Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/287

Rh beyond good and evil, are above their duality even as the Godhead is above it. But the unripe mind, seizing on this truth without rising from the lower consciousness where if is not practically valid, will simply make it a convenient excuse for indulging its Asuric propensities, denying the distinction between good and evifaltogether and falling by self-indulgence deeper into the morass of perdition, sarvi-jndna-vimidhin nashidn achetasah. So too with this truth of the determinism of Nature ; it will be mis-seen and misused, as those misuse it who declare that a man is what his nature has made him and cannot do otherwise than as his nature compels him. Itis true in a sense, but not in the sense which is attached to it, not in the sense that the ego-self can claim irresponsibility and impunity for itself in its works ; for it has will and it has desire and so longas. it acts according to its will and desire, even though that be its nature, it must bear the reactions of its Karma. It is in a net, if you will, a snare which may well seem perplexing, illogical, unjust, terrible to its present experience, to its limited self-knowledge, but a snare of its own choice, a net of its own weaving.

The Gita says, indeed, “All existences follow their nature and what shall coercing it avail?” which seems, if we take it by itself, a hopelessly absolute assertion of the omnipotence of Nature over the soul ; “even the man of knowledge acts according to his own nature.” And on this it founds the injunction to follow faithfully in our action the law of our nature, “Better is one’s own law of works, swadharma, though in itself faulty, if it is well wrought out, than an alien law; death in one’s own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an