Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/179

Rh This then is the sense of the Gita’s doctrine of sacrifice. Its full significance depends on the idea of the Purushottama which as yet is not developed,—we find it set forth clearly only much later in the eighteen chapters,—and therefore we have had to anticipate, at whatever cost of infidelity to the progressive method of the Gita’s exposition, that central teaching. At pre- sent the Teacher simply gives a hint, merely adum- brates this supreme presence of the Purushottama and his relation to the immobile Self in whom it is our first business,our pressing spiritual need to find our poise of perfect peace and equality by attainment to the Brahmic condition. He speaks as yet not at all in set terms of the Purushottama, but of himself,— 17, Krishna, Narayana, the Avatar, the God in man who is also the Lord in the universe incarnated in the figure of the divine charioteer of Kurukshetra. “In the Self, ~ then in Me”, is the formula he gives, implying that the transcendence of the individual personality by seeing it as a “becoming” in the impersonal self-existent Being is simply a.means of arriving at that great secret im- personal Personality, which is thus silent, calm and up. lifted above Nature in the impersonal Being, but also present and active in Nature in all these million becom- ings. Losing our lower individual personality in the Im-. personal, we arrive finally at union with that supreme Personality which is not separate and individual, but yet assumes all individualities. Transcending the lower nature of the three gunas and seating the soul in the