Its strongest power does not amount to mastery. Itcan- not be relied upon to resist the strong wave of circums- tance or of other nature which either overbears or modi- fies or mixes up with it or at the best subtly deceives and circumvents it. Even the most sattwic will is so over- borne or mixed up with or circumvented by the rajasic and tamasic gunas as to be only in part sattwic, and thence arises that sufficiently stroag element of self- deception, of a quite involuntary and even innocent make-believe and hiding from oneself which the merciless eye of the psychologist detects even in the best human action.. When we think that we are acting quite freely, powers are concealed behind our actionwhich escape the most careful self-introspection ; when we think that we are free from ego, the ego is there,concealed, in the mind of the saint as in that of the sinher. When our eyes are really opened on our action and its springs,we are abliged to say with the Gita “gund guneshu vartante,” “jt was the modes of Nature that were acting upon the modes.”
For this reason everr a high predominance of the sattwic principle does not constitute freedom. For, as the Gita points out, the sattwa binds, as much as the other gunas, and binds just in the same way, by desire, by ego ; a nobler desire, a purer ego,—but so long as in any form these two hold the being, there is no freedom. The man of virtue, of knowledge, has his ego of the virtuous man, his ego of knowledge, and it is that sattwic ego which he seeks to satisfy ; for his own sake he seeks virtue and knowledge. Ounly when we cease to satisfy the ego, to think and to will from the ego, the limited “I” in us, then is there a real freedom. In other
