is the Lord of his swabhava and the
\nMaster of all his works, who presides over the law of Prakriti and
\nKarma. From him the soul came forth into the play of Nature’s mutations; to him the soul returns through immutable self-existence to
\nthe highest status of the Divine, param dhāma.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nMan, born into the world, revolves between world and world <\/b> in
\nthe action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-259<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nAll that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that
\nhe is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to
\nbe. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by any means
\na cessation. The body is abandoned, but the soul goes on its way,
\ntyaktvā kalevaram.<\/i> Much then depends on what he is at the critical
\nmoment of his departure. For whatever form of becoming his consciousness is fixed on at the time of death and has been full of that
\nalways in its mind and thought before death, to that form he must
\nattain, since the Prakriti by Karma works out the soul’s thoughts and
\nenergies and that is in real fact her whole business. Therefore, if the
\nsoul in the human being desires to attain to the status of the Purushottama, there are two necessities, two conditions which must be
\nsatisfied before that can be possible. He must have moulded towards
\nthat ideal his whole inner life in his earthly living; and he must be
\nfaithful to his aspiration and will in his departing. "Whoever leaves
\nhis body and departs" says Krishna "remembering Me at his time of
\nend, comes to my bhāva,"<\/i> that of the Purushottama, my status of
\nbeing. He is united with the original being of the Divine and that
\nis the ultimate becoming of the soul, paro bhāvah,<\/i> the last result of
\nKarma in its return upon itself and towards its source. The soul which
\nhas followed the play of cosmic evolution that veils here its essential
\nspiritual nature, its original form of becoming, svabhāva,<\/i> and has
\npassed through all these other ways of becoming of its consciousness
\nwhich are only its phenomena, tam tam bhāvam,<\/i> returns to that essential 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
\nof the return a highest becoming, mad-bhāvam.<\/i> In a certain sense
\nwe may say that it becomes God, since it unites itself with nature of
\nthe Divine in a last transformation of its own phenomenal nature and
\nexistence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Gita here lays a great stress on the thought and state of mind
\nat the time of death, a stress which will with difficulty be understood
\nif we do not recognise what may be called the self-creative power of
\nthe consciousness. What the thought, the inner regard, the faith, śraddhā,<\/i> settles itself upon with a complete and definite insistence,
\ninto that our inner being tends to change. This tendency becomes a
\ndecisive force when we go to those higher spiritual and self-evolved
\nexperiences which are less dependent on external things than is our <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-260<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nordinary psychology, enslaved as that is to outward Nature. There we
\ncan see ourselves steadily becoming that on which we keep our minds
\nfixed and to which we constantly aspire. Therefore there any lapse
\nof the thought, any infidelity of the memory means always a retardation of the change or some fall in its process and a going back towards
\nwhat we were before,\u2014at least so long as we have not substantially
\nand irrevocably fixed our new becoming. When we have done that,
\nwhen we have made it normal to our experience, the memory of it remains self-existingly because that now is the natural form of our
\nconsciousness. In the critical moment of passing from the mortal plane
\nof living, the importance of our then state of consciousness becomes
\nevident. 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
\nhere is not on a par with the indulgences and facilities of popular
\nreligion; it has nothing in common with the crude fancies that make
\nthe absolution and last unction of the priest, an edifying "Christian"
\ndeath after an unedifying profane life or the precaution or accident
\nof a death in sacred Benares or holy Ganges a sufficient machinery of
\nsalvation. The divine subjective becoming on which the mind has to
\nbe fixed firmly in the moment of the physical death, yam smaran bhāvam tyajati ante kalevaram,<\/i> must have been one into which the
\nsoul was at each moment growing inwardly during the physical life,
\nsadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitah.<\/i> "Therefore," says the divine Teacher, "at all
\ntimes remember Me and fight; for if thy mind and thy understanding
\nare always fixed on and given up to Me, mayi arpita-mano-buddhih,<\/i> to
\nMe thou shalt surely come. For it is by thinking always of him with
\na consciousness united with him in an undeviating Yoga of constant
\npractice that one comes to the divine and supreme Purusha." <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nWe arrive here at the first description of this supreme Purusha,\u2014
\nthe Godhead who is even more and greater than the Immutable and
\nto whom the Gita gives subsequently the name of Purushottama. He
\ntoo in his timeless eternity is immutable and far beyond all this manifestation and here in Time there dawn on us only faint glimpses of
\nhis being conveyed through many varied symbols and disguises,
\navyakto aksarah.<\/i> Still he is not merely a featureless or indiscernible
\nexistence, anirdeśyam;<\/i> or he is indiscernible only because he is subtler
\nthan the last subtlety of which the mind is aware and because the
\nform of the Divine is beyond our thought, anor anīyāmsam acintyarūpam.<\/i><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-261<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n This supreme Soul and Self is the Seer, the Ancient of Days
\nand in his eternal self-vision and wisdom the Master and Ruler of all
\nexistence who sets in their place in his being all things that are,
\nkavim purānam anuśāsitāram sarvasya dhātāram.<\/i> This supreme Soul
\nis the immutable self-existent Brahman of whom the Veda-knowers
\nspeak, and this is that into which the doers of askesis enter when they
\nhave passed beyond the affections of the mind of mortality and for
\nthe desire of which they practise the control of the bodily passions.1<\/sup>
\nThat eternal reality is the highest step, place, foot-hold of being
\n(padam<\/i>); therefore is it the supreme goal of the soul’s movement in
\nTime, itself no movement but a status original, sempiternal and
\nsupreme, paramam sthānam ādyam.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Gita describes the last state of the mind of the Yogin in
\nwhich he passes from life through death to this supreme divine existence. A motionless mind, a soul armed with the strength of Yoga, a
\nunion with God in bhakti,\u2014the union by love is not here superseded
\nby the featureless unification through knowledge, it remains to the
\nend a part of the supreme force of the Yoga,\u2014and the life-force
\nentirely drawn up and set between the brows in the seat of mystic
\nvision. All the doors of the sense are closed, the mind is shut in into
\nthe heart, the life-force taken up out of its diffused movement into the
\nhead, the intelligence concentrated in the utterance of the sacred
\nsyllable OM and is conceptive thought in the remembrance of the
\nsupreme Godhead, mām anusmaran.<\/i> That is the established Yogic way of
\ngoing, a last offering up of the whole being to the Eternal, the Transcendent.
\nBut still that is only a process; the essential condition is the constant
\nundeviating memory of the Divine in life, even in action and battle\u2014mām<\/i>
\nanusmara yudhya<\/i> ca\u2014and the turning of the
\nwhole act of living into an uninterrupted Yoga, nitya-yoga.<\/i> Whoever
\ndoes that, finds Me easy to attain, says the Godhead; he is the great
\nsoul who reaches the supreme perfection. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe condition to which the soul arrives when it thus departs from
\nlife is supracosmic. The highest heavens of the cosmic plan are subject to a return to rebirth; but there is no rebirth imposed on the
\nsoul that departs to the Purushottama. Therefore whatever fruit can
\nbe had from the aspiration of knowledge to the indefinable Brahman,
\nis acquired also by this other and comprehensive aspiration through
\nknowledge, works and love to the self-existent Godhead who is the <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1<\/sup>The language here is taken bodily from the Upanishads.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-262<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nMaster of works and the Friend of mankind and of all beings. To
\nknow him so and so to seek him does not bind to rebirth or to the
\nchain of Karma; the soul can satisfy its desire to escape permanently
\nfrom the transient and painful condition of our mortal being. And
\nthe Gita here, in order to make more precise to the mind this circling
\nround of births and the escape from it, adopts the ancient theory of the
\ncosmic cycles which became a fixed part of Indian cosmological notions. There is an eternal cycle of alternating periods of cosmic manifestation and non-manifestation, each period called respectively a
\nday and a night of the creator Brahma, each of equal length in Time,
\nthe long aeon of his working which endures for a thousand ages, the
\nlong aeon of his sleep of another thousand silent ages. At the coming
\nof the Day all manifestations are born into being out of the unmanifest, at the coming of the Night all vanish or are dissolved into it.
\nThus all these existences alternate helplessly in the cycle of becoming
\nand non-becoming; they come into the becoming again and again, bhūtvā bhūtvā,<\/i> and they go back constantly into the unmanifest. But
\nthis unmanifest is not the original divinity of the Being; there is another status of his existence,
\nbhavo ‘nyah,<\/i> a supracosmic unmanifest
\nbeyond this cosmic non-manifestation, which is eternally self-seated,
\nis not an opposite of this cosmic status of manifestation but far above
\nand unlike it, chanegless, eternal, not forced to perish with the perishing of all these existences. "He is called the unmanifest immutable,
\nhim 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
\ndhāma."<\/i> For the soul attaining to it has escaped out of the cycle of
\ncosmic manifestation and non-manifestation. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nWhether we entertain or we dismiss this cosmological notion,\u2014
\nwhich depends on the value we are inclined to assign to the knowledge of "the knowers of day and night,"\u2014the important thing is the
\nturn that Gita gives to it. One might easily imagine that this eternally
\nunmanifested Being whose status seems to have nothing to do with
\nthe manifestation or the non-manifestation, must be the ever undefined and indefinable Absolute, and the proper way to reach him
\nis to get rid of all that we have become in the manifestation, not
\nto carry up to it our whole inner consciousness in a combined concentration of the mind’s knowledge, the heart’s love, the Yogic will,
\nthe vital life-force. Especially, bhakti seems inapplicable to the Absolute who is void of every relation, avyavahārya.<\/i> "But" insists the Gita, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-263<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n\u2014although this condition is supracosmic and although it is eternally
\nunmanifest,\u2014still "that supreme Purusha has to he won by a bhakti
\nwhich turns to him alone in whom all beings exist and by whom all
\nthis world has been extended in space." In other words, the supreme
\nPurusha is not an entirely relationless Absolute aloof from our illusions, but he is the Seer, Creator and Ruler of the worlds, kavim
\nanuśāsitāram, dhātāram,<\/i> and it is by knowing and by loving him as
\nthe One and the All, vasudevah sea-yam Hi,<\/i> that we ought by a union
\nwith him of our whole conscious being in all things, all energies, all
\nactions to seek the supreme consummation, the perfect perfection, the
\nabsolute release. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThen there comes a more curious thought which the Gita has
\nadopted from the mystics of the early Vedanta. It gives the different
\ntimes at which the Yogin has to leave his body according as he wills
\nto seek rebirth or to avoid it. Fire and light and smoke or mist, the
\nday and the night, the bright fortnight of the lunar month and the
\ndark, the northern solstice and the southern, these are the opposites.
\nBy the first in each pair the knowers of the Brahman go to the Brahman; but by the second the Yogin reaches the "lunar light" and returns subsequently to human birth. These are the bright and the
\ndark paths, called the path of the gods and the path of the fathers
\nin the Upanishads, and the Yogin who knows them is not misled
\ninto any error. Whatever psycho-physical fact or else symbolism there
\nmay be behind this notions\u2014it comes down from the age of the mystics who saw in every physical thing an effective symbol of the
\npsychological and who traced everywhere an interaction and a sort
\nof identity of the outward with the inward, light and knowledge, the
\nfiery principle and the spiritual energy,\u2014we need observe only the
\nturn by which the Gita closes the passage: "Therefore at all times be
\nin Yoga." <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nFor that is after all the essential, to make the whole being one
\nwith the Divine, so entirely and in all ways as to be naturally and
\nconstantly fixed in union, and thus to make all living, not only
\nthought and meditation, but action, labour, battle, a remembering <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n2 <\/sup>Yogic experience shows in fact that there is a real psycho-physical truth,
\nnot indeed absolute in its application, behind this idea, viz;<\/i> that in the inner
\nstruggle between the powers of the Light and the powers of the Darkness, the
\nformer tend to have a natural prevalence in the bright periods of the day or the
\nyear, the latter in the dark periods, and this balance may last until the fundamental victory is won.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-264<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof God. "Remember Me and fight," means not to lose the everpresent thought of the Eternal for one single moment in the clash of
\nthe temporal which normally absorbs our minds, and that seems sufficiently difficult, almost impossible. It is entirely possible indeed only
\nif the other conditions are satisfied. If we have become in our consciousness one self with all, one self which is always to our thought
\nthe Divine, and even our eyes and our other senses see and sense the
\nDivine Being everywhere so that it is impossible for us at any time at
\nall to feel or think of anything as that merely which the unenlightened sense perceives, but only as the Godhead at once concealed and
\nmanifested in that form, and if our will is one in consciousness with
\na supreme will and every act of will, of mind, of body is felt to come
\nfrom it, to be its movement, instinct with it or identical, then what
\nthe Gita demands can be integrally done. The remembrance of the
\nDivine Being becomes no longer an intermittent act of the mind, but
\nthe natural condition of our activities and in a way the very substance
\nof the consciousness. The Jiva has become possessed of its right and
\nnatural, its spiritual relation to the Purushottama and all our life is a
\nYoga, an accomplished and yet an eternally self-accomplishing oneness. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n Page-265<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

III   THE SUPREME DIVINE*   ALREADY WHAT has been said in the seventh chapter provides us with the starting-point of our new and fuller…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","wpcat-90-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620","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=3620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}