Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/243

and oppressive. The liberated soul looks beyond these conflicting standards ; he sees simply what the supreme Self demands from him as needful for the maintenance or for the bringing forward of the evolving Dharma. He has no personal ends to serve, no personal loves and hatreds to satisfy, no rigidly tixed standard of action which opposes its rock-line to the flexible advancing march of the progress of the human race or stands up defiant against the call of the Infinite. He has no per- sonal enemies to be conquered or slain, but sees only men who have been brought up against him by circum- stances and the will in things to help by their opposition the march of destiny. Against them he can have no wrath or hatred ; for wrath and hatred are foreign to the divine nature. The Asura’s desire to break and slay what opposes him, the Rakshasa’s grim lust of slaughter are impossible to his calm and peace and his all-embracing sympathy and understanding. He has no wish to in- jure, but on the contrary a universal friendliness and compassion, maitrah karuna eva cha: but this compassion is that of a divine soul overlooking men, embracing all other souls in himself, not the shrinking of the heart and the nerves and the flesh which is the ordinary human form of pity : nor does he attach a supreme importance to the life of the body, but looks beyond to the life of the soul and attaches to the other only an in- strumental value. He will not hasten to slaughter and strife, but if war comes in the wave of the Dharma, he will accept it with a large equality and a perfect under- standing and sympathy for those whose power and plea- sure of domination he has to break and whose joy of triumphant life he has to destroy.