Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/144

136 everyone is made to do action helplessly by the modes born of Prakriti.”” The.strong perception of the great cosmic action and the eternal activity and power of the cosmic energy which was so much emphasised after- wards by the teaching of the Tantric Shaktas who even made Prakriti or Shakti superior to Purusha, is a very remarkable feature of the Gita. Although here an undertone, it is still strong enough, coupled with “what we might call the theistic and devotional elements of its thought, to bring in that activism which so strongly modifies in its scheme of Yoga the quietistic tenden- cies of the old metaphysical Vedanta. Man embodied in the natural world cannot cease from action, not for a moment, not for a second ; his very existence here is an action ; the whole universe is an act of God, mere living even is His movement.

Our physical life, its maintenance, its continuance is a journey, a pilgrimage of the body, sharira-ydtrd, and that cannot be effected without action. But even if a man could leave his body unmaintained, otiose, if he could stand still always like a tree or sit inert like a stone, tisthat:, that vegetable or material immobility would not save him from the hands of Nature ; he would notbe liberated from her workings. For it is not our physical movements and activities alone which are meant by works, by karma; our mental existence alsois a great complex action, it is even the greater and more important part of the works of the. unresting energy,—subjective cause and determinant of the physi- cal. We have gained nothing if we repress the effect but retain the activity of the subjective cause. The objects of sense are only an occasion for our bondage,