This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
42
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BHAGAVAḌ-GĪṬĀ

wicked in their nature, they may transfer their own individualities to those powers, and subsist in them until the time of cosmic pralaya. These would then become formidable powers in the cosmos, and would interfere to a considerable extent in the affairs of mankind, and even prove far more troublesome, so far as humanity is concerned, than the genuine powers themselves, on account of the association of a human individuality with one of these powers. It was for this reason that all great religions have inculcated the great truth, that man should not, for the sake of gain or profit, or for the acquisition of any object, however tempting for the time being, worship any such powers, but should wholly devote his attention and worship to the one true Logos accepted by every true and great religion in the world, as that alone can lead a man safely along the true moral path, and enable him to rise higher and higher, until he lives in it as an immortal being, as the manifested Ishvara of the cosmos, and as the source, if necessary, of spiritual enlightenment to generations to come. It is towards this end, which may be hastened in certain cases, that all evolution is tending. The one great power, that is as it were guiding the whole course of evolution, leading nature on towards its goal, so to speak, is the light of the Logos. The Logos is, as it were, the pattern, and emanating from it is this light of life. It goes forth into the world with this pattern imprinted upon it, and, after going through the whole