Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/318

310 personal will and the mental seeking which is the parent of desire. He has conquered his ' lower self, reached the perfect calm in which his highest self is manifest to him, that highest self always concentrated in its own being, samdhita, in Samadhi, not only in the trance of the inward-drawn consciousness, but always, in the waking state of the mind as well, in exposure to the causes of desire and of the disturbance of calm, to grief and pleasure, heat and cold, honour and disgrace, all the dualities, gitoshna-sukhaduhkheshu tathd méindpamd- nayoh. This higheriself is the Akshara, kitastha, which stands above the changes and the perturbations of the natural being ; and the Yogin is said to be in Yoga with it when he also is like it, kdtastha, when he is superior to all appearances and mutations, when he is satisfied with self-knowledge, when he is equal-minded to all things and happenings and persons.

But this Yoga is after all no easy thing to acquire, as Arjuna indeed shortly afterwards suggests, for the restless mind is always liable to be pulled down from these heights by the attacks of outward things and to fall back into the strong control of grief and passion and inequality. Therefore, it would seem, the Gita proceeds to give us in addition to its general method of knowledge and works a special process of Rajayogic meditation also, a powerful method of practice, abhydsa, a strong way to the complete control of the mind and all its workings. In this process the Yogin is directed to practise continually union with the Self so that that may become his normal consciousness. He is to sit apart and alone, with all desire and idea of passion