Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/231

Rh every tendency in man has its collective as well as its individual aspect, because those who follow one way are ‘naturally drawn together into spiritual companionship and unity, he establishes the sangha, the fellowship and union of those whom his personality and his teaching unite. In Vaishnavism there is the same trio, bhdgavat, bhakta, bhagavin,—the bhdgavat, which is the law of the Vaishnava dispensation of adoration and love, the bhakta representing the fellowship of those in-whom that lawis manifest, bkagavin, the divine Lover and Beloved in whose being and nature the divine law of love is founded’ and fulfilsitself. The Avatar representsthis third element, the divine personality, nature and being who is the soul of the dharma and the sangha, informs them with him- self, keeps them living and draws men towards the feli- .city and the liberation.

In the teaching of the Gita, which is more catholic and complex than other specialised teachings and disci- ~ plines, these things assume a larger meaning. For the unity here is the all-embracing Vedantic unity by which the soul sees all initself and itself in all and makes itself one with all beings. The dharma is therefore the taking up of all human relations into a higher divine meaning ; starting from the established ethical, social and reli- gious rule which binds together the whole community in which the God-seeker lives, it lifts it up by informing it with the Brahmic consciousness ; the law it gives is the law of oneness, of equality, of liberated, desireless, God-governed action, of God-knowledge and self-know- ledge enlightening and drawing to itself all the nature’ and all the action, drawing it towards divine being and divine consciousness, and of God-love as the supreme power and crown of the knowledge and the action. The