The realisation in the flower and the leaf, and in the forms of beauty, is the next in the sequence. It is through our feeling for the beautiful in nature and in art that we realise harmony in the universe, and the pleasure of its correspondence with the innate desire in ourselves.
There remains but one link more to be added to the chain before the ends are riveted; and that is the master link. The other self, the divine self, the Lord of all, says the Upanishad, encircled all; bright, incorporeal, scathless, pure, untouched by evil. He, the Seer, the wise, the self existent, the omnipresent—he disposed all things rightly for eternal years.
At the close of Sādhanā we find the philosophy of the great renunciation put into its simplest terms. We give up all our worldly possessions, our sensual ties, our affections, powers, and honours, one by one. There is an end of getting and having. This ego, the small self, may desire to appropriate to itself a little of the uncontainable wealth of the universe. To what end? Can the house detach a piece of surrounding air or a stretch of overarching sky and say. This is mine, and mine only? As well may the soul try to take for itself what is free element, or the individual try to detain the universal. For everything in the universe, says the Upanishad, is enveloped by God. Each living thing is part of the commonwealth of
