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688
GITA-RAHASYA OR KARMA-YOGA
the world on which we live along with all created beings is sometime or other going to be destroyed, why should we destroy our own happiness for the sake of future mortal generations ?"; or, those persons again who are not satisfied with the solution, that philanthropy and other mental tendencies are the inherent tendencies of the visible, nonpermanent, world of Action, and who wish to go to the root of these tendencies, cannot but turn to the eternal philosophy of the Absolute Self. And that is why Green has started his book on Ethics with the doctrine that the Ātman which comes to Know the perceptible world, must be different from that perceptible world; and that is also why Kant has first dealt with Pure Reason and then written his Critique of Practical Reason or of Ethics. Although the statement that man is born for the happiness of himself or of many, may appear tempting at first sight, it is not really correct. If one considers for a moment whether those noble souls, who are prepared to sacrifice their lives only for the sake of Truth, do so only with the motive that future generations should have more and more of physical happiness, one is forced to admit that man must be having something as his highest ideal in this. world, which (ideal) is more important than the transient material happiness of himself or of others. Which is that ideal? Those who have Realised the permanent, eternal, Element in the shape of the Ātman, which is clothed in the Name-d and Form-ed, that is, visible, though perishable, Appearance of the Body and the Cosmos, by personal Realisation, reply to this question by saying that the first duty of every intelligent person in this world is to Realise the eternal, superior, pure, immortal, and all-pervasive form of his own Ātman, and to be merged in it. That man, who has in this. way Realised the Unity of the Atman pervading all created: things, and every atom of whose body and organs is saturated with this Knowledge, does not stop to contemplate on the question whether the world is or is not transient, but automatically takes to the work of universal benefit, and becomes the. protagonist of Truth. Because, he has fully Realised the true nature of the Eternal Truth, which is untouched by past, present, or future. This metaphysically perfect state of a man