Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/174

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ESSAYS ON THE GITA

existence is seen and felt to be only one of these and its workings are seen and felt to be those of Nature, not of our real self which is the silent, impersonal unity. The ego claimed them as its own doings and therefore we thought them ours; but the ego is now dead and hence- forth they are no longer ours, but Nature’s. We have ‘achieved by the slaying of ego impersonality in our béing and consciousness ; we have achieved by the renuncia- tion of desire impersonality in the works of our nature. We are free not only in inaction, but in action; our liberty does not depend on a physical and temperamen- . tal immobility and vacancy, nor dowe fall from freedom directly we act. Even in a full current of natural action the impersonal soul in us remains calm, still, and free.

The liberation given by this perfect impersonality is real, is complete, is indispensable ; but is it the last word, the end of the whole matter ? All life, all world- existence, we have said, is the sacrifice offered by Nature to the Purusha, the one and secret soul in Nature, in whom all her workings take place ; butits real sense is obscured in us by ego, by desire, by our limited, active, multiple personality. We have risen out of ego and desire and limiled personality and by impersonality, its great corrective, we have found the impersonal Godhead; we have identified our being with the one self and soul in whom all exist. The sacrifice of works continues, conducted not by ourselves any longer, but by Nature,— Nature operating through the finite part of our being, mind, senses, body,— but in our infinite being. But to whom then is this sacrifice offered and ‘with what object? For the impersonal has no activity and no desires, no