The Inner Life

him will come to every such individual. Opposition from friends and from all the habits he has acquired, and also that which naturally arises from hereditary tendencies, will confront him; and then it will depend upon how he listens to Krishna, who is the Logos shining and speaking within, whether he will succeed or fail.”

AFTER Krishna has drawn up the chariot between the two armies, and Arjuna, horror-struck at the idea of fighting and slaying his relations and former friends, has used every argument to show he should not proceed, declaring that he would rather be killed without defending himself than fight against them, Krishna says:

“Thou grievest for those who need not thy grief, Arjuna; yet thy words are not those of the foolish, but bear within them the seeds of wisdom. Thy utterances have a wise sound, but yet express only the outer wisdom, and fail to show the power of the inner doctrine of the wise. They are true, and yet not wholly true—the half-truth is apparent—but the missing half is the deeper portion.

“The truly wise grieve neither for the dead, nor yet for the living. Just as the brave man feareth neither Death nor Life, so doth the wise man avoid grief over either, though the half-wise grieve over either or both, according to their mood and circumstance.

Know thou, O Prince of Pandu, that there never was a time when I, nor thou, nor any of these princes of earth was not; nor shall there ever come a time, hereafter, when any of us shall cease to be.

“As the soul, wearing this material body, experienceth the stages of infancy, youth, manhood, and old age, even so shall it, in due time, pass on to another body, and other incarnations shall it again live, and move and play its part. Those who have attained the wisdom of the Inner Doctrine, know these things, and fail to be moved by aught that cometh to pass in this world of change. To such Life and Death are but words, and both are but surface aspects of the deeper Being.

“The senses, through their appropriate faculties of the mind, give their reports of cold and heat, pleasure and pain. But these changes come and go—they are shifting and impermanent, transient