Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/303

Rh knowledge of our self ; for our true self is always some- thing more than this and something beyond it.

For, beyond the soul manifest in Nature and bound up with its action, is another status of the Purusha, which is entirely a status and not at all an action; that is the silent, the immutable, the all-pervading, self- existent, motionless Self, sarvagatam achalam, immutable Being and not Becoming, the Akshara. In the kshara the Soul isinvolved in the action of Nature, therefore it is concentrated, loses itself, as it were, in the moments of Time, in the waves of the Becoming, not really, but only in appearance and’by following the current: in the Akshara Nature falls to silence and rest in the Soul, therefore it becomes aware of its immutable being. The Kshara is the Sankhya’s Purusha when it reflects the varied workings of the gunas of Nature, and it knows itself as the' Saguna, the Personal ; the Akshara is the Sankhya’s Purusha. when these gunas have fallen into a state of equilibrium, and it knows itself as the Nirguna, the Impersonal. Therefore while the Kshara, associating itself with the work of Prakriti, seems to be the doer of works, kartd, the Akshara dissociated from all the workings of the gunas is the inactive non-doer, akartd, and witness. The soul of man, when it takes the poise of the Kshara, identifies itself with the play of personality and readily clouds its self-knowledge with the ego-sense in Nature, so that he thinks of him- self as the ego doer of works; when it takes its poise in the Akshara, it identifies itself with the Impersonal and is aware of Nature as the doer and itself as the inactive witnessing Self, akartdvam. The mind of man has to tend to one of these poises, it takes them as alternatives ;