Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/173

and there is the way of works, and the Gita combines them in a firm synthesis. The way of knowledge is to turn the understanding, the intelligent will away from its dewnward absorption in the workings of the mind and the scnses and upward to the self, the Purusha or Brahman ; it is to make it dwell always on the one idea of the one Self and not in the many-branching concep- tions of the mind and many-streaming impulses of desire. Taken by itself this path would seem to lead to the complete renunciation of works, to an immobile pas- sivity and to the severance of the soul from Nature. But in reality such an absolute renunciation, passivity and severance are impossible. Purusha and Prakriti are twin principles of being which cannot be severed, and so ‘long as we remain in Nature, our workings in - Nature must continue, even though they may take a different form or rather a different sense from those of the unenlightened soul. The real renunciation— for renunciation, sanmnyasa, there must be—is not the fleeing from works, but the slaying of ego and desire. The way is to abandon attachment to the fruit of works even while doing them, and the way is to recognise Nature as the agent and leave her to do her works and to livein the soul as the witness and sustainer, watching and sustaining her, but not attached either to her actions or their fruits. The ego, the limited and troubled person- ality is then quieted and merged in the consciousness of the one impersonal Self, while the works of Nature continue to our vision to operate through all these ““becomings” or existences who are now seen by us as living and actinge and moving, under her impulsion ‘entirely, in this one infinite Being; our own finite