{"id":1379,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1379"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:25","slug":"49-the-core-of-the-gitas-meaning-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\/49-the-core-of-the-gitas-meaning-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-49_The Core of the Gita’s Meaning.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

TWENTY-THREE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>The
\nCore of the Gita’s Meaning<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                        W<\/font>HAT<\/font> then is the message of the
\nGita and what its working value, its spiritual utility to the human mind of the
\npresent day after the long ages that have elapsed since it was written and the
\ngreat subsequent transformations of thought and experience? The human mind
\nmoves always forward, alters its viewpoint and enlarges its thought substance,
\nand the effect of these changes is to render past systems of thinking obsolete
\nor, when they are preserved, to extend, to modify and subtly or visibly to
\nalter their value. The vitality of an ancient doctrine consists in the extent
\nto which it naturally lends itself to such a treatment; for that means that
\nwhatever may have been the limitations or the obsolescences of the form of its
\nthought, the truth of substance, the truth of living vision and experience on
\nwhich its system was built is still sound and retains a permanent validity and
\nsignificance. The Gita is a book that has worn extraordinarily well and it is
\nalmost as fresh and still in its real substance quite as new, because always
\nrenewable in experience, as when it first appeared in or was written into the
\nframe of the Mahabharata. It is still received in India as one of the great
\nbodies of doctrine that most authoritatively govern religious thinking and its
\nteaching acknowledged as of the highest value if not wholly accepted by almost
\nall shades of religious belief and opinion. Its influence is not merely
\nphilosophic or academic but immediate and living, an influence both for thought
\nand action, and its ideas are actually at work as a powerful shaping factor in
\nthe revival and renewal of a nation and a culture. It has even been said
\nrecently by a great voice that all we need of spiritual truth for the spiritual
\nlife is to be found in the Gita. It would be to encourage the superstition of
\nthe book to take too literally that utterance. The truth of the spirit is
\ninfinite and cannot be circumscribed in that manner. Still it may be said that
\nmost of the main clues are there <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 543<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and that after all the later
\ndevelopments of spiritual experience and discovery we can still return to it
\nfor a large inspiration and guidance. Outside India
\ntoo it is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s great scriptures,
\nalthough in Europe its thought is better understood than
\nits secret of spiritual practice. What is it then that gives this vitality to
\nthe thought and the truth of the Gita? <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The
\ncentral interest of the Gita’s philosophy and Yoga is its attempt, the idea
\nwith which it sets out, continues and closes, to reconcile and even effect a
\nkind of unity between the inner spiritual truth in its most absolute and
\nintegral realisation and the outer actualities of man’s life and action. A
\ncompromise between the two is common enough, but that can never be a final and
\nsatisfactory solution. An ethical rendering of spirituality is also common and
\nhas its value as a law of conduct; but that is a mental solution which does not
\namount to a complete practical reconciliation of the whole truth of spirit with
\nthe whole truth of life and it raises as many problems as it solves. One of
\nthese is indeed the starting-point of the Gita; it sets out with an ethical
\nproblem raised by a conflict in which we have on one side the dharma of the man
\nof action, aprince<\/span> and warrior and leader of men, the
\nprotagonist of a great crisis, of a struggle on the physical plane, the plane
\nof actual life, between the powers of right and justice and the powers of wrong
\nand injustice, the demand of the destiny of the race upon him that he shall
\nresist and give battle and establish even though through a terrible physical
\nstruggle and a giant slaughter a new era and reign of truth and right and
\njustice, and on the other side the ethical sense which condemns the means and
\nthe action as a sin, recoils from the price of individual suffering and social
\nstrife, unsettling and disturbance and regards abstention from violence and
\nbattle as the only way and the one right moral attitude. A spiritualised ethics
\ninsists on Ahinsa, on non-injuring and non-killing as the highest law of
\nspiritual conduct. The battle, if it is to be fought out at all, must be fought
\non the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal of
\nparticipation or only by soul resistance, and if this does not succeed on the
\nexternal plane, if the force of injustice conquers, the individual will still
\nhave preserved his <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 544<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

virtue and vindicated by his
\nexample the highest ideal. On the other hand a more insistent extreme of the
\ninner spiritual direction, passing beyond this struggle between social duty and
\nan absolutist ethical ideal, is apt to take the ascetic turn and to point away
\nfrom life and all its aims and standards of action towards another and
\ncelestial or supracosmic<\/span> state in which alone beyond
\nthe perplexed vanity and illusion of man’s birth and life and death there can
\nbe a pure spiritual existence. The Gita rejects none of these things in their place,\u2014for
\nit insists on the performance of the social duty, the following of the dharma
\nfor the man who has to take his share in the common action, accepts Ahinsa as
\npart of the highest spiritual-ethical ideal and recognises the ascetic renunciation
\nas a way of spiritual salvation. And yet it goes boldly beyond all these
\nconflicting positions; greatly daring, it justifies all life to the spirit as a
\nsignificant manifestation of the one Divine Being and asserts the compatibility
\nof a complete human action and a complete spiritual life lived in union with
\nthe Infinite, consonant with the highest Self, expressive of the perfect
\nGodhead.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>All the problems of human life arise from the
\ncomplexity of our existence, the obscurity of its essential principle and the secrecy
\nof the inmost power that makes out its determinations and governs its purpose
\nand its processes. If our existence were of one piece, solely material-vital or
\nsolely mental or solely spiritual, or even if the others were entirely or
\nmainly involved in one of these or were quite latent in our subconscient or our
\nsuperconscient parts, there would be nothing to perplex us; the material and
\nvital law would be imperative or the mental would be clear to its own pure and
\nunobstructed principle or the spiritual self-existent and self-sufficient to
\nspirit. The animals are aware of no problems; a mental god in a world of pure
\nmentality would admit none or would solve them all by the purity of a mental
\nrule or the satisfaction of a rational harmony; a pure spirit would be above
\nthem and self-content in the infinite. But the existence of man is a triple
\nweb, a thing mysteriously physical-vital, mental and spiritual at once, and he
\nknows not what are the true relations of these things, which the real reality
\nof his life and his nature, whither the attraction of his destiny and where the
\nsphere of his perfection. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 545<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Matter and life
\nare his actual basis, the thing from which he starts and on which he stands and
\nwhose requirement and law he has to satisfy if he would exist at all on earth
\nand in the body. The material and vital law is a rule of survival, of struggle,
\nof desire and possession, of self-assertion and the satisfaction of the body,
\nthe life and the ego. All the intellectual reasoning in the world, all the
\nethical idealism and spiritual absolutism of which the higher faculties of man
\nare capable cannot abolish the reality and claim of our vital and material base
\nor prevent the race from following under the imperative compulsion of Nature
\nits aims and the satisfaction of its necessities or from making its important
\nproblems a great and legitimate part of human destiny and human interest and
\nendeavour. And the intelligence of man even, failing to find any sustenance in
\nspiritual or ideal solutions that solve everything else but the pressing
\nproblems of our actual human life, often turns away from them to an exclusive
\nacceptance of the vital and material existence and the reasoned or instinctive
\npursuit of its utmost possible efficiency, well-being and organised<\/span>
\nsatisfaction. A gospel of the will to live or the will to power or of a rationalised<\/span> vital and material perfection becomes the recognised<\/span> dharma of the human race and all else is
\nconsidered either a pretentious falsity or a quite subsidiary thing, a side
\nissue of a minor and dependent consequence.<\/p>\n

Matter and life
\nhowever in spite of their insistence and great importance are not all that man
\nis, nor can he wholly accept mind as nothing but a servant of the life and body
\nadmitted to certain pure enjoyments of its own as a sort of reward for its
\nservice or regard it as no more than an extension and flower of the vital urge,
\nan ideal luxury contingent upon the satisfaction of the material life. The mind
\nmuch more intimately than the body and the life is the man, and the mind as it develops
\ninsists more and more on making the body and the life an instrument\u2014an
\nindispensable instrument and yet a considerable obstacle, otherwise there would
\nbe no problem\u2014for its own characteristic satisfactions and self-realisation.
\nThe mind of man is not only a vital and physical, but an intellectual,
\naesthetic, ethical, psychic, emotional and dynamic intelligence, and in the
\nsphere of each of its tendencies its highest and strongest nature is to strain
\ntowards <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 546<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

some absolute of them which the
\nframe of life will not allow it to capture wholly and embody and make here entirely
\nreal. The mental absolute of our aspiration remains as a partly grasped shining
\nor fiery ideal which the mind can make inwardly very present to itself,
\ninwardly imperative on its effort, and can even effectuate partly, but not
\ncompel all the facts of life into its image. There is thus an absolute, a high
\nimperative of intellectual truth and reason sought for by our intellectual
\nbeing; there is an absolute, an imperative of right and conduct aimed at by the
\nethical conscience; there is an absolute, an imperative of love, sympathy,
\ncompassion, oneness yearned after by our emotional and psychic nature; there is
\nan absolute, an imperative of delight and beauty quivered to by the aesthetic
\nsoul; there is an absolute, an imperative of inner self-mastery and control of
\nlife laboured<\/span> after by the dynamic will; all these
\nare there together and impinge upon the absolute, the imperative of possession
\nand pleasure and safe embodied existence insisted on by the vital and physical mind.
\nAnd the human intelligence, since it is not able to realise<\/span>
\nentirely any of these things, much less all of them together, erects in each
\nsphere many standards and dharmas<\/span>, standards of truth
\nand reason, of right and conduct, of delight and beauty, of love, sympathy and
\noneness, of self-mastery and control, of self-preservation and possession and
\nvital efficiency and pleasure, and tries to impose them on life. The absolute
\nshining ideals stand far above and beyond our capacity and rare individuals
\napproximate to them as best they can: the mass follow or profess to follow some
\nless magnificent norm, some established possible and relative standard. Human
\nlife as a whole undergoes the attraction and yet rejects the ideal. Life resists
\nin the strength of some obscure infinite of its own and wears down or breaks
\ndown any established mental and moral order. And this must be either because
\nthe two are quite different and disparate though meeting and interacting
\nprinciples or because mind has not the clue to the whole reality of life. The
\nclue must be sought in something greater, an unknown something above the
\nmentality and morality of the human creature. <\/p>\n

The mind itself
\nhas the vague sense of some surpassing factor of this kind and in the pursuit
\nof its absolutes frequently strikes <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 547<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

against it. It glimpses a state,
\na power, a presence that is near and within and inmost to it and yet
\nimmeasurably greater and singularly distant and above it; it has a vision of
\nsomething more essential, more absolute than its own absolutes, intimate,
\ninfinite, one, and it is that which we call God, Self or Spirit. This then the
\nmind attempts to know, enter, touch and seize wholly, to approach it or become
\nit, to arrive at some kind of unity or lose itself in a complete identity with
\nthat mystery, āścaryam<\/i><\/span>.
\nThe difficulty is that this spirit in its purity seems something yet farther
\nthan the mental absolutes from the actualities of life, something not
\ntranslatable by mind into its own terms, much less into those of life and
\naction. Therefore we have the intransigent absolutists of the spirit who reject
\nthe mental and condemn the material being and yearn after a pure spiritual
\nexistence happily purchased by the dissolution of all that we are in life and
\nmind, a Nirvana. The rest of spiritual effort is for these fanatics of the
\nAbsolute a mental preparation or a compromise, a spiritualising<\/span>
\nof life and mind as much as possible. And because the difficulty most
\nconstantly insistent on man’s mentality in practice is that presented by the claims
\nof his vital being, by life and conduct and action, the direction taken by this
\npreparatory endeavour consists mainly in a spiritualising<\/span>
\nof the ethical supported by the psychical mind\u2014or rather it brings in the
\nspiritual power and purity to aid these in enforcing their absolute claim and
\nto impart a greater authority than life allows to the ethical ideal of right
\nand truth of conduct or the psychic ideal of love and sympathy and oneness.
\nThese things are helped to some highest expression, given their broadest
\nluminous basis by an assent of the reason and will to the underlying truth of
\nthe absolute oneness of the spirit and therefore the essential oneness of all
\nliving creatures. This kind of spirituality linked on in some way to the demands
\nof the normal mind of man, persuaded to the acceptance of useful social duty
\nand current law of social conduct, popularised<\/span> by
\ncult and ceremony and image is the outward substance of the world’s greater
\nreligions. These religions have their individual victories, call in some ray of
\na higher light, impose some shadow of a larger spiritual or semi-spiritual
\nrule, but cannot effect a complete victory, end flatly in a compromise <\/p>\n

Page \u2013 548<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and in the act of compromise are
\ndefeated by life. Its problems remain and even recur in their fiercest
\nforms\u2014even such as this grim problem of Kurukshetra. The idealising intellect
\nand ethical mind hope always to eliminate them, to discover some happy device
\nborn of their own aspiration and made effective by their own imperative insistence,
\nwhich will annihilate this nether untoward aspect of life; but it endures and
\nis not eliminated. The spiritualised intelligence on the other hand offers
\nindeed by the voice of religion the promise of some victorious millennium
\nhereafter, but meanwhile half convinced of terrestrial impotence, persuaded
\nthat the soul is a stranger and intruder upon earth, declares that after all
\nnot here in the life of the body or in the collective life of mortal man but in
\nsome immortal Beyond lies the heaven or the Nirvana where alone is to be found
\nthe true spiritual existence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>It is here that the Gita intervenes with a
\nrestatement of the truth of the Spirit, of the Self, of God and of the world
\nand Nature. It extends and remoulds<\/span> the truth evolved
\nby a later thought from the ancient Upanishads and ventures with assured steps
\non an endeavour to apply its solving power to the problem of life and action.
\nThe solution offered by the Gita does not disentangle all the problem as it
\noffers itself to modern mankind; as stated here to a more ancient mentality, it
\ndoes not meet the insistent pressure of the present mind of man for a
\ncollective advance, does not respond to its cry for a collective life that will
\nat last embody a greater rational and ethical and if possible even a dynamic
\nspiritual ideal. Its call is to the individual who has become capable of a
\ncomplete spiritual existence; but for the rest of the race it prescribes only a
\ngradual advance, to be wisely effected by following out faithfully with more
\nand more of intelligence and moral purpose and with a final turn to spirituality
\nthe law of their nature. Its message touches the other smaller solutions but,
\neven when it accepts them partly, it is to point them beyond themselves to a
\nhigher and more integral secret into which as yet only the few individuals have
\nshown themselves fit to enter. <\/p>\n

The Gita’s
\nmessage to the mind that follows after the vital and material life is that all
\nlife is indeed a manifestation of the <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 549<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

universal Power in the
\nindividual, a derivation from the Self, a ray from the Divine, but actually it
\nfigures the Self and the Divine veiled in a disguising Maya, and to pursue the
\nlower life for its own sake is to persist in a stumbling path and to enthrone
\nour nature’s obscure ignorance and not at all to find the true truth and
\ncomplete law of existence. A gospel of the will to live, the will to power, of
\nthe satisfaction of desire, of the glorification of mere force and strength, of
\nthe worship of the ego and its vehement acquisitive self-will and tireless
\nself-regarding intellect is the gospel of the Asura and it can lead only to
\nsome gigantic ruin and perdition. The vital and material man must accept for
\nhis government a religious and social and ideal dharma by which, while
\nsatisfying desire and interest under right restrictions, he can train and
\nsubdue his lower personality and scrupulously attune it to a higher law both of
\nthe personal and the communal life.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The Gita’s message to the mind occupied with
\nthe pursuit of intellectual, ethical and social standards, the mind that insists
\non salvation by the observance of established dharmas<\/span>,
\nthe moral law, social duty and function or the solutions of the liberated
\nintelligence, is that this is indeed a very necessary stage, the dharma has
\nindeed to be observed and, rightly observed, can raise the stature of the
\nspirit and prepare and serve the spiritual life, but still it is not the
\ncomplete and last truth of existence. The soul of man has to go beyond to some
\nmore absolute dharma of man’s spiritual and immortal nature. And this can only
\nbe done if we repress and get rid of the ignorant formulations of the lower
\nmental elements and the falsehood of egoistic personality, impersonalise<\/span>
\nthe action of the intelligence and will, live in the identity of the one self
\nin all, break out of all ego-moulds into the impersonal spirit. The mind moves
\nunder the limiting compulsion of the triple lower nature, it erects its
\nstandards in obedience to the tamasic, rajasic<\/span> or at
\nhighest the sattwic<\/span> qualities; but the destiny of the
\nsoul is a divine perfection and liberation and that can only be based in the
\nfreedom of our highest self, can only be found by passing through its vast impersonality
\nand universality beyond mind into the integral light of the immeasurable
\nGodhead and supreme Infinite who is beyond all dharmas.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 550<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

The Gita’s<\/span> message to those, absolutist seekers of the
\nInfinite, who carry impersonality to an exclusive extreme, entertain an
\nintolerant passion for the extinction of life and action and would have as the
\none ultimate aim and ideal an endeavour to cease from all individual being in
\nthe pure silence of the ineffable Spirit, is that this is indeed one path of journey
\nand entry into the Infinite, but the most difficult, the ideal of inaction a
\ndangerous thing to hold up by precept or example before the world, this way,
\nthough great, yet not the best way for man and this knowledge, though true, yet
\nnot the integral knowledge. The Supreme, the all-conscious Self, the Godhead,
\nthe Infinite is not solely a spiritual existence remote and ineffable; he is
\nhere in the universe at once hidden and expressed through man and the gods and
\nthrough all beings and in all that is. And it is by finding him not only in
\nsome immutable silence but in the world and its beings and in all self and in all
\nNature, it is by raising to an integral as well as to a highest union with him
\nall the activities of the intelligence, the heart, the will, the life that man
\ncan solve at once his inner riddle of self and God and the outer problem of his
\nactive human existence. Made Godlike, God-becoming, he can enjoy the infinite
\nbreadth of a supreme spiritual consciousness that is reached through works no
\nless than through love and knowledge. Immortal and free, he can continue his
\nhuman action from that highest level and transmute it into a supreme and
\nall-embracing divine activity,\u2014that indeed is the ultimate crown and significance
\nhere of all works and living and sacrifice and the world’s endeavour.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>This highest message is first for those who
\nhave the strength to follow after it, the master men, the great spirits, the God-knowers<\/span>, God-doers, God-lovers who can live in God and for
\nGod and do their work joyfully for him in the world, a divine work uplifted
\nabove the restless darkness of the human mind and the false limitations of the
\nego. At the same time, and here we get the gleam of a larger promise which we
\nmay even extend to the hope of a collective turn towards perfection,\u2014for if there
\nis hope for man, why should there not be hope for mankind?\u2014the Gita declares
\nthat all can if they will, even to the lowest and sinfullest<\/span>
\namong men, enter into the path of this<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 551<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Yoga. And if there is a true
\nself-surrender and an absolute unegoistic<\/span> faith in
\nthe indwelling Divinity, success is certain in this path. The decisive turn is
\nneeded; there must be an abiding belief in the Spirit, a sincere and insistent
\nwill to live in the Divine, to be in self one with him and in Nature\u2014where too
\nwe are an eternal portion of his being\u2014one with his greater spiritual Nature,
\nGod-possessed in all our members and Godlike.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The Gita in the development of its idea raises
\nmany issues, such as the determinism of Nature, the significance of the universal
\nmanifestation and the ultimate status of the liberated soul, questions that
\nhave been the subject of unending and inconclusive debate. It is not necessary
\nin this series of essays of which the object is a scrutiny and positive
\naffirmation of the substance of the Gita and a disengaging of its contribution
\nto the abiding spiritual thought of humanity and its kernel of living practice,
\nto enter far into these discussions or to consider where we may differ from its
\nstandpoint or conclusions, make any reserves in our assent or even, strong in
\nlater experience, go beyond its metaphysical teaching or its Yoga. It will be
\nsufficient to close with a formulation of the living message it still brings
\nfor man the eternal seeker and discoverer to guide him through the present
\ncircuits and the possible steeper ascent of his life up to the luminous heights
\nof his spirit.<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 552<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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