Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/273

Rh living and acting in Me. O Arjuna, he who sees all equally everywhere as himself, whether it be happiness or suffering, I hold him to be the supreme Yogin.” That is the old Vedantic knowledge of the Upanishads which the Gita holds up constantly before us;but it is its superiority to other later formulations of it that it turns persistently this knowledge into a great practical philo- sophy of divine living. Always it insists on the relation between this knowledge of oneness and Karmayoga, and therefore on the knowledge of oneness as the basis of a liberated action in the warld. Whenever it speaks of knowledge, it turns at once to speak of equality which is its result ; whenever it speaks of equality, it turns to speak too of the knowledge which is its basis.% The equality it enjoins does not begin and end in a static condition of the soul useful only for self- liberation ; it is always a basis of works. The peace of the Brahman in theliberated soul is the foundation; the large, free, equal, worldwide action of the Isord in the liberated nature radiates the power which proceeds from that peace; these two made one synthesise divine works and God- knowledge.

We see at once what a profound extension we get here for the ideas which otherwise the Gita has in common with other systems of philosophic, ethical or religious living. Endurance, philosophic indifference, resignation are, we have said, the foundation of three 'kinds of equality; but the Gita’s truth of knowledge not only gathers them all up together, but gives them an infinitely profound, a magnificently ample significance. The Stoic knowledge is that of the soul’'s power of self- mastery by fortitude, an equality attained by a struggle

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