Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/169

Rh but the discovery of God, the worship and seeking of the Divine and the Infinite through a constantly enlarg- ing sacrifice culminating in a perfect selfgiving founded, on a perfect self-knowledge is that to which the experi- ence of life is at last intended to lead.

‘But the individual being begins with ignorance and persists long in ignorance. Acutely conscious of himself he sees the ego as the cause and whole meaning of life and not the Divine. He sees himself as the doer of - works and does not see that all the workings of existence including his own internal and external activities are the workings of one universal Nature and nothing else. He sees himself as the enjoyer of works and imagines that for him all exists and him Nature ought to satisfy and obey his personal will ; he does not see that she is not at all concerned with satisfying him or at all careful of his will, but obeys a higher universal will and seeks to satis- | fy a Godhead who transcends her and her works and creations ; his finite being, his will and his satisfactions are hers and not his, and she offers them at every moment as a sacrifice to the Divine of whose purpose in her she makes all this the covert instrumentation. Because of this ignorance whose seal is egoism, the’ creature ignores the law of sacrifice and seeks to take all he can for himself and gives only what Nature by her internal and external compulsion forces him to give. He can really take nothing except what she allows him to receive a3 his portion, what the divine Powers within her yield to his desire. The egoistic soul in a world of sacrifice is as if a thief or robber who takes what these Powers.bring to him.and has no mind to give in return. He misses the true meaning of life and, since he does

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