{"id":1376,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1376"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:24","slug":"05-the-human-disciple-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13\/05-the-human-disciple-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-05_The Human Disciple.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nTHREE<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/font><\/b>The Human Disciple<\/font><\/b><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nS<\/font><\/span><\/b>UCH <\/font>then is the divine Teacher of the Gita, the eternal
\nAvatar, the Divine who has descended into the human consciousness, the Lord
\nseated within the heart of all beings, He who guides from behind the veil all our
\nthought and action and heart’s seeking even as He directs from behind the veil
\nof visible and sensible forms and forces and tendencies the great universal
\naction of the world which He has manifested in His own being. All the strife of
\nour upward endeavour and seeking finds its culmination and ceases in a
\nsatisfied fulfilment when we can rend the veil and get behind our apparent self
\nto this real Self, can realise our whole being in this true Lord of our being,
\ncan give up our personality to and into this one real Person, merge our
\never-dispersed and ever-converging mental activities into His plenary light,
\noffer up our errant and struggling will and energies into His vast, luminous
\nand undivided Will, at once renounce and satisfy all our dissipated outward-moving
\ndesires and emotions in the plenitude of His self-existent Bliss. This is the
\nworld-Teacher of whose eternal knowledge all other highest teaching is but the
\nvarious reflection and partial word, this the Voice to which the hearing of our
\nsoul has to awaken. <\/p>\n

Arjuna, the
\ndisciple who receives his initiation on the battlefield, is a counterpart of
\nthis conception; he is the type of the struggling human soul who has not yet
\nreceived the knowledge, but has grown fit to receive it by action in the world
\nin a close companionship and an increasing nearness to the higher and divine
\nSelf in humanity. There is a method of explaining the Gita in which not only
\nthis episode but the whole Mahabharata is turned into an allegory of the inner
\nlife and has nothing to do with our outward human life and action, but only
\nwith the battles of the soul and the powers that strive within us for possession.
\nThat is a view which the general character and the actual  <\/p>\n

\nPage 17<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 language of the epic does not
\njustify and, if pressed, would turn the straightforward philosophical language
\nof the Gita into a constant, laborious and somewhat puerile mystification. The
\nlanguage of the Veda and part at least of the Puranas is plainly symbolic, full
\nof figures and concrete representations of things that lie behind the veil, but
\nthe Gita is written in plain terms and professes to solve the great ethical and
\nspiritual difficulties which the life of man raises, and it will not do to go behind
\nthis plain language and thought and wrest them to the service of our fancy. But
\nthere is this much of truth in the view, that the setting of the doctrine
\nthough not symbolical, is certainly typical, as indeed the setting of such a
\ndiscourse as the Gita must necessarily be if it is to have any relation at all
\nwith that which it frames. Arjuna, as we have seen, is the representative man
\nof a great world-struggle and divinely-guided movement of men and nations; in
\nthe Gita he typifies the human soul of action brought face to face through that
\naction in its highest and most violent crisis with the problem of human life
\nand its apparent incompatibility with the spiritual state or even with a purely
\nethical ideal of perfection.<\/p>\n

Arjuna is the
\nfighter in the chariot with the divine Krishna as his
\ncharioteer. In the Veda also we have this image of the human soul and the
\ndivine riding in one chariot through a great battle to the goal of a
\nhigh-aspiring effort. But there it is a pure figure and symbol. The Divine is
\nthere Indra, the Master of the World of Light and Immortality, the power of
\ndivine knowledge which descends to the aid of the human seeker battling with
\nthe sons of falsehood, darkness, limitation, mortality; the battle is with
\nspiritual enemies who bar the way to the higher world of our being; and the goal
\nis that plane of vast being resplendent with the light of the supreme Truth and
\nuplifted to the conscious immortality of the perfected soul, of which Indra is
\nthe master. The human soul is Kutsa, he who constantly seeks the
\nseer-knowledge, as his name implies, and he is the son of Arjuna or Arjuni, the
\nWhite One, child of Switra the White Mother; he is, that is to say, the sattwic
\nor purified and light-filled soul which is open to the unbroken glories of the
\ndivine knowledge. And when the chariot reaches the end of its journey, the own
\nhome of Indra, the human Kutsa <\/p>\n

\nPage 18<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 has grown into such an exact likeness
\nof his divine companion that he can only be distinguished by Sachi, the wife of
\nIndra, because she is \u201ctruth-conscious\u201d. The parable is evidently of the inner
\nlife of man; it is a figure of the human growing into the likeness of the
\neternal divine by the increasing illumination of Knowledge. But the Gita starts
\nfrom action and Arjuna is the man of action and not of knowledge, the fighter,
\nnever the seer or the thinker. <\/p>\n

From the
\nbeginning of the Gita this characteristic temperament of the disciple is
\nclearly indicated and it is maintained throughout. It becomes first evident in
\nthe manner in which he is awakened to the sense of what he is doing, the great psychological
\nmotives which make him recoil from the whole terrible catastrophe. They are not
\nthe thoughts, the standpoint, the motives of a philosophical or even of a
\ndeeply reflective mind or a spiritual temperament confronted with the same or a
\nsimilar problem. They are those, as we might say, of the practical or the
\npragmatic man, the emotional, sensational, moral and intelligent human being
\nnot habituated to profound and original reflection or any sounding of the
\ndepths, accustomed rather to high but fixed standards of thought and action and
\na confident treading through all vicissitudes and difficulties, who now finds
\nall his standards failing him and all the basis of his confidence in himself
\nand his life shorn away from under him at a single stroke. That is the nature
\nof the crisis which he undergoes. <\/p>\n

Arjuna is, in
\nthe language of the Gita, a man subject to the action of the three gunas or
\nmodes of the Nature-Force and habituated to move unquestioningly in that field,
\nlike the generality of men. He justifies his name only in being so far pure and
\nsattwic as to be governed by high and clear principles and impulses and
\nhabitually control his lower nature by the noblest Law which he knows. He is
\nnot of a violent Asuric disposition, not the slave of his passions, but has
\nbeen trained to a high calm and self-control, to an unswerving performance of
\nhis duties and firm obedience to the best principles of the time and society in
\nwhich he has lived and the religion and ethics to which he has  <\/p>\n

\nPage 19<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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been brought up. He is egoistic
\nlike other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the moral
\nlaw and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his own
\ninterests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the
\nShastra, the moral and social code. The thought which preoccupies him, the
\nstandard which he obeys is the dharma, that collective Indian conception of the
\nreligious, social and moral rule of conduct, and especially the rule of the
\nstation and function to which he belongs, he the Kshatriya, the high-minded,
\nself-governed, chivalrous prince and warrior and leader of Aryan men. Following
\nalways this rule, conscious of virtue and right dealing he has travelled so far
\nand finds suddenly that it has led him to become the protagonist of a terrific
\nand unparalleled slaughter, a monstrous civil war involving all the cultured
\nAryan nations which must lead to the complete destruction of the flower of
\ntheir manhood and threatens their ordered civilisation with chaos and collapse.\n<\/p>\n

It is typical
\nagain of the pragmatic man that it is through his sensations that he awakens to
\nthe meaning of his action. He has asked his friend and charioteer to place him
\nbetween the two armies, not with any profounder idea, but with the proud intention
\nof viewing and looking in the face these myriads of the champions of
\nunrighteousness whom he has to meet and conquer and slay \u201cin this holiday of
\nfight\u201d so that the right may prevail. It is as he gazes that the revelation of
\nthe meaning of a civil and domestic war comes home to him, a war in which not
\nonly men of the same race, the same nation, the same clan, but those of the
\nsame family and household stand upon opposite sides. All whom the social man
\nholds most dear and sacred, he must meet as enemies and slay, \u2013 the worshipped
\nteacher and preceptor, the old friend, comrade and companion in arms, grandsires,
\nuncles, those who stood in the relation to him of father, of son, of grandson,
\nconnections by blood and connections by marriage, \u2013 all these social ties have
\nto be cut asunder by the sword. It is not that he did not know these things
\nbefore, but he has never realised it all; obsessed by his claims and wrongs and
\nby the principles of his life, the struggle for the right, the duty of the
\nKshatriya to protect justice and the law and fight and beat down injustice and
\nlawless  <\/p>\n

\nPage 20<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 violence, he has neither thought
\nit out deeply nor felt it in his heart and at the core of his life. And now it
\nis shown to his vision by the divine charioteer, placed sensationally before
\nhis eyes, and comes home to him like a blow delivered at the very centre of his
\nsensational, vital and emotional being. <\/p>\n

The first result
\nis a violent sensational and physical crisis which produces a disgust of the
\naction and its material objects and of life itself. He rejects the vital aim
\npursued by egoistic humanity in its action, \u2013 happiness and enjoyment; he
\nrejects the vital aim of the Kshatriya, victory and rule and power and the
\ngovernment of men. What after all is this fight for justice when reduced to its
\npractical terms, but just this, a fight for the interests of himself, his
\nbrothers and his party, for possession and enjoyment and rule? But at such a
\ncost these things are not worth having. For they are of no value in themselves,
\nbut only as a means to the right maintenance of social and national life and it
\nis these very aims that in the person of his kin and his race he is about to
\ndestroy. And then comes the cry of the emotions. These are they for whose sake
\nlife and happiness are desired, our \u201cown people\u201d. Who would consent to slay
\nthese for the sake of all the earth, or even for the kingdom of the three
\nworlds? What pleasure can there be in life, what happiness, what satisfaction
\nin oneself after such a deed? The whole thing is a dreadful sin, \u2013 for now the
\nmoral sense awakens to justify the revolt of the sensations and the emotions.
\nIt is a sin, there is no right nor justice in mutual slaughter; especially are
\nthose who are to be slain the natural objects of reverence and of love, those
\nwithout whom one would not care to live, and to violate these sacred feelings
\ncan be no virtue, can be nothing but a heinous crime. Granted that the offence,
\nthe aggression, the first sin, the crimes of greed and selfish passion which have
\nbrought things to such a pass came from the other side; yet armed resistance to
\nwrong under such circumstances would be itself a sin and crime worse than
\ntheirs because they are blinded by passion and unconscious of guilt, while on
\nthis side it would be with a clear sense of guilt that the sin would be
\ncommitted. And for<\/a> what? For the maintenance of family morality,
\nof the social law and the law of the nation? These are the very standards that
\nwill be destroyed by <\/p>\n

 Page 21<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 this civil war; the family itself
\nwill be brought to the point of annihilation, corruption of morals and loss of
\nthe purity of race will be engendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral
\nlaw of the family will be destroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse of its high
\ntraditions, ethical degradation and hell for the authors of such a crime, these
\nare the only practical results possible of this monstrous civil strife.
\n\u201cTherefore,\u201d cries Arjuna, casting down the divine bow and inexhaustible quiver
\ngiven to him by the gods for that tremendous hour, \u201cit is more for my welfare
\nthat the sons of Dhritarashtra armed should slay me unarmed and unresisting. I will
\nnot fight.\u201d <\/p>\n

The character of this inner
\ncrisis is therefore not the questioning of the thinker; it is not a recoil from
\nthe appearances of life and a turning of the eye inward in search of the truth
\nof things, the real meaning of existence and a solution or an escape from the
\ndark riddle of the world. It is the sensational, emotional and moral revolt of
\nthe man hitherto satisfied with action and its current standards who finds
\nhimself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they are in violent conflict
\nwith each other and with themselves and there is no moral standing-ground left,
\nnothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharma<\/i>.\u00b9 <\/span>That for the soul of action in
\nthe mental being is the worst possible crisis, failure and overthrow. The
\nrevolt itself is the most elemental and simple possible; sensationally, the
\nelemental feeling of horror, pity and disgust; vitally, the loss of attraction and
\nfaith in the recognised and familiar objects of action and aims of life;
\nemotionally, the recoil of the ordinary feelings of social man, affection,
\nreverence, desire of a common happiness and satisfaction, from a stern duty
\noutraging them all; morally, the elementary sense of sin and hell and rejection
\nof \u201cblood-stained enjoyments\u201d; practically, the sense that the standards of
\naction have led to a result which destroys the practical aims of action. But
\nthe whole upshot is that all-embracing inner bankruptcy which Arjuna expresses
\nwhen he says that his whole conscious being, not the thought alone but heart
\nand vital desires and all, are utterly bewildered and can find nowhere the dharma<\/i>, nowhere any valid law of action.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 \u00b9<\/font><\/span>Dharma means literally that
\nwhich one lays hold of and which holds things together, the law, the norm, the
\nrule of nature, action and life. <\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 22<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 For this alone he takes refuge as
\na disciple with Krishna; give me, he practically asks,
\nthat which I have lost, a true law, a clear rule of action, a path by which I
\ncan again confidently walk. He does not ask for the secret of life or of the
\nworld, the meaning and purpose of it all, but for a dharma<\/i>. <\/p>\n

Yet it is
\nprecisely this secret for which he does not ask, or at least so much of the
\nknowledge as is necessary to lead him into a higher life, to which the divine
\nTeacher intends to lead this disciple; for he means him to give up all Dharmas except
\nthe one broad and vast rule of living consciously in the Divine and acting from
\nthat consciousness. Therefore after testing the completeness of his revolt from
\nthe ordinary standards of conduct, he proceeds to tell him much that has to do with
\nthe state of the soul, but nothing of any outward rule of action. He must be
\nequal in soul, abandon the desire of the fruits of work, rise above his
\nintellectual notions of sin and virtue, live and act in Yoga with a mind in
\nSamadhi, firmly fixed, that is to say, in the Divine alone. Arjuna is not
\nsatisfied: he wishes to know how the change to this state will affect the outward
\naction of the man, what result it will have on his speech, his movements, his
\nstate, what difference it will make in this acting, living human being. Krishna
\npersists merely in enlarging upon the ideas he has already brought forward, on
\nthe soul-state behind the action, not on the action itself. It is the fixed
\nanchoring of the intelligence in a state of desireless equality that is the one
\nthing needed. Arjuna breaks out impatiently, \u2013 for here is no rule of conduct
\nsuch as he sought, but rather, as it seems to him, the negation of all action,
\n\u2013 \u201c If thou holdest the intelligence to be greater than action, why then dost
\nthou appoint me to an action terrible in its nature? Thou bewilderest my
\nunderstanding with a mingled word: speak one thing decisively by which I can
\nattain to what is the best.\u201d It is always the pragmatic man who has no value
\nfor metaphysical thought or for the inner life except when they help him to his
\none demand, a dharma<\/i>, a law of life
\nin the world or, if need be, of leaving the world; for that too is a decisive
\naction which he can understand. But to live and act in the world, yet be above
\nit, this is a \u201cmingled\u201d and confusing word the sense of which he has no
\npatience to grasp. <\/p>\n

 Page 23<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 The rest of
\nArjuna’s questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and
\ncharacter. When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be no
\napparent change in the action, he must act always by the law of his nature, even
\nif the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another law
\nthan his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in the
\naction with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives
\nmen as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His
\npractical intelligence is baffled by Krishna’s assertion that it was he who in
\nancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again
\nrevealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the
\nfamous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is
\nagain perplexed by the words in which Krishna continues
\nto reconcile action and renunciation of action and asks once again for a
\ndecisive statement of that which is the best and highest, not this \u201cmingled\u201d
\nword. When he realises fully the nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to
\nembrace, his pragmatic nature accustomed to act from mental will and preference
\nand desire is appalled by its difficulty and he asks what is the end of the
\nsoul which attempts and fails, whether it does not lose both this life of human
\nactivity and thought and emotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic
\nconsciousness to which it aspires and falling from both perish like a
\ndissolving cloud? <\/p>\n

When his doubts
\nand perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine which must be
\nhis law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive knowledge as will
\nguide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. How is
\nthe Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which
\nconstitute our ordinary experience? What are the great manifestations of its
\nself-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by
\nmeditation? May he not see even now the divine cosmic Form of That which is
\nactually speaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his
\nlast questions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and
\nthis subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between
\nPurusha and Prakriti, the Field and <\/p>\n

 Page 24<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

 the Knower of the Field, so
\nimportant for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine
\nWill; and finally a clear statement of the practical operations and results of
\nthe three modes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount. <\/p>\n

To such a
\ndisciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his divine teaching. He seizes him at a
\nmoment of his psychological development by egoistic action when all the mental,
\nmoral, emotional values of the ordinary egoistic and social life of man have
\ncollapsed in a sudden bankruptcy, and he has to lift him up out of this lower
\nlife into a higher consciousness, out of ignorant attachment to action into
\nthat which transcends, yet originates and orders action, out of ego into Self,
\nout of life in mind, vitality and body into that higher nature beyond mind
\nwhich is the status of the Divine. He has at the same time to give him that for
\nwhich he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance within him,
\na new Law of life and action high above the insufficient rule of the ordinary
\nhuman existence with its endless conflicts and oppositions, perplexities and illusory
\ncertainties, a higher Law by which the soul shall be free from this bondage of
\nworks and yet powerful to act and conquer in the vast liberty of its divine
\nbeing. For the action must be performed, the world must fulfil its cycles and
\nthe soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it is
\nhere to do. The whole course of the teaching of the Gita is determined and
\ndirected, even in its widest wheelings, towards the fulfilment of these three
\nobjects.  <\/p>\n

\nPage 25<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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