Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/142

134 so that there seems to be in this teaching a radical inconsistency. Not only so; for some kind of work no doubt may persist for a while, the minimum, tle most inoffensive ; but here is a work wholly inconsistent with knowledge, with serenity and with the mnotionless peace of the self-delighted soul,—a work terrible, even monst- rous, a bloody strite, a ruthless battle, a giant massacre. Yet itis this that is enjoined, this that it is sought to justity by the teaching of inner peace and desireless equality and status in the Brahman! Here thenis an unrcconciled contradiction. Arjuna cumplains that he has been given a contradictory and confusing doctrine, not the clear, strenuously single road by which the human intelligence can move straight and trenchantly to the supreme good. It isin answer to this objection that the Gita begins at once to develop more clearly its positive and imperative doctrine ot Works.

The teacher first makes a distinction between the two means of salvation on which in this world men can concentrate separately, the Yoga of knowledge, the Yoga of works, the one implying, it is usually supposed, renunciation of works as an obstacle to salvation, the other accepting works as a means of salvation. He does not yet insist strongly on any fusion of them, on any reconciliation of the thought that divides them, but begins by showing that the renunciation of the Sankhyas, the physical. renunciation, Sannyasa, is neither the only way, nor at all the better way. Naishkarinya, a calm voidness trom works, is no doubt that to which the soul, the Purusha has to attain; for it is Prakriti which does the work and the soul has to rise above involution in the activities of the being and