Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/129

Rh and freedom. Therefore it is the Yoga of the buddhi, the intelligence, that is first enjoined on Arjuna. Toact with right intelligence and, therefore, a right will, fixed in the One, aware of the one self in all and acting out of its equal serenity, not running about in different directions under the thousand impulses of our super- ficial mental self, is the Yoga of - the intelligent will.

There are, says the Gita, two types of intelligence in the human being. The first is concentrated, poised, one, homogeneous, directed singly towards the Truth ; unity is its characteristic, concentrated fixity is its very being. In the other there is no single will, no unitied intelligence, but.only an endless numnber of ideas many- branching, coursing about, that is to say, in this or that direction in pursuit of the desires which are offered to it by life and by the environment. Buddhi, the word used, means, properly speaking, the mental power of understanding but it is evidently used by the Gita in a large philosophic scnse for the whole action of the discriminating and deciding mind which determines both the direction and use of our thoughts and the direction and use of our acts; thought, intelligence, judgment, perceptive choice and aim are allincluded in its function- ing: for the characteristic of the unified intelligence is not only concentration of the mind that knows, but especially concentration of the mind that decides and persistsin the decision, zyavasaya, while the sign of the dissipated inteliigence is not so much even discursive- ness of the ideas and perceptions us discursiveness ot the ai ms ar.d desires, thercfore of the will. Will, then, and knowledge are the two furctions of the Buddhi. The urified intelligent will is fixed in the enlightened soul, itis

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