Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/333

Rh It consists in a power of process, Prakriti, which is the interplay of three fundamental modes of its working, three qualities, gunas. And what is the medium ? 1t is the comnplex system of existence created by a graded evolution of the instruments ot Prakriti, which, as they are reflected here in the soul’s experience of her work- ings, we may call successively the reason and the ego, the mind, the senses and the elements of material energy which are the basis of its forms. These are all mechanical, a complex engine of Nature, yanfra; and from our modern point of view we may say that they are all involved in material energy and manifest them- selves in it as the soul in Nature becomes aware of itself by an upward evolution of each instrument, but in the inverse crder to that which we have stated, matter first, thep sensation, then mind, next reason, last spiritual consciousness. Reason, which is at first only preoccupied with the workings of Nature, may ‘then detect their ultimate character, may see them only as a play of the three gunas in which the soul is entangled, may dis- tinguish between the soul and these workings; then the sou) gets a chance of disentangling itself and of going back to its original freedom and immutable existence. In Vedantic language, it sees the spirit, the being; it ceases to identify itself with the instruments and ‘work- ings of Nature, with its becoming ; it identifies itself with its true Self and being and recovers its immutable spiritual self-existence. Itis then from this spiritual self-existence, according to the Gita, that it can freely and as the master of its being, the Ishwara, support the action of its becoming.

Looking only at the psychological facts on which these philosophical distinctions are founded,—