Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/128

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ESSAYS ON THE GITA

of at this moment, you the Aryan fighter; the world’s chief hero ? But this is the great fear which besieges humanity, its fear of sin and saffering now and hereafter, its fear in a world of whose true nature it is ignorant, of a God whose true being also it has not seen and whose cosmic purpose it does not understand. My Yoga will deliver you from the great fear and even a little of it will bring deliverance. When you have once set out on this path, you will, find that no step is lost; every least movement will be a gain; you will find there no obstacle that can baulk you of your advance. A bold and absolute promise and one to which the fearful and - hesitating mind beset and stumbling in all its paths cannot easily lend an assured trust ; nor is the large and full truth of it apparent unless with these first words of the message of the Giti we read also the last, ““Abandon all laws of conduct and take refuge in Me alone;l will deliver you from all sin and evil ; do not grieve,”

But it is not with this deep and moving word of God to man, but rather with the first necessary rays of light on the path, directed not like that to the soul, but to the intellect, that the exposition begins. Nbtthe Friend and Lover of man speaks first, but the guide and teacher who has to remove from him his ignorance of his true self and of the nature of the world and of the springs of his own action. For it is because he acts ignorantly, with a wrong intelligence and therefore a wrong will in these matters, that man is or seems to be bound by his works ; otherwise works are no bondage to the free soul. It is because of this wrong intelligence that he has hope and fear, wrath and grief and transient joy; otherwise works are possible with a perfect serenity