{"id":1397,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1397"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:32","slug":"06-the-core-of-the-teaching-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\/06-the-core-of-the-teaching-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-06_The Core of the Teaching.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nFOUR<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span>The Core of
\nthe Teaching<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nW<\/font><\/span><\/b>E KNOW<\/font> the
\ndivine Teacher, we see the human disciple; it remains to form a clear
\nconception of the doctrine. A clear conception fastening upon the essential
\nidea, the central heart of the teaching is especially necessary here because
\nthe Gita with its rich and many-sided thought, its synthetical grasp of
\ndifferent aspects of the spiritual life and the fluent winding motion of its
\nargument lends itself, even more than other scriptures, to one-sided misrepresentations
\nborn of a partisan intellectuality. The unconscious or half-conscious wresting
\nof fact and word and idea to suit a preconceived notion or the doctrine or
\nprinciple of one’s preference is recognised by Indian logicians as one of the
\nmost fruitful sources of fallacy; and it is perhaps the one which it is most
\ndifficult for even the most conscientious thinker to avoid. For the human
\nreason is incapable of always playing the detective upon itself in this
\nrespect; it is its very nature to seize upon some partial conclusion, idea,
\nprinciple, become its partisan and make it the key to all truth, and it has an
\ninfinite faculty of doubling upon itself so as to avoid detecting in its
\noperations this necessary and cherished weakness. The Gita lends itself easily
\nto this kind of error, because it is easy, by throwing particular emphasis on
\none of its aspects or even on some salient and emphatic text and putting all
\nthe rest of the eighteen chapters into the background or making them a
\nsubordinate and auxiliary teaching, to turn it into a partisan of our own
\ndoctrine or dogma. <\/p>\n

Thus, there are those who make the Gita teach, not works at
\nall, but a discipline of preparation for renouncing life and works: the
\nindifferent performance of prescribed actions or of whatever task may lie ready
\nto the hands, becomes the means, the discipline; the final renunciation of life
\nand works is the sole real object. It is quite easy to justify this view by citations
\nfrom <\/p>\n

\nPage 26<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

the
\nbook and by a certain arrangement of stress in following out its argument,
\nespecially if we shut our eyes to the peculiar way in which it uses such a word
\nas sannyāsa<\/i>, renunciation; but
\nit is quite impossible to persist in this view on an impartial reading in face
\nof the continual assertion to the very end that action should be preferred to
\ninaction and that superiority lies with the true, the inner renunciation of
\ndesire by equality and the giving up of works to the supreme Purusha. <\/p>\n

Others again speak of the Gita as if the doctrine of devotion
\nwere its whole teaching and put in the background its monistic elements and the
\nhigh place it gives to quietistic immergence in the one self of all. And
\nundoubtedly its emphasis on devotion, its insistence on the aspect of the
\nDivine as Lord and Purusha and its doctrine of the Purushottama, the Supreme Being
\nwho is superior both to the mutable Being and to the Immutable and who is what
\nin His relation to the world we know as God, are the most striking and among
\nthe most vital elements of the Gita. Still, this Lord is the Self in whom all
\nknowledge culminates and the Master of sacrifice to whom all works lead as well
\nas the Lord of Love into whose being the heart of devotion enters, and the Gita
\npreserves a perfectly equal balance, emphasising now knowledge, now works, now
\ndevotion, but for the purposes of the immediate trend of the thought, not with
\nany absolute separate preference of one over the others. He in whom all three
\nmeet and become one, He is the Supreme Being, the Purushottama. <\/p>\n

But at the present day, since in fact the modern mind began
\nto recognise and deal at all with the Gita, the tendency is to subordinate its
\nelements of knowledge and devotion, to take advantage of its continual
\ninsistence on action and to find in it a scripture of the Karmayoga, a Light
\nleading us on the path of action, a Gospel of Works. Undoubtedly, the Gita is a
\nGospel of Works, but of works which culminate in knowledge, that is, in
\nspiritual realisation and quietude, and of works motived by devotion, that is,
\na conscious surrender of one’s whole self first into the hands and then into
\nthe being of the Supreme, and not at all of works as they are understood by the
\nmodern mind, not at all an action dictated by egoistic and altruistic, by personal,
\nsocial, humanitarian motives, principles, ideals. Yet this is what present-day<\/p>\n

 Page 27<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 interpretations
\nseek to make of the Gita. We are told continually by many authoritative voices
\nthat the Gita, opposing in this the ordinary ascetic and quietistic tendency of
\nIndian thought and spirituality, proclaims with no uncertain sound the gospel
\nof human action, the ideal of disinterested performance of social duties, nay,
\neven, it would seem, the quite modern ideal of social service. To all this I
\ncan only reply that very patently and even on the very surface of it the Gita
\ndoes nothing of the kind and that this is a modern misreading, a reading of the
\nmodern mind into an ancient book, of the present-day European or Europeanised
\nintellect into a thoroughly antique, a thoroughly Oriental and Indian teaching.
\nThat which the Gita teaches is not a human, but a divine action; not the performance
\nof social duties, but the abandonment of all other standards of duty or conduct
\nfor a selfless performance of the divine will working through our nature; not
\nsocial service, but the action of the Best, the God-possessed, the Master-men done
\nimpersonally for the sake of the world and as a sacrifice to Him who stands
\nbehind man and Nature. <\/p>\n

In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics,
\nbut of the spiritual life. The modern mind is just now the European mind, such
\nas it has become after having abandoned not only the philosophic idealism of
\nthe highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but the Christian
\ndevotionalism of the Middle Ages; these it has replaced by or transmuted into a
\npractical idealism and social, patriotic and philanthropic devotion. It has got
\nrid of God or kept Him only for Sunday use and erected in His place man as its
\ndeity and society as its visible idol. At its best it is practical, ethical,
\nsocial, pragmatic, altruistic, humanitarian. Now all these things are good, are
\nespecially needed at the present day, are part of the divine Will or they would
\nnot have become so dominant in humanity. Nor is there any reason why the divine
\nman, the man who lives in the Brahmic consciousness, in the God-being should
\nnot be all of these things in his action; he will be, if they are the best
\nideal of the age, the Yugadharma, and there is no yet higher ideal to be
\nestablished, no great radical change to be effected. For he is, as the Teacher
\npoints out to his disciple, the best who has to set the standard for others;
\nand in fact Arjuna is called upon to live according to <\/p>\n

\nPage 28<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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the
\nhighest ideals of his age and the prevailing culture, but with knowledge, with
\nunderstanding of that which lay behind, and not as ordinary men, with a
\nfollowing of the merely outward law and rule. <\/p>\n

But the point here is that the modern mind has exiled from
\nits practical motive-power the two essential things, God or the Eternal and
\nspirituality or the God-state, which are the master conceptions of the Gita. It
\nlives in humanity only, and the Gita would have us live in God, though for the
\nworld in God; in its life, heart and intellect only, and the Gita would have us
\nlive in the spirit; in the mutable Being who is \u201call creatures\u201d, and the Gita
\nwould have us live also in the Immutable and the Supreme; in the changing march
\nof Time, and the Gita would have us live in the Eternal. Or if these higher
\nthings are now beginning to be vaguely envisaged, it is only to make them
\nsubservient to man and society; but God and spirituality exist in their own
\nright and not as adjuncts. And in practice the lower in us must learn to exist
\nfor the higher, in order that the higher also may in us consciously exist for
\nthe lower, to draw it nearer to its own altitudes. <\/p>\n

Therefore it is a mistake to interpret the Gita from the
\nstandpoint of the mentality of today and force it to teach us the disinterested
\nperformance of duty as the highest and all-sufficient law. A little
\nconsideration of the situation with which the Gita deals will show us that this
\ncould not be its meaning. For the whole point of the teaching, that from which
\nit arises, that which compels the disciple to seek the Teacher, is an
\ninextricable clash of the various related conceptions of duty ending in the
\ncollapse of the whole useful intellectual and moral edifice erected by the
\nhuman mind. In human life some sort of a clash arises fairly often, as for
\ninstance between domestic duties and the call of the country or the cause, or
\nbetween the claim of the country and the good of humanity or some larger
\nreligious or moral principle. An inner situation may even arise, as with the
\nBuddha, in which all duties have to be abandoned, trampled on, flung aside in
\norder to follow the call of the Divine within. I cannot think that the Gita
\nwould solve such an inner situation by sending Buddha back to his wife and
\nfather and the government of the Sakya
\n State, or would direct a Ramakrishna
\nto become a Pundit in a vernacular <\/p>\n

\nPage 29<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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school
\nand disinterestedly teach little boys their lessons, or bind down a Vivekananda
\nto support his family and for that to follow dispassionately the law or
\nmedicine or journalism. The Gita does not teach the disinterested performance
\nof duties but the following of the divine life, the abandonment of all dharmas,
\nsarvadharmān<\/i>, to take refuge in
\nthe Supreme alone, and the divine activity of a Buddha, a Ramakrishna, a
\nVivekananda is perfectly in consonance with this teaching. Nay, although the
\nGita prefers action to inaction, it does not rule out the renunciation of
\nworks, but accepts it as one of the ways to the Divine. If that can only be
\nattained by renouncing works and life and all duties and the call is strong
\nwithin us, then into the bonfire they must go, and there is no help for it. The
\ncall of God is imperative and cannot be weighed against any other
\nconsiderations. <\/p>\n

But here there is this farther difficulty that the action
\nwhich Arjuna must do is one from which his moral sense recoils. It is his duty
\nto fight, you say? But that duty has now become to his mind a terrible sin. How
\ndoes it help him or solve his difficulty, to tell him that he must do his duty
\ndisinterestedly, dispassionately? He will want to know which is his duty or how
\nit can be his duty to destroy in a sanguinary massacre his kin, his race and
\nhis country. He is told that he has right on his side, but that does not and
\ncannot satisfy him, because his very point is that the justice of his legal
\nclaim does not justify him in supporting it by a pitiless massacre destructive
\nto the future of his nation. Is he then to act dispassionately in the sense of not
\ncaring whether it is a sin or what its consequences may be so long as he does
\nhis duty as a soldier? That may be the teaching of a State, of politicians, of
\nlawyers, of ethical casuists; it can never be the teaching of a great religious
\nand philosophical Scripture which sets out to solve the problem of life and
\naction from the very roots. And if that is what the Gita has to say on a most
\npoignant moral and spiritual problem, we must put it out of the list of the
\nworld’s Scriptures and thrust it, if anywhere, then into our library of
\npolitical science and ethical casuistry. <\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, the Gita does, like the Upanishads, teach the
\nequality which rises above sin and virtue, beyond good and evil, but only as a
\npart of the Brahmic consciousness and for the man <\/p>\n

 Page 30<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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who
\nis on the path and advanced enough to fulfil the supreme rule. It does not
\npreach indifference to good and evil for the ordinary life of man, where such a
\ndoctrine would have the most pernicious consequences. On the contrary it
\naffirms that the doers of evil shall not attain to God. Therefore if Arjuna
\nsimply seeks to fulfil in the best way the ordinary law of man’s life,
\ndisinterested performance of what he feels to be a sin, a thing of Hell, will
\nnot help him, even though that sin be his duty as a soldier. He must refrain
\nfrom what his conscience abhors though a thousand duties were shattered to
\npieces. <\/p>\n

We must remember that duty is an idea which in practice rests
\nupon social conceptions. We may extend the term beyond its proper connotation
\nand talk of our duty to ourselves or we may, if we like, say in a transcendent
\nsense that it was Buddha’s duty to abandon all, or even that it is the
\nascetic’s duty to sit motionless in a cave! But this is obviously to play with words.
\nDuty is a relative term and depends upon our relation to others. It is a
\nfather’s duty, as a father, to nurture and educate his children; a lawyer’s to
\ndo his best for his client even if he knows him to be guilty and his defence to
\nbe a lie; a soldier’s to fight and shoot to order even if he kill his own kin
\nand countrymen; a judge’s to send the guilty to prison and hang the murderer.
\nAnd so long as these positions are accepted, the duty remains clear, a
\npractical matter of course even when it is not a point of honour or affection,
\nand overrides the absolute religious or moral law. But what if the inner view
\nis changed, if the lawyer is awakened to the absolute sinfulness of falsehood,
\nthe judge becomes convinced that capital punishment is a crime against
\nhumanity, the man called upon to the battlefield feels, like the conscientious
\nobjector of today or as a Tolstoy would feel, that in no circumstances is it
\npermissible to take human life any more than to eat human flesh? It is obvious
\nthat here the moral law which is above all relative duties must prevail; and
\nthat law depends on no social relation or conception of duty but on the
\nawakened inner perception of man, the moral being. <\/p>\n

There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of
\nconduct each valid on its own plane, the rule principally dependent on external
\nstatus and the rule independent of status and entirely <\/p>\n

\nPage 31<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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dependent
\non the thought and conscience. The Gita does not teach us to subordinate the
\nhigher plane to the lower, it does not ask the awakened moral consciousness to
\nslay itself on the altar of duty as a sacrifice and victim to the law of the
\nsocial status. It calls us higher and not lower; from the conflict of the two
\nplanes it bids us ascend to a supreme poise above the mainly practical, above
\nthe purely ethical, to the Brahmic consciousness. It replaces the conception of
\nsocial duty by a divine obligation. The subjection to external law gives place
\nto a certain principle of inner self-determination of action proceeding by the
\nsoul’s freedom from the tangled law of works. And this, as we shall see, \u2013 the
\nBrahmic consciousness, the soul’s freedom from works and the determination of
\nworks in<\/p>\n

the
\nnature by the Lord within and above us, \u2013 is the kernel of the Gita’s teaching
\nwith regard to action. <\/p>\n

The Gita can only be understood, like any other great work of
\nthe kind, by studying it in its entirety and as a developing argument. But the
\nmodern interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankim Chandra Chatterji
\nwho first gave to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an
\nalmost exclusive stress on the first three or four chapters and in those on the
\nidea of equality, on the expression kartavyam<\/i>
\nkarma<\/i>, the work that is to be done,
\nwhich they render by duty, and on the phrase \u201cThou hast a right to action, but
\nnone to the fruits of action\u201d which is now popularly quoted as the great word, mahāvākya<\/i>, of the Gita. The
\nrest of the eighteen chapters with their high philosophy are given a secondary
\nimportance, except indeed the great vision in the eleventh. This is natural
\nenough for the modern mind which is, or has been till yesterday, inclined to be
\nimpatient of metaphysical subtleties and far-off spiritual seekings, eager to
\nget to work and, like Arjuna himself, mainly concerned for a workable law of
\nworks, a dharma<\/i>. But it is the wrong
\nway to handle this Scripture. <\/p>\n

The equality which the Gita preaches is not
\ndisinterestedness, \u2013 the great command to Arjuna given after<\/i> the foundation and main structure of the teaching have been
\nlaid and built, \u201cArise, slay thy enemies, enjoy a prosperous kingdom,\u201d has not
\nthe ring of an uncompromising altruism or of a white, dispassionate<\/p>\n

  Page 32<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

abnegation;
\nit is a state of inner poise and wideness which is the foundation of spiritual
\nfreedom. With that poise, in that freedom we have to do the \u201cwork that is to be
\ndone,\u201d a phrase which the Gita uses with the greatest wideness including in it
\nall works, sarvakarmāni<\/i>,
\nand which far exceeds, though it may include, social duties or ethical
\nobligations. What is the work to be done is not to be determined by the
\nindividual choice; nor is the right to the action and the rejection of claim to
\nthe fruit the great word of the Gita, but only a preliminary word governing the
\nfirst state of the disciple when he begins ascending the hill of Yoga. It is
\npractically superseded at a subsequent stage. For the Gita goes on to affirm
\nemphatically that the man is not the doer of the action; it is Prakriti, it is
\nNature, it is the great Force with its three modes of action that works through
\nhim, and he must learn to see that it is not he who does the work. Therefore
\nthe \u201cright to action\u201d is an idea which is only valid so long as we are still
\nunder the illusion of being the doer; it must necessarily disappear from the
\nmind like the claim to the fruit, as soon as we cease to be to our own
\nconsciousness the doer of our works. All pragmatic egoism, whether of the claim
\nto fruits or of the right to action, is then at an end. <\/p>\n

But the determinism of Prakriti is not the last word of the
\nGita. The equality of the will and the rejection of fruits are only means for
\nentering with the mind and the heart and the understanding into the divine
\nconsciousness and living in it; and the Gita expressly says that they are to be
\nemployed as a means as long as the disciple is unable so to live or even to
\nseek by practice the gradual development of this higher state. And what is this
\nDivine, whom Krishna declares himself to be? It is the
\nPurushottama beyond the Self that acts not, beyond the Prakriti that acts,
\nfoundation of the one, master of the other, the Lord of whom all is the
\nmanifestation, who even in our present subjection to Maya sits in the heart of
\nHis creatures governing the works of Prakriti, He by whom the armies on the
\nfield of Kurukshetra have already been slain while yet they live and who uses
\nArjuna only as an instrument or immediate occasion of this great slaughter.
\nPrakriti is only His executive force. The disciple has to rise beyond this
\nForce and its three modes or Gunas; he has to  <\/p>\n

\nPage 33<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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

become
\ntrigunātīta<\/i>. Not to
\nher has he to surrender his actions, over which he has no longer any claim or
\n\u201cright\u201d, but into the being of the Supreme. Reposing his mind and
\nunderstanding, heart and will in Him, with self-knowledge, with God-knowledge,
\nwith world-knowledge, with a perfect equality, a perfect devotion, an absolute self-giving,
\nhe has to do works as an offering to the Master of all self-energisings and all
\nsacrifice. Identified in will, conscious with that consciousness, That shall
\ndecide and initiate the action. This is the solution which the Divine Teacher offers
\nto the disciple. <\/p>\n

What the great, the supreme word of the Gita is, its mahāvākya<\/i>, we have not to
\nseek; for the Gita itself declares it in its last utterance, the crowning note
\nof the great diapason. \u201cWith the Lord in thy heart take refuge with all thy
\nbeing; by His grace thou shalt attain to the supreme peace and the eternal status.
\nSo have I expounded to thee a knowledge more secret than that which is hidden.
\nFurther hear the most secret, the supreme word that I shall speak to thee.
\nBecome my-minded, devoted to Me, to Me do sacrifice and adoration; infallibly,
\nthou shalt come to Me, for dear to me art thou. Abandoning all laws of conduct
\nseek refuge in Me alone. I will release thee from all sin; do not grieve.\u201d <\/p>\n

The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great
\nsteps by which action rises out of the human into the divine plane leaving the
\nbondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law. First, by the
\nrenunciation of desire and a perfect equality works have to be done as a
\nsacrifice by man as the doer, a sacrifice to a deity who is the supreme and
\nonly Self though by him not yet realised in his own being. This is the initial
\nstep. Secondly, not only the desire of the fruit, but the claim to be the doer
\nof works has to be renounced in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the
\ninactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of
\nuniversal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable
\npower. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing
\nthis Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom
\nall works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To him love
\nand adoration and the sacrifice of works <\/p>\n

\nPage 34<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 have
\nto be offered; the whole being has to be surrendered to Him and the whole
\nconsciousness raised up to dwell in this divine consciousness so that the human
\nsoul may share in His divine transcendence of Nature and of His works and act
\nin a perfect spiritual liberty.<\/p>\n

The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless sacrifice of works,
\nand here the Gita’s insistence is on action. The second is Jnanayoga, the
\nself-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self and the world;
\nand here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues
\nand the path of Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the path of
\nKnowledge. The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme
\nSelf as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion; but the
\nknowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still
\nthe sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of
\nknowledge, works and devotion. And the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit
\nstill placed before the seeker, is attained, union with the divine Being and
\noneness with the supreme divine Nature. <\/p>\n

\nPage 35<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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