{"id":1404,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1404"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:35","slug":"04-the-divine-teacher-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\/04-the-divine-teacher-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-04_The Divine Teacher.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\n
\nTWO<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/font>The Divine Teacher<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 
\n \n<\/p>\n

\n                 T<\/font><\/b>HE<\/font>
\npeculiarity of the Gita among the great religious books\u00a0 <\/span>of the world is that it does not stand apart
\nas a work by itself, the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality
\nlike Christ, Mahomed or Buddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like
\nthe Veda and Upanishads, but is given as an episode in an epic history of
\nnations and their wars and men and their deeds and arises out of a critical
\nmoment in the soul of one of its leading personages face to face with the
\ncrowning action of his life, a work terrible, violent and sanguinary, at the
\npoint when he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its
\ninexorable completion. It matters little whether or no, as modern criticism
\nsupposes, the Gita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the
\nMahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the authority
\nand popularity of the great national epic. There seem to me to be strong
\ngrounds against this supposition for which, besides, the evidence, extrinsic or
\ninternal, is in the last degree scanty and insufficient. But even if it be
\nsound, there remains the fact that the author has not only taken pains to
\ninterweave his work inextricably into the vast web of the larger poem, but is careful
\nagain and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has
\narisen; he returns to it prominently, not only at the end, but in the middle of
\nhis profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept the insistence of
\nthe author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the
\nTeacher and the disciple. The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded
\nnot merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine,
\nbut as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and
\nspirituality to human life. For what that crisis stands, what is the
\nsignificance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on Arjuna’s
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n Page 9<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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inner being, we have first to
\ndetermine if we would grasp the central drift of the ideas of the Gita. <\/p>\n

Very obviously a
\ngreat body of the profoundest teaching cannot be built round an ordinary
\noccurrence which has no gulfs of deep suggestion and hazardous difficulty
\nbehind its superficial and outward aspects and can be governed well enough by
\nthe ordinary everyday standards of thought and action. There are indeed three
\nthings in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost symbolic, typical
\nof the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human existence
\nat its roots; they are the divine personality of the Teacher, his
\ncharacteristic relations with his disciple and the occasion of his teaching.
\nThe teacher is God himself descended into humanity; the disciple is the first,
\nas we might say in modern language, the representative man of his age, closest
\nfriend and chosen instrument of the Avatar, his protagonist in an immense work
\nand struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to the actors in it, known
\nonly to the incarnate Godhead who guides it all from behind the veil of his
\nunfathomable mind of knowledge; the occasion is the violent crisis of that work
\nand struggle at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty and blind
\nviolence of its apparent movements forces itself with the shock of a visible
\nrevelation on the mind of its representative man and raises the whole question
\nof the meaning of God in the world and the goal and drift and sense of human
\nlife and conduct. <\/p>\n

India
\nhas from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the Avatara,
\nthe descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West
\nthis belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented
\nthrough exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the
\nreason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India
\nit has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life
\nand taken firm root in the consciousness of the race. All existence is a
\nmanifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except
\nas either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore
\nevery conscious being is in part or in some
\n  <\/p>\n

\nPage 10<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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 way a descent of the Infinite
\ninto the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation
\nand there is a gradation between the supreme being\u00b9 <\/span>of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly
\nor wholly by ignorance of self in the finite. The conscious embodied soul\u00b2 <\/span>is the spark of the divine Fire and
\nthat soul in man opens out to self-knowledge as it develops out of ignorance of
\nself into self-being. The Divine also, pouring itself into the forms of the
\ncosmic existence, is revealed ordinarily in an efflorescence of its powers, in
\nenergies and magnitudes of its knowledge, love, joy, developed force of being,\u00b3 <\/span>in degrees and faces of its
\ndivinity. But when the divine Consciousness and Power, taking upon itself the
\nhuman form and the human mode of action, possesses it not only by powers and
\nmagnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal
\nself-knowledge, when the Unborn knows itself and acts in the frame of the
\nmental being and the appearance of birth, that is the height of the conditioned
\nmanifestation; it is the full and conscious descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatara.
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Vaishnava
\nform of Vedantism which has laid most stress upon this conception expresses the
\nrelation of God in man to man in God by the double figure of Nara-Narayana,
\nassociated historically with the origin of a religious school very similar in
\nits doctrines to the teaching of the Gita. Nara
\nis the human soul which, eternal companion of the Divine, finds itself only
\nwhen it awakens to that companionship and begins, as the Gita would say, to
\nlive in God. Narayana is the divine Soul always present in our humanity, the
\nsecret guide, friend and helper of the human being, the \u201cLord who abides within
\nthe heart of creatures\u201d of the Gita; when within us the veil of that secret
\nsanctuary is withdrawn and man speaks face to face with God, hears the divine
\nvoice, receives the divine light, acts in the divine power, then becomes
\npossible the supreme uplifting of the embodied human conscious-being into the
\nunborn and eternal. He becomes capable of that dwelling in God and giving up of
\nhis whole consciousness into the Divine which the Gita upholds as the best or
\nhighest secret of things, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>para bhāva<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00b2<\/span>dehī<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00b3<\/span>vibhūti<\/i>.<\/font>  <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 11<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

uttamam rahasyam<\/i>. When this eternal divine Consciousness always
\npresent in every human being, this God in man, takes possession partly\u00b9 <\/span>or wholly of the human
\nconsciousness and becomes in visible human shape the guide, teacher, leader of
\nthe world, not as those who living in their humanity yet feel something of the
\npower or light or love of the divine Gnosis informing and conducting them, but
\nout of that divine Gnosis itself, direct from its central force and plenitude,
\nthen we have the manifest Avatar. The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in
\nman; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.\n<\/p>\n

When we thus
\nunderstand the conception of Avatarhood, we see that whether for the
\nfundamental teaching of the Gita, our present subject, or for spiritual life
\ngenerally the external aspect has only a secondary importance. Such
\ncontroversies as the one that has raged in Europe over the historicity of
\nChrist, would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time; he
\nwould concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any religious
\nimportance; for what does it matter in the end whether a Jesus son of the
\ncarpenter Joseph was actually born in Nazareth or Bethlehem, lived and taught
\nand was done to death on a real or trumped-up charge of sedition, so long as we
\ncan know by spiritual experience the inner Christ, live uplifted in the light
\nof his teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law by that atonement
\nof man with God of which the crucifixion is the symbol? If the Christ, God made
\nman, lives within our spiritual being, it would seem to matter little whether
\nor not a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. So too
\nthe Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation
\nof the Divine and not the historical teacher and leader of men. <\/p>\n

In seeking the
\nkernel of the thought of the Gita we need, therefore, only concern ourselves
\nwith the spiritual significance of the human-divine Krishna
\nof the Mahabharata who is presented to us as the teacher of Arjuna on the battle-field
\nof Kurukshetra. The historical Krishna, no doubt,
\nexisted. We<\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9<\/span>Chaitanya, the Avatar of
\nNadiya, is said to have been thus partly or occasionally occupied by the divine
\nConsciousness and Power.<\/span><\/p>\n

  Page 12<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 meet the name first in the
\nChhandogya Upanishad where all we can gather about him is that he was well
\nknown in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman, so well known indeed
\nin his personality and the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to
\nrefer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of Devaki for all to
\nunderstand who was meant. In the same Upanishad we find mention of King
\nDhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya, and since tradition associated the two
\ntogether so closely that they are both of them leading personages in the action
\nof the Mahabharata, we may fairly conclude that they were actually
\ncontemporaries and that the epic is to a great extent dealing with historical
\ncharacters and in the war of Kurukshetra with a historical occurrence imprinted
\nfirmly on the memory of the race. We know too that Krishna and Arjuna were the
\nobject of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries; and there is some
\nreason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and philosophical
\ntradition from which the Gita may have gathered many of its elements and even
\nthe foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion and works, and perhaps
\nalso that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or at the least one of
\nthe early teachers of this school. The Gita may well in spite of its later form
\nrepresent the outcome in Indian thought of the teaching of Krishna and the
\nconnection of that teaching with the historical Krishna, with Arjuna and with
\nthe war of Kurukshetra may be something more than a dramatic fiction. In the
\nMahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical character and the
\nAvatar; his worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been well established by
\nthe time \u2013 apparently from the fifth to the first centuries B.C. \u2013 when the old
\nstory and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form. There
\nis a hint also in the poem of the story or legend of the Avatar’s early life in
\nVrindavan which, as developed by the Puranas into an intense and powerful
\nspiritual symbol, has exercised so profound an influence on the religious mind
\nof India. We
\nhave also in the Harivansha an account of the life of Krishna,
\nvery evidently full of legends, which perhaps formed the basis of the Puranic
\naccounts. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 13<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 But all this,
\nthough of considerable historical importance, has none whatever for our present
\npurpose. We are concerned only with the figure of the divine Teacher as it is
\npresented to us in the Gita and with the Power for which it there stands in the
\nspiritual illumination of the human being. The Gita accepts the human
\nAvatarhood; for the Lord speaks of the repeated, the constant\u00b9 <\/span>manifestation of the Divine in
\nhumanity, when He the eternal Unborn assumes by his Maya, by the power of the
\ninfinite Consciousness to clothe itself apparently in finite forms, the
\nconditions of becoming which we call birth. But it is not this upon which
\nstress is laid, but on the transcendent, the cosmic and the internal Divine; it
\nis on the Source of all things and the Master of all and on the Godhead secret
\nin man. It is this internal divinity who is meant when the Gita speaks of the
\ndoer of violent Asuric austerities troubling the God within or of the sin of
\nthose who despise the Divine lodged in the human body or of the same Godhead
\ndestroying our ignorance by the blazing lamp of knowledge. It is then the
\neternal Avatar, this God in man, the divine Consciousness always present in the
\nhuman being who manifested in a visible form speaks to the human soul in the
\nGita, illumines the meaning of life and the secret of divine action and gives
\nit the light of the divine knowledge and guidance and the assuring and
\nfortifying word of the Master of existence in the hour when it comes face to
\nface with the painful mystery of the world. This is what the Indian religious
\nconsciousness seeks to make near to itself in whatever form, whether in the
\nsymbolic human image it enshrines in its temples or in the worship of its
\nAvatars or in the devotion to the human Guru through whom the voice of the one
\nworld-Teacher makes itself heard. Through these it strives to awaken to that
\ninner voice, unveil that form of the Formless and stand face to face with that
\nmanifest divine Power, Love and Knowledge. <\/p>\n

Secondly, there
\nis the typical, almost the symbolic significance of the human Krishna
\nwho stands behind the great action of the Mahabharata, not as its hero, but as
\nits secret centre and hidden guide. That action is the action of a whole<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9<\/span>bahūni me vyatītāni janmāni . . . sambhavāmi
\nyuge yuge.<\/font><\/i>  <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 14<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

world of men and nations, some of
\nwhom have come as helpers of an effort and result by which they do not
\npersonally profit, and to these he is a leader, some as its opponents and to
\nthem he also is an opponent, the baffler of their designs and their slayer and
\nhe seems even to some of them an instigator of all evil and destroyer of their
\nold order and familiar world and secure conventions of virtue and good; some
\nare representatives of that which has to be fulfilled and to them he is
\ncounsellor, helper, friend. Where the action pursues its natural course or the doers
\nof the work have to suffer at the hands of its enemies and undergo the ordeals
\nwhich prepare them for mastery, the Avatar is unseen or appears only for
\noccasional comfort and aid, but at every crisis his hand is felt, yet in such a
\nway that all imagine themselves to be the protagonists and even Arjuna, his
\nnearest friend and chief instrument, does not perceive that he is an instrument
\nand has to confess at last that all the while he did not really know his divine
\nFriend. He has received counsel from his wisdom, help from his power, has loved
\nand been loved, has even adored without understanding his divine nature; but he
\nhas been guided like all others through his own egoism and the counsel, help
\nand direction have been given in the language and received by the thoughts of
\nthe Ignorance. Until the moment when all has been pushed to the terrible issue of
\nthe struggle on the field of Kurukshetra and the Avatar stands at last, still
\nnot as fighter, but as the charioteer in the battle-car which carries the
\ndestiny of the fight, he has not revealed Himself even to those whom he has
\nchosen. <\/p>\n

Thus the figure
\nof Krishna becomes, as it were, the symbol of the divine
\ndealings with humanity. Through our egoism and ignorance we are moved, thinking
\nthat we are the doers of the work, vaunting of ourselves as the real causes of
\nthe result, and that which moves us we see only occasionally as some vague or
\neven some human and earthly fountain of knowledge, aspiration, force, some
\nPrinciple or Light or Power which we acknowledge and adore without knowing what
\nit is until the occasion arises that forces us to stand arrested before the
\nVeil. And the action in which this divine figure moves is the whole wide action
\nof man in life, not merely the inner life, but all this obscure course of  <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 15<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 the world which we can judge only
\nby the twilight of the human reason as it opens up dimly before our uncertain
\nadvance the little span in front. This is the distinguishing feature of the
\nGita that it is the culmination of such an action which gives rise to its
\nteaching and assigns that prominence and bold relief to the gospel of works
\nwhich it enunciates with an emphasis and force we do not find in other Indian
\nScriptures. Not only in the Gita, but in other passages of the Mahabharata we
\nmeet with Krishna declaring emphatically the necessity
\nof action, but it is here that he reveals its secret and the divinity behind
\nour works. <\/p>\n

The symbolic
\ncompanionship of Arjuna and Krishna, the human and the divine soul, is
\nexpressed elsewhere in Indian thought, in the heavenward journey of Indra and
\nKutsa seated in one chariot, in the figure of the two birds upon one tree in the
\nUpanishad, in the twin figures of Nara and Narayana, the seers who do tapasyā<\/i> together for the knowledge.
\nBut in all three it is the idea of the divine knowledge in which, as the Gita
\nsays, all action culminates that is in view; here it is instead the action
\nwhich leads to that knowledge and in which the divine Knower figures himself.
\nArjuna and Krishna, this human and this divine, stand
\ntogether not as seers in the peaceful hermitage of meditation, but as fighter
\nand holder of the reins in the clamorous field, in the midst of the hurtling
\nshafts, in the chariot of battle. The Teacher of the Gita is therefore not only
\nthe God in man who unveils himself in the word of knowledge, but the God in man
\nwho moves our whole world of action, by and for whom all our humanity exists
\nand struggles and labours, towards whom all human life travels and progresses.
\nHe is the secret Master of works and sacrifice and the Friend of the human
\npeoples. <\/p>\n

\nPage 16<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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