Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/258

250 void they have created, they are able to hear the divine call,*O soul that findest thyself in this transient and un- happy world, turn and put thy delight in Me,” anityam asukham lokam imam prapya bhajaswa mam.

Still, in this movement, the equality consists only . in an equal recoil from all that constitutes the world ; and it arrives at indifference and aloofness, but does not include that power to accept equally all the touches of the world pleasurable or painful without attachment or disturbance which is a necessary element in the dis- cipline of the Gita. Therefore, even if we begin with the tamasic recoil,—which is not at all necessary,—it can only be as a.first incitement to a greater endeavour, not as a permanent pessimism. The real discipline be- gins with the movement to mastery over these things from which we were first inclined merely to flee. It is here that the possibility of a kind of rajasic equality comes in, which is at its lowest the strong nature’s pride in self-mastery, self-control, superiority to passion and weakness ; but the Stoic ideal seizes upon this point of departure and makes it the key to an entire liberation of the soul from subjection to all weakness of its lower nature. As the tamasic inward recoil is a generalisation of Nature’s principle of jugupsa or self-protection from suffering, so the rajasic upward movement is a general- isation of Nature’s other principle of the acceptance of struggle and eftort and the innate impulse of life tow- ards mastery and victory ; but it transfers the battle to the field where alone complete victory is possible. In- stead of a struggle for scattered outward aims and tran- sient successes, it proposes nothing less than the con- quest of Nature and the world itself by a spiritual strug-