Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/306

298 but himself calm, indifferent, untouched, motionless, pure, one with all beings in their self, not one with Nature and her workings. This self, though by its pre- sence authorizing the works of Nature, though by its all- pervading existence supporting and consenting” to them, prabhu vibhu, does not itself create works or the state of the doer or the joining of the works to their fruit, na kartr'itvam na karmdni sri'jati na karma-phala-sanyogam, but only watches nature in the Kshara working out these things. svabhdvas tu pravartate ; it accepts neither the sin nor the virtue of the living creatures born into this birth as its own, nddatte kasyachit pdpam na chaiva suky'itam; it preserves its spiritual purity. It is the ego bewildered by ignorance which attributes these things to itself, be- cause it assumes the responsibility of the doer and choses to figure as that and not as the instrument of a greater power, which is all that it really is; ajudnendvy:- tam jninam tena muhyantt jantavah. By going back into the impersonal self the soul gets back into a greater self knowledge and is liberated from the bondage of the works of nature, untouched by her gunas, free from her shows of good and evil, suffering and happiness. The natural being, the mind, body, life, still remain, Nature still works ; but the inner being does not identify himself with these, nor while the gunas play in the natural being, does he rejoice or grieve. He is the calm and free im- mutable self observing all,

Is this the last state, the utmost possibility, the highest secret? It cannot be, since this is a mixed or- divided, not a perfectly harmonised status, a double, not a unified being, a freedom in the soul, an imperfection in the nature. It can only be a stage. What then is there