{"id":2226,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2226"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:14","slug":"03-the-human-disciple-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/19-essays-on-the-gita\/03-the-human-disciple-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","title":{"rendered":"-03_The Human Disciple.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nIII <\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Human
\nDisciple <\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nS<\/font>UCH <\/b>then is the divine Teacher of the Gita, the eternal Avatar, the
\nDivine who has descended into the human consciousness, the Lord seated within
\nthe heart of all beings, He who guides from behind the veil all our thought and
\naction and heart’s seeking even as He directs from behind the veil of visible
\nand sensible forms and forces and tendencies the great universal action of the
\nworld which He has manifested in His own being. All the strife of our upward
\nendeavour and seeking finds its culmination and ceases in a satisfied fulfilment
\nwhen we can rend the veil and get behind our apparent self to this real Self,
\ncan realise our whole being in this true Lord of our being, can give up our
\npersonality to and into this one real Person, merge our ever-dispersed and
\never-converging mental activities into His plenary light, offer up our errant
\nand struggling will and energies into His vast, luminous and undivided Will, at
\nonce renounce and satisfy all our dissipated outward-moving desires and emotions
\nin the plenitude of His self-existent Bliss. This is the world-Teacher of whose
\neternal knowledge all other highest teaching is but the various reflection and
\npartial word, this the Voice to which the hearing of our soul has to awaken.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nArjuna, the disciple who receives his initiation on the battlefield, is a
\ncounterpart of this conception; he is the type of the struggling human soul who
\nhas not yet received the knowledge, but has grown fit to receive it by action in
\nthe world in a close companionship and an increasing nearness to the higher and
\ndivine Self in humanity. There is a method of explaining the Gita in which not
\nonly this episode but the whole Mahabharata is turned into an allegory of the
\ninner life and has nothing to do with our outward human life and action, but
\nonly with the battles of the soul and the powers that strive within us for
\npossession. That is a view which the general character and the  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 20<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nactual language of the epic does not justify and, if pressed, would turn the
\nstraightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a constant, laborious
\nand somewhat puerile mystification. The language of the Veda and part at least
\nof the Puranas is plainly symbolic, full of figures and concrete representations
\nof things that lie behind the veil, but the Gita is written in plain terms and
\nprofesses to solve the great ethical and spiritual difficulties which the life
\nof man raises, and it will not do to go behind this plain language and thought
\nand wrest them to the service of our fancy. But there is this much of truth in
\nthe view, that the setting of the doctrine though not symbolical, is certainly
\ntypical, as indeed the setting of such a discourse as the Gita must necessarily
\nbe if it is to have any relation at all with that which it frames. Arjuna, as we
\nhave seen, is the representative man of a great world-struggle and
\ndivinely-guided movement of men and nations; in the Gita he typifies the human
\nsoul of action brought face to face through that action in its highest and most
\nviolent crisis with the problem of human life and its apparent incompatibility
\nwith the spiritual state or even with a purely ethical ideal of perfection.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nArjuna is the fighter in the chariot with the divine Krishna as his charioteer.
\nIn the Veda also we have this image of the human soul and the divine riding in
\none chariot through a great battle to the goal of a high-aspiring effort. But
\nthere it is a pure figure and symbol. The Divine is there Indra, the Master of
\nthe World of Light and Immortality, the power of divine knowledge which descends
\nto the aid of the human seeker battling with the sons of falsehood, darkness,
\nlimitation, mortality; the battle is with spiritual enemies who bar the way to
\nthe higher world of our being; and the goal is that plane of vast being
\nresplendent with the light of the supreme Truth and uplifted to the conscious
\nimmortality of the perfected soul, of which Indra is the master. The human soul
\nis Kutsa, he who constantly seeks the seer-knowledge, as his name implies, and he
\nis the son of Arjuna or Arjuni, the White One, child of Switra the White Mother;
\nhe is, that is to say, the sattwic or purified and light-filled soul which is
\nopen to the unbroken glories of the divine knowledge. And   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 21<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

when the chariot reaches the end of its journey, the own home of Indra, the
\nhuman Kutsa has grown into such an exact likeness of his divine companion that
\nhe can only be distinguished by Sachi, the wife of Indra, because she is
\n"truth-conscious". The parable is evidently of the inner life of man; it is a
\nfigure of the human growing into the likeness of the eternal divine by the
\nincreasing illumination of Knowledge. But the Gita starts from action and Arjuna
\nis the man of action and not of knowledge, the fighter, never the seer or the
\nthinker. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nFrom the beginning of the Gita this characteristic temperament of the disciple
\nis clearly indicated and it is maintained throughout. It becomes first evident
\nin the manner in which he is awakened to the sense of what he is doing, the
\ngreat slaughter of which he is to be the chief instrument, in the thoughts which
\nimmediately rise in him, in the standpoint and the psychological motives which
\nmake him recoil from the whole terrible catastrophe. They are not the thoughts,
\nthe standpoint, the motives of a philosophical or even of a deeply reflective
\nmind or a spiritual temperament confronted with the same or a similar problem.
\nThey are those, as we might say, of the practical or the pragmatic man, the
\nemotional, sensational, moral and intelligent human being not habituated to
\nprofound and original reflection or any sounding of the depths, accustomed
\nrather to high but fixed standards of thought and action and a confident
\ntreading through all vicissitudes and difficulties, who now finds all his
\nstandards failing him and all the basis of his confidence in himself and his
\nlife shorn away from under him at a single stroke. That is the nature of the
\ncrisis which he undergoes.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nArjuna is, in the language of the Gita, a man subject to the action of the three
\ngunas or modes of the Nature-Force and habituated to move unquestioningly in
\nthat field, like the generality of men. He justifies his name only in being so
\nfar pure and sattwic as to be governed by high and clear principles and impulses
\nand habitually control his lower nature by the noblest Law which he knows. He is
\nnot of a violent Asuric disposition, not the slave of his passions, but has been
\ntrained to a high calm and self-control, to an unswerving performance of his
\nduties  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 22<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nand firm obedience to the best principles of the time and society in which he
\nhas lived and the religion and ethics to which he has been brought up. He is
\negoistic like other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the
\nmoral law and society and the claims of others and not only or predominantly his
\nown interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the
\nShastra, the moral and social code. The thought which preoccupies him, the
\nstandard which he obeys is the
\ndharma<\/i>, that collective Indian conception of the religious, social and
\nmoral rule of conduct, and especially the rule of the station and function to
\nwhich he belongs, he the Kshatriya, the high-minded, self-governed, chivalrous
\nprince and warrior and leader of Aryan men. Following always this rule,
\nconscious of virtue and right dealing he has travelled so far and finds suddenly
\nthat it has led him to become the protagonist of a terrific and unparalleled
\nslaughter, a monstrous civil war involving all the cultured Aryan nations which
\nmust lead to the complete destruction of the flower of their manhood and
\nthreatens their ordered civilisation with chaos and collapse. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt is typical again of the pragmatic man that it is through his sensations that
\nhe awakens to the meaning of his action. He has asked his friend and charioteer
\nto place him between the two armies, not with any profounder idea, but with the
\nproud intention of viewing and looking in the face these myriads of the
\nchampions of unrighteousness whom he has to meet and conquer and slay "in this
\nholiday of fight" so that the right may prevail. It is as he gazes that the
\nrevelation of the meaning of a civil and domestic war comes home to him, a war
\nin which not only men of the same race, the same nation, the same clan, but
\nthose of the same family and household stand upon opposite sides. All whom the
\nsocial man holds most dear and sacred, he must meet as enemies and slay,\u2014the
\nworshipped teacher and preceptor, the old friend, comrade and companion in arms,
\ngrandsires, uncles, those who stood in the relation to him of father, of son, of
\ngrandson, connections by blood and connections by marriage,\u2014all these social
\nties have to be cut asunder by the sword. It is not that he did not know these
\nthings before, but he has   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 23<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

never realised it all; obsessed by his claims and wrongs and by the principles
\nof his life, the struggle for the right, the duty of the Kshatriya to protect
\njustice and the law and fight and beat down injustice and lawless violence, he
\nhas neither thought it out deeply nor felt it in his heart and at the core of
\nhis life. And now it is shown to his vision by the divine charioteer, placed
\nsensationally before his eyes, and comes home to him like a blow delivered at
\nthe very centre of his sensational, vital and emotional being. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe first result is a violent sensational and physical crisis which produces a
\ndisgust of the action and its material objects and of life itself. He rejects
\nthe vital aim pursued by egoistic humanity in its action,\u2014happiness and
\nenjoyment; he rejects the vital aim of the Kshatriya, victory and rule and power
\nand the government of men. What after all is this fight for justice when reduced
\nto its practical terms, but just this, a fight for the interests of himself, his
\nbrothers and his party, for possession and enjoyment and rule? But at such a
\ncost these things are not worth having. For they are of no value in themselves,
\nbut only as a means to the right maintenance of social and national life and it
\nis these very aims that in the person of his kin and his race he is about to
\ndestroy. And then comes the cry of the emotions. These are they for whose sake
\nlife and happiness are desired, our "own people". Who would consent to slay
\nthese for the sake of all the earth, or even for the kingdom of the three
\nworlds? What pleasure can there be in life, what happiness, what satisfaction in
\noneself after such a deed? The whole thing is a dreadful sin,\u2014for now the moral
\nsense awakens to justify the revolt of the sensations and the emotions. It is a
\nsin, there is no right nor justice in mutual slaughter; especially are those who
\nare to be slain the natural objects of reverence and of love, those without whom
\none would not care to live, and to violate these sacred feelings can be no
\nvirtue, can be nothing but a heinous crime. Granted that the offence, the
\naggression, the first sin, the crimes of greed and selfish passion which have
\nbrought things to such a pass came from the other side; yet armed resistance to
\nwrong under such circumstances would be itself a sin and  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 24<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\ncrime worse than theirs because they are blinded by passion and unconscious of
\nguilt, while on this side it would be with a clear sense of guilt that the sin
\nwould be committed. And for what? For the maintenance of family morality, of the
\nsocial law and the law of the nation? These are the very standards that will be
\ndestroyed by this civil war; the family itself will be brought to the point of
\nannihilation, corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race will be
\nengendered, the eternal laws of the race and moral law of the family will be
\ndestroyed. Ruin of the race, the collapse of its high traditions, ethical
\ndegradation and hell for the authors of such a crime, these are the only
\npractical results possible of this monstrous civil strife. "Therefore," cries
\nArjuna, casting down the divine bow and inexhaustible quiver given to him by the
\ngods for that tremendous hour, "it is more for my welfare that the sons of
\nDhritarashtra armed should slay me unarmed and unresisting. I will not fight."
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe character of this inner crisis is therefore not the questioning of the
\nthinker; it is not a recoil from the appearances of life and a turning of the
\neye inward in search of the truth of things, the real meaning of existence and a
\nsolution or an escape from the dark riddle of the world. It is the sensational,
\nemotional and moral revolt of the man hitherto satisfied with action and its
\ncurrent standards who finds himself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they
\nare in violent conflict with each other and with themselves and there is no
\nmoral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no
\ndharma<\/i>.1 That for the soul of action in the mental being is the worst
\npossible crisis, failure and overthrow. The revolt itself is the most elemental
\nand simple possible; sensationally, the elemental feeling of horror, pity and
\ndisgust; vitally, the loss of attraction and faith in the recognised and
\nfamiliar objects of action and aims of life; emotionally, the recoil of the
\nordinary feelings of social man, affection, reverence, desire of a common
\nhappiness and satisfaction, from a stern duty outraging them all; morally, the
\nelementary sense of sin and
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1 Dharma <\/i>means literally that which one lays hold of and which holds
\nthings together, the law, the norm, the rule of nature, action and life.  
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 25<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

hell and rejection of "blood-stained enjoyments"; practically, the sense that
\nthe standards of action have led to a result which destroys the practical aims
\nof action. But the whole upshot is that all-embracing inner bankruptcy which
\nArjuna expresses when he says that his whole conscious being, not the thought
\nalone but heart and vital desires and all, are utterly bewildered and can find
\nnowhere the dharma<\/i>, nowhere any valid law of action. For this alone he
\ntakes refuge as a disciple with Krishna; give me, he practically asks, that
\nwhich I have lost, a true law, a clear rule of action, a path by which I can
\nagain confidently walk. He does not ask for the secret of life or of the world,
\nthe meaning and purpose of it all, but for a
\ndharma<\/i>.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nYet it is precisely this secret for which he does not ask, or at least so much
\nof the knowledge as is necessary to lead him into a higher life, to which the
\ndivine Teacher intends to lead this disciple; for he means him to give up all
\ndharmas <\/i>except the one broad and vast rule of living consciously in the
\nDivine and acting from that consciousness. Therefore after testing the
\ncompleteness of his revolt from the ordinary standards of conduct, he proceeds
\nto tell him much that has to do with the state of the soul, but nothing of any
\noutward rule of action. He must be equal in soul, abandon the desire of the
\nfruits of work, rise above his intellectual notions of sin and virtue, live and
\nact in Yoga with a mind in Samadhi, firmly fixed, that is to say, in the Divine
\nalone. Arjuna is not satisfied: he wishes to know how the change to this state
\nwill affect the outward action of the man, what result it will have on his
\nspeech, his movements, his state, what difference it will make in this acting,
\nliving human being. Krishna persists merely in enlarging upon the ideas he has
\nalready brought forward, on the soul-state behind the action, not on the action
\nitself. It is the fixed anchoring of the intelligence in a state of desireless
\nequality that is the one thing needed. Arjuna breaks out impatiently,\u2014for here
\nis no rule of conduct such as he sought, but rather, as it seems to him, the
\nnegation of all action,\u2014"If thou holdest the intelligence to be greater than
\naction, why then dost thou appoint me to an action terrible in its nature? Thou
\nbewilderest my understanding with a mingled  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 26<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\nword: speak one thing decisively by which I can attain to what is the best." It
\nis always the pragmatic man who has no value for metaphysical thought or for the
\ninner life except when they help him to his one demand, a
\ndharma<\/i>, a law of life in the world or, if need be, of leaving the world;
\nfor that too is a decisive action which he can understand. But to live and act
\nin the world, yet be above it, this is a "mingled" and confusing word the sense
\nof which he has no patience to grasp.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe rest of Arjuna’s questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament
\nand character. When he is told that once the soul-state is assured there need be
\nno apparent change in the action, he must act always by the law of his nature,
\neven if the act itself seem faulty and deficient compared with that of another
\nlaw than his own, he is troubled. The nature! but what of this sense of sin in
\nthe action with which he is preoccupied? is it not this very nature which drives
\nmen as if by force and even against their better will into sin and guilt? His
\npractical intelligence is baffled by Krishna’s assertion that it was he who in
\nancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again
\nrevealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous
\nand oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose. He is again
\nperplexed by the words in which Krishna continues to reconcile action and
\nrenunciation of action and asks once again for a decisive statement of that
\nwhich is the best and highest, not this "mingled" word. When he realises fully
\nthe nature of the Yoga which he is bidden to embrace, his pragmatic nature
\naccustomed to act from mental will and preference and desire is appalled by its
\ndifficulty and he asks what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails,
\nwhether it does not lose both this life of human activity and thought and
\nemotion which it has left behind and the Brahmic consciousness to which it
\naspires and falling from both perish like a dissolving cloud? <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nWhen his doubts and perplexities are resolved and he knows that it is the Divine
\nwhich must be his law, he aims again and always at such clear and decisive
\nknowledge as will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his
\nfuture action. How   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 27<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

is the Divine to be distinguished among the various states of being which
\nconstitute our ordinary experience? What are the great manifestations of its
\nself-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realise it by meditation?
\nMay he not see even now the divine cosmic Form of That which is actually
\nspeaking to him through the veil of the human mind and body? And his last
\nquestions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and this
\nsubtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between
\nPurusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for
\nthe practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and
\nfinally a clear statement of the practical operations and results of the three
\nmodes of Prakriti which he is bidden to surmount. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nTo such a disciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his divine teaching. He seizes
\nhim at a moment of his psychological development by egoistic action when all the
\nmental, moral, emotional values of the ordinary egoistic and social life of man
\nhave collapsed in a sudden bankruptcy, and he has to lift him up out of this
\nlower life into a higher consciousness, out of ignorant attachment to action
\ninto that which transcends, yet originates and orders action, out of ego into
\nSelf, out of life in mind, vitality and body into that higher nature beyond mind
\nwhich is the status of the Divine. He has at the same time to give him that for
\nwhich he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance within him, a
\nnew Law of life and action high above the insufficient rule of the ordinary
\nhuman existence with its endless conflicts and oppositions, perplexities and
\nillusory certainties, a higher Law by which the soul shall be free from this
\nbondage of works and yet powerful to act and conquer in the vast liberty of its
\ndivine being. For the action must be performed, the world must fulfil its cycles
\nand the soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it
\nis here to do. The whole course of the teaching of the Gita is determined and
\ndirected, even in its widest wheelings, towards the fulfilment of these three
\nobjects.  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 28<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

III   The Human Disciple   SUCH then is the divine Teacher of the Gita, the eternal Avatar, the Divine who has descended into the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19-essays-on-the-gita","wpcat-47-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226","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=2226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}