Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/252

244 higher region where we find ourselves breathing a larger and purer air. The Stoic poise, the philosophic poise of the soul are only its first and second steps of ascen- sion out of the whirl of the passions and the tossings of desire to a serenity and bliss, not of the Gods, but of the Divine himself in his supreme self-mastery. The Stoic equality, making character its pivot, founds itself upon self - mastery by austgre endurance; the happier and serener philosophic equality prefers self-mastery by knowledge, by detachment, by a high intellectualindiffer- ence seated above the.disturbances to which our nature is prone, uddsinavad dsinah,as the Gita expresses it ; there is also the religious or Christian equality whichis a per- petual kneeling or a prostrate resignation and submission to the will of God. These are the three steps and means towards divine peace, heroic endurance, sage indifference, pious resignation, fitikshd, uddsinatd, namas or mnati. The Gita takes them all in its large synthetic manner and weaves them into its upward soul-movement, but it gives to each a profounder root, a larger outlook, a more universal and transcendent significance. For to each it gives the values of the spirit, its power of spiritual being beyond the strain of character, beyond the difficult poise of the understanding, beyond the stress of the emotions.

The ordinary human soul takes a pleasure in the customary disturbances of its mature-life ; it is because it has this pleasure and because, having it, it gives a sanction to the troubled play of the lower nature that the play continues perpetually ; for the Prakriti does noth- ing except for the pleasure and with the sanction of its lover and enjoyer, the Purusha. We do not recognize