Page:A Collection of Esoteric Writings.djvu/250

236 At last he came to have analysed the whole man into nothing. At this point a kind of melancholy came over him, which had something of terror in it. In this state of mind he continued for some years, until he read a copy of Wordsworth's poems full of sympathy for nature's objects and human life. "From them," he says, "I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources ot happiness, when all the greater evils of life should have been removed." This feebly indicates what the chela must experience when he has determined to renounce all old associates, and is called to live for a bright future on a higher plane. This transition stage was more or less the position of Arjuna before the discourse in question. He was about to engage in a war of extermination against foes led by some of his nearest relations, and he not unnaturally shrank from the thought of killing kindered and friends. We are each of us called upon to kill out all our passions and desires, not that they are all necessarily evil in themselves, bnt that their influence must be annihilated before we can establish ourselves on the higher planes. The position of Arjuna is intended to typify that of a chela, who is called upon to face the Dweller on the Threshold. As the Guru prepares his chela for the trials of initiation by philosophical teaching, so at this critical point Krishna proeeeds to instruct Arjuna.

The Bhagavad Gita may be looked upon as a discource addressed by a Guru to a chela who has fully determined upon the renunciation of all worldly desires and aspirations, but yet feels a certain despondency, caused by the apparent blankness of his existence. The book contains eighteen chapters, all intimately connected. Each chapter describes a particular phase or aspect of human life. The student should bear this in mind in reading the book, and endeavour to work out the correspondences. He will find what appear to be necessary repetitions. These were a necessity of the method adopted by Vyasa, his intention being to represent nature in different ways, as seen from the standpoints of the various philosophical schools, which flourished in India.