{"id":1420,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1420"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:41","slug":"08-man-and-the-battle-of-life-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\/08-man-and-the-battle-of-life-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-08_Man and the Battle of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

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

 <\/font><\/span>Man and the <\/font> <\/span>
\nBattle<\/font><\/span><\/b> of Life<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nT<\/font><\/span><\/b>HUS<\/font>, if we are to appreciate in its catholicity
\nthe teaching of the Gita, we must accept intellectually its standpoint and courageous
\nenvisaging of the manifest nature and process of the world. The divine charioteer
\nof Kurukshetra reveals himself on one side as the Lord of all the worlds and
\nthe Friend and omniscient Guide of all creatures, on the other as Time the
\nDestroyer \u201carisen for the destruction of these peoples.\u201d The Gita, following in
\nthis the spirit of the catholic Hindu religion, affirms this also as God; it
\ndoes not attempt to evade the enigma of the world by escaping from it through a
\nside-door. If, in fact, we do not regard existence merely as the mechanic
\naction of a brute and indifferent material Force or, on the other hand, as an
\nequally mechanical play of ideas and energies arising out of an original
\nNon-Existence or else reflected in the passive Soul or the evolution of a dream
\nor nightmare in the surface consciousness of an indifferent, immutable
\nTranscendence which is unaffected by the dream and has no real part in it, \u2013 if
\nwe accept at all, as the Gita accepts, the existence of God, that is to say of
\nthe omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, yet always transcendent Being who manifests
\nthe world and Himself in the world, who is not the slave but the lord of His
\ncreative Consciousness, Nature or Force (Maya, Prakriti or Shakti), who is not
\nbaffled or thwarted in His world-conception or design by His creatures, man or devil,
\nwho does not need to justify Himself by shifting the responsibility for any
\npart of His creation or manifestation on that which is created or manifested,
\nthen the human being has to start from a great, a difficult act of faith.
\nFinding himself in a world which is apparently a chaos of battling powers, a
\nclash of vast and obscure forces, a life which subsists only by constant change
\nand death, menaced from every side by pain, suffering, evil and destruction, he
\nhas to see the omnipresent Deity in it all and conscious that<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 43<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

of this enigma there must be a
\nsolution and beyond this Ignorance in which he dwells a Knowledge that
\nreconciles, he has to take his stand upon this faith, \u201cThough Thou slay me, yet
\nwill I trust in Thee.\u201d All human thought or faith that is active and
\naffirmative, whether it be theistic, pantheistic or atheistic, does in fact
\ninvolve more or less explicitly and completely such an attitude. It admits and
\nit believes: admits the discords of the world, believes in some highest
\nprinciple of God, universal Being or Nature which shall enable us to transcend,
\novercome or harmonise these discords, perhaps even to do all three at once, to
\nharmonise by overcoming and transcending. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then, as to
\nhuman life in its actualities, we have to accept its aspect of a struggle and a
\nbattle mounting into supreme crises such as that of Kurukshetra. The Gita, as
\nwe have seen, takes for its frame such a period of transition and crisis as humanity
\nperiodically experiences in its history, in which great forces clash together
\nfor a huge destruction and reconstruction, intellectual, social, moral,
\nreligious, political, and these in the actual psychological and social stage of
\nhuman evolution culminate usually through a violent physical convulsion of
\nstrife, war or revolution. The Gita proceeds from the acceptance of the
\nnecessity in Nature for such vehement crises and it accepts not only the moral
\naspect, the struggle between righteousness and unrighteousness, between the
\nself-affirming law of Good and the forces that oppose its progression, but also
\nthe physical aspect, the actual armed war or other vehement physical strife
\nbetween the human beings who represent the antagonistic powers. We must
\nremember that the Gita was composed at a time when war was even more than it is
\nnow a necessary part of human activity and the idea of its elimination from the
\nscheme of life would have been an absolute chimera. The gospel of universal
\npeace and goodwill among men \u2013 for without a universal and entire mutual
\ngoodwill there can be no real and abiding peace \u2013 has never succeeded for a
\nmoment in possessing itself of human life during the historic cycle of our
\nprogress, because morally, socially, spiritually the race was not prepared and
\nthe poise of Nature in its evolution would not admit of its being immediately
\nprepared for any such transcendence. Even now we have not actually progressed
\nbeyond the<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/span>Page 44<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\n feasibility of a system of
\naccommodation between conflicting interests which may minimise the recurrence
\nof the worst forms of strife. And towards this consummation the method, the
\napproach which humanity has been forced by its own nature to adopt, is a
\nmonstrous mutual massacre unparalleled in history; a universal war, full of
\nbitterness and irreconcilable hatred, is the straight way and the triumphant
\nmeans modern man has found for the establishment of universal peace! That
\nconsummation, too, founded not upon any fundamental change in human nature, but
\nupon intellectual notions, economic convenience, vital and sentimental
\nshrinkings from the loss of life, discomfort and horror<\/span><\/p>\n

of war, effected by nothing better
\nthan political adjustments, gives no very certain promise of firm foundation
\nand long duration. A day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity
\nwill be ready spiritually, morally, socially for the reign of universal peace;
\nmeanwhile the aspect of battle and the nature and function of man as a fighter
\nhave to be accepted and accounted for by any practical philosophy and religion.
\nThe Gita, taking life as it is and not only as it may be in some distant
\nfuture, puts the question how this aspect and function of life, which is really
\nan aspect and function of human activity in general, can be harmonised with the
\nspiritual existence. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Gita is
\ntherefore addressed to a fighter, a man of action, one whose duty in life is
\nthat of war and protection, war as a part of government for the protection of
\nthose who are excused from that duty, debarred from protecting themselves and
\ntherefore at the mercy of the strong and the violent, war, secondly and by a
\nmoral extension of this idea, for the protection of the weak and the oppressed
\nand for the maintenance of right and justice in the world. For all these ideas,
\nthe social and practical, the moral and the chivalrous enter into the Indian
\nconception of the Kshatriya, the man who is a warrior and ruler by function and
\na knight and king in his nature. Although the more general and universal ideas
\nof the Gita are those which are the most important to us, we ought not to leave
\nout of consideration altogether the colouring and trend they take from the
\npeculiar Indian culture and social system in the midst of which they arose.
\nThat system differed from the modern in its conception. To the modern mind <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 45<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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 man is a thinker, worker or producer
\nand a fighter all in one, and the tendency of the social system is to lump all
\nthese activities and to demand from each individual his contribution to the
\nintellectual, economical and military life and needs of the community without
\npaying any heed to the demands of his individual nature and temperament. The
\nancient Indian civilisation laid peculiar stress on the individual nature,
\ntendency, temperament and sought to determine by it the ethical type, function
\nand place in the society. Nor did it consider man primarily as a social being
\nor the fullness of his social existence as the highest ideal, but rather as a
\nspiritual being in process of formation and development and his social life, ethical
\nlaw, play of temperament and exercise of function as means and stages of
\nspiritual formation. Thought and knowledge, war and government, production and
\ndistribution, labour and service were carefully differentiated functions of society,
\neach assigned to those who were naturally called to it and providing the right
\nmeans by which they could individually proceed towards their spiritual
\ndevelopment and self-perfection. <\/span><\/p>\n

The modern
\nidea of a common obligation in all the main departments of human activity has
\nits advantages; it helps to greater solidarity, unity and fullness in the life
\nof the community and a more all-round development of the complete human being
\nas opposed to the endless divisions and over-specialisation and the narrowing
\nand artificial shackling of the life of the individual to which the Indian
\nsystem eventually led. But it has also its disadvantages and in certain of its
\ndevelopments the too logical application of it has led to grotesque and
\ndisastrous absurdities. This is evident enough in the character of modern war.
\nFrom the idea of a common military obligation binding on every individual to
\ndefend and fight for the community by which he lives and profits, has arisen
\nthe system by which the whole manhood of the nation is hurled into the bloody
\ntrench to slay and be slain, thinkers, artists, philosophers, priests,
\nmerchants, artisans all torn from their natural functions, the whole life of
\nthe community disorganised, reason and conscience overridden, even the minister
\nof religion who is salaried by the State or called by his function to preach
\nthe gospel of peace and love forced to deny <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 46<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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his creed and become a butcher of
\nhis fellow-men! Not only are conscience and nature violated by the arbitrary
\nfiat of the military State, but national defence carried to an insane extreme
\nmakes its best attempt to become a national suicide. <\/span><\/p>\n

Indian
\ncivilisation on the contrary made it its chief aim to minimise the incidence
\nand disaster of war. For this purpose it limited the military obligation to the
\nsmall class who by their birth, nature and traditions were marked out for this
\nfunction and found in it their natural means of self-development through the
\nflowering of the soul in the qualities of courage, disciplined force, strong
\nhelpfulness and chivalrous nobility for which the warrior’s life pursued under the
\nstress of a high ideal gives a field and opportunities. The rest of the
\ncommunity was in every way guarded from slaughter and outrage; their life and
\noccupations were as little interfered with as possible and the combative and
\ndestructive tendencies of human nature were given a restricted field, confined
\nin a sort of lists so as to do the minimum amount of harm to the general life
\nof the race, while at the same time by being subjected to high ethical ideals
\nand every possible rule of humanity and chivalry the function of war was
\nobliged to help in ennobling and elevating instead of brutalising those who
\nperformed it. It must be remembered that it is war of this kind and under these
\nconditions that the Gita had in view, war considered as an inevitable part of
\nhuman life, but so restricted and regulated as to serve like other activities
\nthe ethical and spiritual development which was then regarded as the whole real
\nobject of life, war destructive within certain carefully fixed limits of the
\nbodily life of individual men but constructive of their inner life and of the
\nethical elevation of the race. That war in the past has, when subjected to an
\nideal, helped in this elevation, as in the development of knighthood and
\nchivalry, the Indian ideal of the Kshatriya, the Japanese ideal of the Samurai,
\ncan only be denied by the fanatics of pacifism. When it has fulfilled its
\nfunction, it may well disappear; for if it tries to survive its utility, it
\nwill appear as an unrelieved brutality of violence stripped of its ideal and
\nconstructive aspects and will be rejected by the progressive mind of
\nhumanity; but its past service to the race must be admitted in any reasonable
\nview of our evolution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 47<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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The physical
\nfact of war, however, is only a special and outward manifestation of a general
\nprinciple in life and the Kshatriya is only the outward manifestation and type
\nof a general characteristic necessary to the completeness of human perfection.
\nWar typifies and embodies physically the aspect of battle and struggle which
\nbelongs to all life, both to our inner and our outer living, in a world whose
\nmethod is a meeting and wrestling of forces which progress by mutual
\ndestruction towards a continually changing adjustment expressive of a
\nprogressive harmonising and hopeful of a perfect harmony based upon some yet
\nungrasped potentiality of oneness. The Kshatriya is the type and embodiment of
\nthe fighter in man who accepts this principle in life and faces it as a warrior
\nstriving towards mastery, not shrinking from the destruction of bodies and
\nforms, but through it all aiming at the realisation of some principle of right,
\njustice, law which shall be the basis of the harmony towards which the struggle
\ntends. The Gita accepts this aspect of the world-energy and the physical fact
\nof war which embodies it, and it addresses itself to the man of action, the
\nstriver and fighter, the Kshatriya, \u2013 war which is the extreme contradiction of
\nthe soul’s high aspiration to peace within and harmlessness<\/span>\u00b9 <\/span>without, the striver and fighter
\nwhose necessary turmoil of struggle and action seems to be the very
\ncontradiction of the soul’s high ideal of calm mastery and self-possession,\u2014and
\nit seeks for an issue from the contradiction, a point at which its terms meet
\nand a poise which shall be the first essential basis of harmony and
\ntranscendence. <\/span><\/p>\n

Man meets
\nthe battle of life in the manner most consonant with the essential quality most
\ndominant in his nature. There are, according to the Sankhya philosophy accepted
\nin this respect by the Gita, three essential qualities or modes of the
\nworld-energy and therefore also of human nature, sattva<\/i>, the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction, rajas<\/i>, the mode of passion, action and
\nstruggling emotion, tamas<\/i>, the mode
\nof ignorance and inertia. Dominated by tamas<\/i>,
\nman does not so much meet the rush and shock of the world-energies whirling
\nabout him and converging upon him as he succumbs to them, is overborne by <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00b9<\/font><\/span>ahimsā<\/font><\/span><\/i>.<\/font><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 48<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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

them, afflicted, subjected; or at
\nthe most, helped by the other qualities, the tamasic man seeks only somehow to
\nsurvive, to subsist so long as he may, to shelter himself in the fortress of an
\nestablished routine of thought and action in which he feels himself to a
\ncertain extent protected from the battle, able to reject the demand which his
\nhigher nature makes upon him, excused from accepting the necessity of farther
\nstruggle and the ideal of an increasing effort and mastery. Dominated by rajas<\/i>, man flings himself into the
\nbattle and attempts to use the struggle of forces for his own egoistic benefit,
\nto slay, conquer, dominate, enjoy; or, helped by a certain measure of the
\nsattwic quality, the rajasic man makes the struggle itself a means of
\nincreasing inner mastery, joy, power, possession. The battle of life becomes
\nhis delight and passion partly for its own sake, for the pleasure of activity
\nand the sense of power, partly as a means of his increase and natural self-development.
\nDominated by sattva<\/i>, man seeks in the
\nmidst of the strife for a principle of law, right, poise, harmony, peace,
\nsatisfaction. The purely sattwic man tends to seek this within, whether for
\nhimself alone or with an impulse to communicate it, when won, to other human
\nminds, but usually by a sort of inner detachment from or else an outer
\nrejection of the strife and turmoil of the active world-energy; but if the sattwic
\nmind accepts partly the rajasic impulse, it seeks rather to impose this poise
\nand harmony upon the struggle and apparent chaos, to vindicate a victory for
\npeace, love and harmony over the principle of war, discord and struggle. All
\nthe attitudes adopted by the human mind towards the problem of life either derive
\nfrom the domination of one or other of these qualities or else from an attempt
\nat balance and harmony between them. <\/span><\/p>\n

But there
\ncomes also a stage in which the mind recoils from the whole problem and,
\ndissatisfied with the solutions given by the threefold mode of Nature, traigunya<\/i>, seeks for some higher
\nsolution outside of it or else above it. It looks for an escape either into
\nsomething which is outside and void of all qualities and therefore of all
\nactivity or in something which is superior to the three qualities and master of
\nthem and therefore at once capable of action and unaffected, undominated by its
\nown action, in the nirguna<\/i> or
\nthe trigunātīta<\/i>. It
\naspires to an absolute peace <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 49<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\n and unconditioned existence or to a dominant
\ncalm and superior existence. The natural movement of the former attitude is
\ntowards the renunciation of the world, sannyāsa<\/i>;
\nof the latter towards superiority to the claims of the lower nature and its
\nwhirl of actions and reactions, and its principle is equality and the inner
\nrenunciation of passion and desire. The former is the first impulse of Arjuna recoiling
\nfrom the calamitous culmination of all his heroic activity in the great
\ncataclysm of battle and massacre, Kurukshetra; losing his whole past principle
\nof action, inaction and the rejection of life and its claims seem to him the
\nonly issue. But it is to an inner superiority and not to the physical
\nrenunciation of life and action that he is called by the voice of the divine
\nTeacher. <\/span><\/p>\n

Arjuna is
\nthe Kshatriya, the rajasic man who governs his rajasic action by a high sattwic
\nideal. He advances to this gigantic struggle, to this Kurukshetra with the full
\nacceptance of the joy of battle, as to \u201ca holiday of fight\u201d, but with a proud confidence
\nin the righteousness of his cause; he advances in his rapid chariot tearing the
\nhearts of his enemies with the victorious clamour of his war-conch; for he
\nwishes to look upon all these Kings of men who have come here to champion against
\nhim the cause of unrighteousness and establish as a rule of life the disregard
\nof law, justice and truth which they would replace by the rule of a selfish and
\narrogant egoism. When this confidence is shattered within him, when he is
\nsmitten down from his customary attitude and mental basis of life, it is by the
\nuprush of the tamasic quality into the rajasic man, inducing a recoil of
\nastonishment, grief, horror, dismay, dejection, bewilderment of the mind and
\nthe war of reason against itself, a collapse towards the principle of ignorance
\nand inertia. As a result he turns towards renunciation. Better the life of the
\nmendicant living upon alms than this dharma<\/i>
\nof the Kshatriya, this battle and action culminating in undiscriminating
\nmassacre, this principle of mastery and glory and power which can only be won
\nby destruction and bloodshed, this conquest of blood-stained enjoyments, this
\nvindication of justice and right by a means which contradicts all righteousness
\nand this affirmation of the social law by a war which destroys in its process
\nand result all that constitutes society. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 50<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

 <\/span>Sannyāsa<\/span><\/i> is the renunciation of life and action and of
\nthe threefold modes of Nature, but it has to be approached through one or other
\nof the three qualities. The impulse may be tamasic, a feeling of impotence,
\nfear, aversion, disgust, horror of the world and life; or it may be the rajasic
\nquality tending towards tamas, an impulse of weariness of the struggle, grief,
\ndisappointment, refusal to accept any longer this vain turmoil of activity with
\nits pains and its eternal discontent. Or the impulse may be that of rajas
\ntending towards sattwa, the impulse to arrive at something superior to anything
\nlife can give, to conquer a higher state, to trample down life itself under the
\nfeet of an inner strength which seeks to break all bonds and transcend all
\nlimits. Or it may be sattwic, an intellectual perception of the vanity of life
\nand the absence of any real goal or justification for this ever-cycling
\nworld-existence or else a spiritual perception of the Timeless, the Infinite,
\nthe Silent, the nameless and formless Peace beyond. The recoil of Arjuna is the
\ntamasic recoil from action of the sattwa-rajasic man. The Teacher may confirm
\nit in its direction, using it as a dark entry to the purity and peace of the
\nascetic life; or he may purify it at once and raise it towards the rare
\naltitudes of the sattwic tendency of renunciation. In fact, he does neither. He
\ndiscourages the tamasic recoil and the tendency to renunciation and enjoins the
\ncontinuance of action and even of the same fierce and terrible action, but he
\npoints the disciple towards another and inner renunciation which is the real
\nissue from his crisis and the way towards the soul’s superiority to the
\nworld-Nature and yet its calm and self-possessed action in the world. Not a
\nphysical asceticism, but an inner askesis is the teaching of the Gita. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 51<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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