Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/158

150 creatures. For all the working of Prakriti is in its true nature a sacrifice, yajna, with the Divine Being as the enjoyer of all energisms and works and sacrifice and the great Lord of all existenccs, bhokidram yajnatapasam sarvabluita-mahesweram, and to know this Divine all- pervading and established in sacrifice, sarvagatam yajne pratisthitam, is the true, the Vedic knowledge.

But he may be known in an inferior action through the devas, the gods, the powers of the divine Soul in Nature and in the eternal interaction of these powers and the soul of man, mutually giving and receiving, mutually helping, increasing, raising each others’ work- ings and satisfaction, a commerce in which man rises towards a growing fitness for the supreme good. He recognises that his life is a part of this divine action in Nature and not a thing separate and to be held and pursued for its own sake. He records his enjoyments and the satisfaction of his desires as the fruit of saeri- fice and the gift of the gods in their divine universal workings and he ceases to pursue them in the false and evil spirit of sinful egoistic selfishness as if they were a good to be seized from life by his own unaided strength without return and without thankfulness. As this spirit increases in him, he subordinates his desires, becomes satisfied with sacrifice as the law of life and works and is content with whatever remains over from the sacri- fice, giving up all the rest freely as an offering g the great and beneficent interchange between his life and the world-life. Whoever goes contrary to this law of action and pursues works and enjoyment for his own isolated perscnal self-interest, lives in vain ; he misses the true meaning and aim and utility of living and the