But the Gita accepts this stoic discipline, this her- oic philosophy, on the same condition thatit accepts the tamasic recoil,—it must have above it the sattwic vision of knowledge, at its root the aim at self-realisation and in its steps the ascent to the divine nature. A stoic discipline which merely crushed down the common affections of our human nature,—although less danger- ous than a tamasic weariness of life, unfruitful pessi- mism and sterile inertia, because it would at least in- crease the power and self-mastery of the soul,—would still be no unmixed good, since it might lead to insens- ibility and an inhuman isolation without giving the true spiritual release. The Stoic equality is justified as an element in the discipline of the Gita because it can be associated with and can help to the realisation of the free immutable self in the mobile human being, param drishtwad, and to status in that new self-consciousness, eshd brahmi sthitih. ‘‘Awakening by the understanding to the Highest which is beyond even the discerning mind, put force on the self by the self to make it firm and still, and slay this enemy who is so hard to assail, Desire.” Both the tamasic recoil of escape and the rajasic povement of struggle and victory are only justified when they look beyond themselves through the sattwic principle to the self-knowledge which legitimises both the recoil and the struggle.
The pure philosopher, the thinker, the born sage not only relies upon the sattwic principle in him as his ultimate justification, but uses it from the beginning as his instrument of self-mastery. He starts from the sattwic equality. He too observes the transitoriness of the material and external world and its failure to satisfy
