Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/162

154 priated action; there is only the divine Purusha acting by the divine Prakriti in His own being, offering every- thing into the fire of His self-conscious, cosmic energy, while the knowledge and the possession of His divine existence and consciousness by the soul unified with Him is the goal of all this God-directed movement and activity. To know that and to live and act in this unify- ing consciousness is to be free.

But all even of the Yogins have not attained to this knowledge. “ Some Yogins follow after the sacrifice which is of the gods; others offer the sacrifice by the sacrifice itself into the DBrahman-fire”. The former conceive of the Divine in various forms and powers and seek him by various means, ordihances, dharmas, laws or, as we might say, settled rites of action, self- discipline, consecrated works ; for the latter, those who already know, the simple fact of sacrifice, of offering whatever work to the Divine itself, of casting all their activities into the unified divine consciousness and energy, is their one means, their one dharma. The means of sacrifice are various; the offerings are of many kinds. There is the psychological sacrifice of self-control and self-discipline which leads to the higher self-possession and self-knowledge. “ Some offer their senses into the fires of control, others offer the objects of sense into the fires of sense, and others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force into the fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge.” There is, that is to say, the discipline which receives the objects of sense perception without allowing the mind to be disturbed or affected by its sense-activities, the senses themselves beccming pure fires of sacrifice; there is the