Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: Albemarle Street London

Page 80

CHANGING VALUES Middle Way which is not so much between the opposites as a strait and narrow way, “narrow as a razor's edge between yet above them both. If an act is right, it is neither too much this nor that ; if it is not right it has slipped down the steeps of illusion on one side or the other. And all the while the winds of doubt are blowing, cold and keen. ...
The road is long, and the pilgrim soon grows weary. The accumulated Karma of the past, which in its own inexorable time will offer itself for cancelling, is appalling in the true sense of the word. Habits of thought and act and motive must be halted and reversed; all values changed. We must “cease to do evil” before we can “ learn to do good”. Then, when the trchd of our acts is purified, we must“ cleanse the heart”, till the 'I' which is not I has learnt that it is of the Essence of Pure Mind.
According to Yoga, the Indian science of spiritual development, there are many branches of the Way, of which three may be mentioned in particular. Gnana Yoga is the way of Knowlcdge, an ever-incrcasing understanding as the awakening Faculty of Buddhi, the intuition, illumines the mind. Bhakti Yoga is the way of devotion, of love, of utter self-sacrifice in the service of the Beloved Ideal. The third is Karma Yoga, and this, it would seem, is the Dharma, the present duty or right path for the West. This is the way of Action, of the right performance of all duty, however high, however small. Yet Gnana and Karma Yoga are complementary. On the Middle Way action and vision go hand in hand, and that is why the teachings of the Gita alternate between knowledge and action in a way so baffling to thc purely intellectual man. Purified and disciplined action opens the inner eye and grants the vision of the highest that the disciple is yet
able of sceing. But that vision must not remain a mere private ecstasy. It must be translated into action, and so built into the personality before another range of vision can present itself to the inner eye and the way be opened for yet another cyclic advance. The burden of Karma is heavy. All alike have heavy debts 1 The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna Prem.
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