Karmayogi

Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 39

to say they it is quite as sacred for its
Un
purposes is to deify selfishness. Our lives are useful only in proportion as they help others by example or action or tend to fulfil God in man. It is not true that my esse is sacred, my safety is sacred, or my self-interest is sacred. This if anything is "a fatal doctrine." We do not deny that sacrifice cannot be an end to itself; no one is so foolish se to advance any such proposition. But when the Bengalee argues that the individual must demand adequate value for every asoritime he makes on the national altar, it shows a complete inability to appreciate the nature of sacrifice and the laws of politics. If we had acted in this Baniys spirit, we should never have got beyond the point at which we stod four years ago. It is by unhesitating, wholehearted and princely sacrifices that nations affect their liberty. It has always been so in the past and the laws of nature have not altered and will not alter to suit the calculating prudence of individuals. A great man is valuable to the nation and he should guard himself but only so far as he can do so without demoralizing his followers, ceasing from the battle or abdicsting his right to leadership. He should never forget that he leads and the nation looks up to him as a fountain of steadfastness, unselfish service and courage. Expediency means national expediency, not individual expediency. Even so it must be the larger expediency which makes great sacrifices and faces great risks to secure great ende. Statesmanship is hot summed up in the words prudence and caution, it has a place for strength and
courage.
Expediency and Nationalism.
We have met the argaments of the Bengales at some length because we hold the teaching in this article to be perilous in its tendencies. There is plenty of selfishness, prudence, hesita ting calculation in the country, plenty of fear and demoralisation in the older generation. There is no need to take thought and labour for increasing it. Steadfastness, courage, a calm and high spirit are what we now need, wisdom to plan and sot, not prudence to abstain
action. Nodalism tempered by expediendy is like the French despotism tempered by epigrams. The epigrams un lerained the despotism, the expediency is likely to andermine and in sme qirers is visibly undermining the Nations'ism. Moe incalculable
KARMAYOGIN.
Injury" is likely to be done by teaching of this kind at this juncture than by the removal of any great man, however preminent and inspiring his greatness
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YOGA AND HUMAN EVOLUTION
The whole burden of our human progress has been an attempt to escape from the bondage to the body and the vital impulses. According to the scientific theory the human being began as the animal, developed through the akvage and consummated in the modern civilized man. The Indian theory is different. God created the world by developing the many out of the One and the material out of the spiritual. From the beginning the objects which compose the physical world were arranged by Him in their causes, developed under the law of their being in the subtle or psychical world and then minifested in the gross or material world. From karana to sukshma, from sukshma to sthula, and back again, that is the formula. Once manifested in matter the world proceeds by laws which do not change, from age to age, by a regular succession, until it is all withdrawn hack again into the source from which the psychical and the psychical is invol it came. The material goes back into red in its cause or seed. It is again put out when the period of expansion recurs and runs its course on similar lines but with different details till the
period of contraction is due. Hinduism regards the world as a recurrent series. of phenomens of which the terms very but the general formula abides the same. The theory is only acceptable if we recog nize the truth of the conception formulated in the Vishnu Purana of the world As vijnana-vijrimbhiteni, devlopments of ideas in the Universal Intelligence which lies at the root of all material phenomens and by its hdwelling force shapes the growth of the tree and the qvolution of the clod as well as the development of living creatures and the progress of mankind. Whichever theory we take. the laws of the material world are not affected. From aedn to aeon, from kalps to kalpa Narayan manifests himself in an ever-evolving humanity which grow and bontractions towards its destined in experience by a series of expansions self realisation in God. That evolution is not denied by the Hindu theory of rugs. Each seo in the Hindu system his is wine fm rat and spiritual
evalation and the decline of the dharma or established law of conduct from, the Bags to the Kaliyuga is not in reality a delenoration but a detrition of the outward forms and props of spirituality in order to prepare a deeper spiritual intensity within the heart. In each Kaliyuga mankind gains something in essential spirituality. Whether we take the modern scientifio or the ancient Hindu standpoint the progress of hunanity is a fact. The wheel of Brahma rotates for ever but it does not turn in the same place; its rotations carry it forward.
The animal is distingu'shed from man by its enslavement to the body and the vital impulses. Ashanaya mrityu, Hunger who is Death, evolved the material world from of old, and it is the physical hunger and desire and the vital sensations and primary emotions connected with the Prana thst seek to feed upon the world in the beast and in the savage man who approximates to the condition of the beast. Out of this animal state according to European Science, man rises working out the tiger and the ape by intellectual and moral development in the social condition. If the beast has to be worked out, it is obvious that the body and the prans must be conquered, and as that conquest is more or less complete, the man is more or less evolved. The progress of mankind has been placed by many predominatingly in the development of the human intelleet, and intellectual development is no doubt essential to self-conquest. The animal and the savge are bound by the body because the idea's of the animal or the ideas of the savage are mostly limited to those sensations and associations which are connected with the body. The development of intellect enables a man to find the deeper sel within and partially replace what our philosophy calls the dehatmak buddhi, the sum of ideas and sensations which make us think of the body as ourself, by another set of ideas which reach. beyond the body, and, existing for their own delight and substituting intellectual and moral satisfaction as the chief ohjects of life, master, if they can not entirely silence, the clamour of the lower sensual desires. That animal ignoran which is engrossed with the cards and the pleasures of the body and the vital impalees, emotions and sensations in tamasic, the result of the predominance of the third principle of nature which leads to ignorance and, inertis.. That is the state of the animal and the lower forms of humsvify which are called in the Purana tle first tar i ceo. Th's malig