Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/235

Rh To attain to the divine birth,—a divinising new birth of the soul into a higher consciousness,—and to do divine works both as a means towards that before it is attained and as an expression of it after it is attained, is then all the Karmayoga of the Gita. The Gita does not try to define works by any outward signs through which it can be recognisable to an external gaze, mea- surable by the criticisvz of the world; it deliberately renounces even the ordinary ethical distinctions by which men seek to guide themselves in the light of the human reason. The signs by which it distinguishes divine works are all profoundly intimate and subjective; the stamp by which they are known is invisible, spiritual, supra-ethical.

They are recognizable only by the light of the soul from which they come. For, it says “ what is action and what is inaction, as to, this even the sages are per- plexed and deluded,” because, judging by practical, social, ethical, intellectual standards, they discriminate by accidentals and do not go to the root of the matter ; 1 will declare to thee that action by the knowledge of which thou shalt be released from all ills. One has to understand about action as well as ‘to under- stand about wrong action and about inaction one has to understand ; thick and tangled is the way of works.” Action in the world is like a deep forest, gahana, through which man goes stumbling as