{"id":1406,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1406"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:36","slug":"03-our-demand-and-need-from-the-gita-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\/03-our-demand-and-need-from-the-gita-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-03_Our Demand and Need from the Gita.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nONE<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n


\nOur Demand and Need from the Gita<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/font>T<\/font><\/b>HE<\/font>
\nworld abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with revelations and
\nhalf-revelations, with religions and philosophies, sects and schools and
\nsystems. To these the many minds of a half-ripe knowledge or no knowledge at
\nall attach themselves with exclusiveness and passion and will have it that this
\nor the other book is alone the eternal Word of God and all others are either
\nimpostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that philosophy is the
\nlast word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are either errors or
\nsaved only by such partial truth in them as links them to the one true
\nphilosophical cult. Even the discoveries of physical Science have been elevated
\ninto a creed and in its name religion and spirituality banned as ignorance and
\nsuperstition, philosophy as frippery and moonshine. And to these bigoted
\nexclusions and vain wranglings even the wise have often lent themselves, misled
\nby some spirit of darkness that has mingled with their light and overshadowed
\nit with some cloud of intellectual egoism or spiritual pride. Mankind seems now
\nindeed inclined to grow a little modester and wiser; we no longer slay our
\nfellows in the name of God’s truth or because they have minds differently
\ntrained or differently constituted from ours; we are less ready to curse and
\nrevile our neighbour because he is wicked or presumptuous enough to differ from
\nus in opinion; we are ready even to admit that Truth is everywhere and cannot
\nbe our sole monopoly; we are beginning to look at other religions and
\nphilosophies for the truth and help they contain and no longer merely in order
\nto damn them as false or criticise what we conceive to be their errors. But we are
\nstill apt to declare that our truth gives us the supreme knowledge which other
\nreligions or philosophies have missed or only imperfectly grasped so that they
\ndeal either with subsidiary and inferior aspects of the truth of things or can
\nmerely
\n  <\/p>\n

\nPage 1<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 prepare less evolved minds for
\nthe heights to which we have arrived. And we are still prone to force upon
\nourselves or others the whole sacred mass of the book or gospel we admire,
\ninsisting that all shall be accepted as eternally valid truth and no iota or
\nunderline or diaeresis denied its part of the plenary inspiration.<\/p>\n

It may therefore
\nbe useful in approaching an ancient Scripture, such as the Veda, Upanishads or
\nGita, to indicate precisely the spirit in which we approach it and what exactly
\nwe think we may derive from it that is of value to humanity and its future.
\nFirst of all, there is undoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which we are
\nseeking, from which all other truth derives, by the light of which all other
\ntruth finds its right place, explanation and relation to the scheme of
\nknowledge. But precisely for that reason it cannot be shut up in a single
\ntrenchant formula, it is not likely to be found in its entirety or in all its
\nbearings in any single philosophy or scripture or uttered altogether and for
\never by any one teacher, thinker, prophet or Avatar. Nor has it been wholly
\nfound by us if our view of it necessitates the intolerant exclusion of the
\ntruth underlying other systems; for when we reject passionately, we mean simply
\nthat we cannot appreciate and explain. Secondly, this Truth, though it is one
\nand eternal, expresses itself in Time and through the mind of man; therefore
\nevery Scripture must necessarily contain two elements, one temporary,
\nperishable, belonging to the ideas of the period and country in which it was
\nproduced, the other eternal and imperishable and applicable in all ages and
\ncountries. Moreover, in the statement of the Truth the actual form given to it,
\nthe system and arrangement, the metaphysical and intellectual mould, the precise
\nexpression used must be largely subject to the mutations of Time and cease to
\nhave the same force; for the human intellect modifies itself always;
\ncontinually dividing and putting together it is obliged to shift its divisions
\ncontinually and to rearrange its syntheses; it is always leaving old expression
\nand symbol for new or, if it uses the old, it so changes its connotation or at
\nleast its exact content and association that we can never be quite sure of
\nunderstanding an ancient book of this kind precisely in the sense and spirit it
\nbore to its contemporaries. <\/p>\n

 Page 2<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 What is of entirely permanent
\nvalue is that which besides being universal has been experienced, lived and
\nseen with a higher than the intellectual vision. <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>I hold it therefore of small importance to
\nextract from the Gita its exact metaphysical connotation as it was understood
\nby the men of the time, \u2013 even if that were accurately possible. That it is not
\npossible, is shown by the divergence of the original commentaries which have
\nbeen and are still being written upon it; for they all agree in each
\ndisagreeing with all the others, each finds in the Gita its own system of
\nmetaphysics and trend of religious thought. Nor will even the most painstaking
\nand disinterested scholarship and the most luminous theories of the historical
\ndevelopment of Indian philosophy save us from inevitable error. But what we can
\ndo with profit is to seek in the Gita for the actual living truths it contains,
\napart from their metaphysical form, to extract from it what can help us or the
\nworld at large and to put it in the most natural and vital form and expression
\nwe can find that will be suitable to the mentality and helpful to the spiritual
\nneeds of our present-day humanity. No doubt in this attempt we may mix a good
\ndeal of error born of our own individuality and of the ideas in which we live,
\nas did greater men before us, but if we steep ourselves in the spirit of this
\ngreat Scripture and, above all, if we have tried to live in that spirit, we may
\nbe sure of finding in it as much real truth as we are capable of receiving as
\nwell as the spiritual influence and actual help that, personally, we were
\nintended to derive from it. And that is after all what Scriptures were written
\nto give; the rest is academical disputation or theological dogma. Only those
\nScriptures, religions, philosophies which can be thus constantly renewed,
\nrelived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed in
\nthe inner thought and spiritual experience of a developing humanity, continue
\nto be of living importance to mankind. The rest remain as monuments of the
\npast, but have no actual force or vital impulse for the future. <\/p>\n

In the Gita
\nthere is very little that is merely local or temporal and its spirit is so
\nlarge, profound and universal that even this little can easily be universalised
\nwithout the sense of the teaching suffering any diminution or violation; rather
\nby giving an ampler  <\/p>\n

\nPage 3<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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 scope to it than belonged to the
\ncountry and epoch, the teaching gains in depth, truth and power. Often indeed
\nthe Gita itself suggests the wider scope that can in this way be given to an
\nidea in itself local or limited. Thus it dwells on the ancient Indian system
\nand idea of sacrifice as an interchange between gods and men, \u2013 a system and
\nidea which have long been practically obsolete in India itself and are no
\nlonger real to the general human mind; but we find here a sense so entirely
\nsubtle, figurative and symbolic given to the word \u201csacrifice\u201d and the conception
\nof the gods is so little local or mythological, so entirely cosmic and
\nphilosophical that we can easily accept both as expressive of a practical fact
\nof psychology and general law of Nature and so apply them to the modern
\nconceptions of interchange between life and life and of ethical sacrifice and
\nself-giving as to widen and deepen these and cast over them a more spiritual
\naspect and the light of a profounder and more far-reaching Truth. Equally the
\nidea of action according to the Shastra, the fourfold order of society, the
\nallusion to the relative position of the four orders or the comparative
\nspiritual disabilities of Shudras and women seem at first sight local and
\ntemporal, and, if they are too much pressed in their literal sense, narrow so
\nmuch at least of the teaching, deprive it of its universality and spiritual
\ndepth and limit its validity for mankind at large. But if we look behind to the
\nspirit and sense and not at the local name and temporal institution, we see
\nthat here too the sense is deep and true and the spirit philosophical,
\nspiritual and universal. By Shastra we perceive that the Gita means the law
\nimposed on itself by humanity as a substitute for the purely egoistic action of
\nthe natural unregenerate man and a control on his tendency to seek in the
\nsatisfaction of his desire the standard and aim of his life. We see too that
\nthe fourfold order of society is merely the concrete form of a spiritual truth
\nwhich is itself independent of the form; it rests on the conception of right
\nworks as a rightly ordered expression of the nature of the individual being
\nthrough whom the work is done, that nature assigning him his line and scope in
\nlife according to his inborn quality and his self-expressive function. Since
\nthis is the spirit in which the Gita advances its most local and particular
\ninstances, we are justified in pursuing always the same principle and looking
\nalways  <\/p>\n

\nPage 4<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 for the deeper general truth
\nwhich is sure to underlie whatever seems at first sight merely local and of the
\ntime. For we shall find always that the deeper truth and principle is implied
\nin the grain of the thought even when it is not expressly stated in its
\nlanguage. <\/p>\n

Nor shall we
\ndeal in any other spirit with the element of philosophical dogma or religious
\ncreed which either enters into the Gita or hangs about it owing to its use of
\nthe philosophical terms and religious symbols current at the time. When the
\nGita speaks of Sankhya and Yoga, we shall not discuss beyond the limits of what
\nis just essential for our statement, the relations of the Sankhya of the Gita
\nwith its one Purusha and strong Vedantic colouring to the non-theistic or
\n\u201catheistic\u201d Sankhya that has come down to us bringing with it its scheme of
\nmany Purushas and one Prakriti, nor of the Yoga of the Gita, many-sided,
\nsubtle, rich and flexible to the theistic doctrine and the fixed, scientific,
\nrigorously defined and graded system of the Yoga of Patanjali. In the Gita the
\nSankhya and Yoga are evidently only two convergent parts of the same Vedantic
\ntruth or rather two concurrent ways of approaching its realisation, the one
\nphilosophical, intellectual, analytic, the other intuitional, devotional,
\npractical, ethical, synthetic, reaching knowledge through experience. The Gita
\nrecognises no real difference in their teachings. Still less need we discuss
\nthe theories which regard the Gita as the fruit of some particular<\/p>\n

religious system or tradition.
\nIts teaching is universal whatever may have been its origins. <\/p>\n

The
\nphilosophical system of the Gita, its arrangement of truth, is not that part of
\nits teaching which is the most vital, profound, eternally durable; but most of
\nthe material of which the system is composed, the principal ideas suggestive
\nand penetrating which are woven into its complex harmony, are eternally valuable
\nand valid; for they are not merely the luminous ideas or striking speculations
\nof a philosophic intellect, but rather enduring truths of spiritual experience,
\nverifiable facts of our highest psychological possibilities which no attempt to
\nread deeply the mystery of existence can afford to neglect. Whatever the system
\nmay be, it is not, as the commentators strive to make it, framed or intended to
\nsupport any exclusive school of philosophical thought or to put forward
\npredominantly the claims of any one  <\/p>\n

\nPage 5<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 form of Yoga. The language of the
\nGita, the structure of thought, the combination and balancing of ideas belong
\nneither to the temper of a sectarian teacher nor to the spirit of a rigorous
\nanalytical dialectics cutting off one angle of the truth to exclude all the
\nothers; but rather there is a wide, undulating, encircling movement of ideas
\nwhich is the manifestation of a vast synthetic mind and a rich synthetic
\nexperience. This is one of those great syntheses in which Indian spirituality
\nhas been as rich as in its creation of the more intensive, exclusive movements
\nof knowledge and religious realisation that follow out with an absolute
\nconcentration one clue, one path to its extreme issues. It does not cleave
\nasunder, but reconciles and unifies. <\/p>\n

The thought of
\nthe Gita is not pure Monism although it sees in one unchanging, pure, eternal
\nSelf the foundation of all cosmic existence, nor Mayavada although it speaks of
\nthe Maya of the three modes of Prakriti omnipresent in the created world; nor
\nis it qualified Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme
\nPrakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in
\nGod rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness;
\nnor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double
\nprinciple of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism<\/p>\n

although it presents to us
\nKrishna, who is the Avatara of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as the supreme
\nDeity and allows no essential difference nor any actual superiority of the
\nstatus of the indefinable relationless Brahman over that of this Lord of beings
\nwho is the Master of the universe and the Friend of all creatures. Like the
\nearlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later synthesis at once
\nspiritual and intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid determination as
\nwould injure its universal comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite
\nto that of the polemist commentators who found this Scripture established as
\none of the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a
\nweapon of offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is
\nnot a weapon for dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the\u00a0 <\/span>whole world of spiritual truth and experience
\nand the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that supreme region. It
\nmaps out, but\u00a0 <\/span>it does not cut up or
\nbuild walls or hedges to confine our vision. <\/p>\n

 Page 6<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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There have been
\nother syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic
\nsynthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest
\nrangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic
\nexistence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into
\nthose superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material
\nmentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic
\nRishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the
\nincreasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads
\nmeet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning
\nexperience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and
\nprofound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great
\nharmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated
\nknowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual
\nseeking. The Gita starts from this Vedantic synthesis and upon the basis of its
\nessential ideas builds another harmony of the three great means and powers,
\nLove, Knowledge and Works, through which the soul of man can directly approach
\nand cast itself into the Eternal. There is yet another, the Tantric,\u00b9 <\/span>which though less subtle and
\nspiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the
\nGita, \u2013 for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels
\nthem to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole
\nof Life in our divine scope as the Lila\u00b2
\n<\/span>of the Divine; and in some directions it is more immediately rich and
\nfruitful, for it brings forward into the foreground along with divine
\nknowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets
\nalso of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for
\nthe opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives
\nonly a passing and perfunctory attention. Moreover it grasps at that idea of
\nthe divine perfectibility of man, possessed by the Vedic Rishis but thrown into
\nthe background by the intermediate ages, which is destined to fill so large a
\nplace in <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>All the Puranic tradition,
\nit must be remembered, draws the richness of its contents from the Tantra<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00b2<\/font><\/span>The cosmic Play.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 7<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 any future synthesis of human
\nthought, experience and aspiration. <\/p>\n

We of the coming day stand at the
\nhead of a new age of development which must lead to such a new and larger
\nsynthesis. We are not called upon to be orthodox Vedantins of any of the three
\nschools or Tantrics or to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past
\nor to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita.
\nThat would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life
\nout of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past,
\ninstead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not
\nbelong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future. A mass of new
\nmaterial is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of
\nthe great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of
\nthe meaning of Buddhism, but to take full account of the potent though limited
\nrevelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and
\ndateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence
\nof many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now
\nbreaking out again from behind the veil. All this points to a new, a very rich,
\na very vast synthesis; a fresh and widely embracing harmonisation of our gains
\nis both an intellectual and a spiritual necessity of the future. But just as
\nthe past syntheses have taken those which preceded them for their
\nstarting-point, so also must that of the future, to be on firm ground, proceed
\nfrom what the great bodies of realised spiritual thought and experience in the
\npast have given. Among them the Gita takes a most important place.<\/p>\n

Our object,
\nthen, in studying the Gita will not be a scholastic or academical scrutiny of
\nits thought, nor to place its philosophy in the history of metaphysical
\nspeculation, nor shall we deal with it in the manner of the analytical
\ndialectician. We approach it for help and light and our aim must be to
\ndistinguish its essential and living message, that in it on which humanity has
\nto seize for its perfection and its highest spiritual welfare. <\/p>\n

\nPage 8<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ONE  Our Demand and Need from the Gita    THE world abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with revelations and half-revelations, with religions and philosophies,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","wpcat-31-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}