they can forget the hard realities of life, and live awhile with their fancies and dreams in the atmosphere created by their own inagination. They like to retreat within themselves, seeking the protection of the inner life against the torments of outer life. Here they fondly delude themselves to ascribe reality to their visions and dreams. They people the world with their own thoughts, make it after their likes and dislikes. It gives them some comfort to live awhile in the world of illusion. Many find occasional reverie soothing. The soothing thoughts of the dreamland of their creation help them to forget the trying reality and lull to sleep the burning fever of the tortured brain. Men of philosophic bent of mind seek to escape the sordid realities of life by retiring into a world of mysticism to live in the atmosphere of otherworldliness.
Among the Aryan settlers of India, we have seen, renunciation of the world of desires became an ideal of life. Desire came to be looked upon as the chief cause of evil. To live is to desire and consequently suffer in many rebirths. Escape from the life of desires to seek their extinction hastened deliverance. The Bhagavad Gita seeks to find compromise by advising the wise to desire without any attachment and to act without any expectation of reaping fruits.
Prince Arjuna is grieved at the painful duty his position in life entails upon him to fight his kinsmen. When he witnesses the contending armies drawn up on the battlefield, he is struck with sudden compunction and appalled at the prospect of the impending slaughter of his kinsfolk. He hesitates to plunge into the battle array. God Krishna manifests himself in human form in the person of his charioteer to relieve him from his embarrassment. On no account can the prince shirk his inevitable duty, urges Krishna, even if its performance forces him to wade his way to the throne through the blood of his relations. Man cannot escape his duty in life. He cannot compass his retreat before the actions that fall to his lot.
Life without actions is unthinkable. One has only to do his work in such a manner that he may maintain complete detachment from the consequence of his actions. Dispassionate and disinterested performance of actions does not fetter the doer. Thus, says Krishna, he acts himself, for the world would perish if he ceased to work. The multifarious actions that he performs do
