{"id":2252,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2252"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:23","slug":"02-the-divine-teacher-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\/02-the-divine-teacher-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","title":{"rendered":"-02_The Divine Teacher.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Divine Teacher <\/font> <\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nT<\/font>HE PECULIARITY <\/b>of the Gita among the great religious
\nbooks of the world is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself, the
\nfruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or
\nBuddha or of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads,
\nbut is given as an episode in an epic history of nations and their wars and men
\nand their deeds and arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its
\nleading personages face to face with the crowning action of his life, a work
\nterrible, violent and sanguinary, at the point when he must either recoil from
\nit altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion. It matters
\nlittle whether or no, as modern criticism supposes, the Gita is a later
\ncomposition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to
\ninvest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national
\nepic. There seem to me to be strong grounds against this supposition for which,
\nbesides, the evidence, extrinsic or internal, is in the last degree scanty and
\ninsufficient. But even if it be sound, there remains the fact that the author
\nhas not only taken pains to interweave his work inextricably into the vast web
\nof the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation
\nfrom which the teaching has arisen; he returns to it prominently, not only at
\nthe end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We
\nmust accept the insistence of the author and give its full importance to this
\nrecurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple. The teaching of the
\nGita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual
\nphilosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the
\napplication of ethics and spirituality to human life. For what that crisis
\nstands, what is the significance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on
\nArjuna’s inner being, we have first to determine if we would  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 12<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\ngrasp the central drift of the ideas of the Gita. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nVery obviously a great body of the profoundest teaching cannot be built round an
\nordinary occurrence which has no gulfs of deep suggestion and hazardous
\ndifficulty behind its superficial and outward aspects and can be governed well
\nenough by the ordinary everyday standards of thought and action. There are
\nindeed three things in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost
\nsymbolic, typical of the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual
\nlife and of human existence at its roots; they are the divine personality of the
\nTeacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and the occasion of his
\nteaching. The teacher is God himself descended into humanity; the disciple is
\nthe first, as we might say in modern language, the representative man of his
\nage, closest friend and chosen instrument of the Avatar, his protagonist in an
\nimmense work and struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to the actors
\nin it, known only to the incarnate Godhead who guides it all from behind the
\nveil of his unfathomable mind of knowledge; the occasion is the violent crisis
\nof that work and struggle at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty
\nand blind violence of its apparent movements forces itself with the shock of a
\nvisible revelation on the mind of its representative man and raises the whole
\nquestion of the meaning of God in the world and the goal and drift and sense of
\nhuman life and conduct.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIndia has from ancient times held strongly a belief in the reality of the
\nAvatara, the descent into form, the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In
\nthe West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it
\nhas been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without
\nany roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But
\nin India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view
\nof life and 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 every
\nconscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the
\napparent finiteness of   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 13<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation and there is a gradation between
\nthe supreme being1<\/font><\/sup> of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly
\nby ignorance of self in the finite. The conscious embodied soul2<\/font><\/sup> is the spark of
\nthe divine Fire and that soul in man opens out to self-knowledge as it develops
\nout of ignorance of self into self-being. The Divine also, pouring itself into
\nthe forms of the cosmic existence, is revealed ordinarily in an efflorescence of
\nits powers, in energies and magnitudes of its knowledge, love, joy, developed
\nforce of being,3<\/font><\/sup> in degrees and faces of its divinity. But when the divine
\nConsciousness and Power, taking upon itself the human form and the human mode of
\naction, possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward
\nfaces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge, when the Unborn knows
\nitself and acts in the frame of the mental being and the appearance of birth,
\nthat is the height of the conditioned manifestation; it is the full and
\nconscious descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatara. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Vaishnava form of Vedantism which has laid most stress upon this conception
\nexpresses the relation of God in man to man in God by the double figure of
\nNara-Narayana, associated historically with the origin of a religious school
\nvery similar in its doctrines to the teaching of the Gita. Nara is the human
\nsoul which, eternal companion of the Divine, finds itself only when it awakens
\nto that companionship and begins, as the Gita would say, to live in God.
\nNarayana is the divine Soul always present in our humanity, the secret guide,
\nfriend and helper of the human being, the "Lord who abides within the heart of
\ncreatures" of the Gita; when within us the veil of that secret sanctuary is
\nwithdrawn and man speaks face to face with God, hears the divine voice, receives
\nthe divine light, acts in the divine power, then becomes possible the supreme
\nuplifting of the embodied human conscious-being into the unborn and eternal. He
\nbecomes capable of that dwelling in God and giving up of his whole consciousness
\ninto the Divine which the Gita upholds as
\n the best or highest secret of things, uttamam rahasyam<\/i>. When
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1 para bhava.<\/i>      2dehi.<\/i>
\n     3vibhuti.<\/i>  
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 14<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthis eternal divine Consciousness always present in every human being, this God
\nin man, takes possession partly4<\/font><\/sup> or wholly of the human consciousness and
\nbecomes in visible human shape the guide, teacher, leader of the world, not as
\nthose who living in their humanity yet feel something of the power or light or
\nlove of the divine Gnosis informing and conducting them, but out of that divine
\nGnosis itself, direct from its central force and plenitude, then we have the
\nmanifest Avatar. The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human
\nmanifestation is its sign and development in the external world.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nWhen we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood, we see that whether for
\nthe fundamental 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 of
\nhis teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law by that atonement of
\nman 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 or
\nnot a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. So too the
\nKrishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation of the Divine and not the
\nhistorical teacher and leader of men. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIn seeking the kernel of the thought of the Gita we need, therefore, only
\nconcern ourselves with the spiritual significance of the human-divine Krishna of
\nthe Mahabharata who is presented to us as the teacher of Arjuna on the
\nbattle-field of Kurukshetra. The historical Krishna, no doubt, existed. We meet
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n4 Chaitanya, the Avatar of Nadiya, is said to have been thus partly or
\noccasionally occupied by the divine Consciousness and Power.  
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 15<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

the name first in the Chhandogya Upanishad where all we can gather about him is
\nthat he was well known in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman, so
\nwell known indeed in his personality and the circumstances of his life that it
\nwas sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of
\nDevaki for all to understand who was meant. In the same Upanishad we find
\nmention of King Dhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya, and since tradition
\nassociated the two together so closely that they are both of them leading
\npersonages in the action of the Mahabharata, we may fairly conclude that they
\nwere actually contemporaries and that the epic is to a great extent dealing with
\nhistorical characters and in the war of Kurukshetra with a historical occurrence
\nimprinted firmly on the memory of the race. We know too that Krishna and Arjuna
\nwere the object of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries; and there
\nis some reason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and
\nphilosophical tradition from which the Gita may have gathered many of its
\nelements and even the foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion and
\nworks, and perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or at
\nthe least one of the early teachers of this school. The Gita may well in spite
\nof its later form represent the outcome in Indian thought of the teaching of
\nKrishna and the connection of that teaching with the historical Krishna, with
\nArjuna and with the war of Kurukshetra may be something more than a dramatic
\nfiction. In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical
\ncharacter and the Avatar; his worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been
\nwell established by the time\u2014apparently from the fifth to the first centuries
\nB.C.\u2014when the old story and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its
\npresent form. There is a hint also in the poem of the story or legend of the
\nAvatar’s early life in Vrindavan which, as developed by the Puranas into an
\nintense and powerful spiritual symbol, has exercised so profound an influence on
\nthe religious mind of India. We have also in the Harivansha an account of the
\nlife of Krishna, very evidently full of legends, which perhaps formed the basis
\nof the Puranic accounts.  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 16<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nBut all this, though of considerable historical importance, has none whatever
\nfor our present purpose. We are concerned only with the figure of the divine
\nTeacher as it is presented to us in the Gita and with the Power for which it
\nthere stands in the spiritual illumination of the human being. The Gita accepts
\nthe human Avatarhood; for the Lord speaks of the repeated, the constant5<\/font><\/sup>
\nmanifestation of the Divine in humanity, when He the eternal Unborn assumes by
\nhis Maya, by the power of the infinite Consciousness to clothe itself apparently
\nin finite forms, the conditions of becoming which we call birth. But it is not
\nthis upon which stress is laid, but on the transcendent, the cosmic and the
\ninternal Divine; it is on the Source of all things and the Master of all and on
\nthe Godhead secret in man. It is this internal divinity who is meant when the
\nGita speaks of the doer of violent Asuric austerities troubling the God within
\nor of the sin of those who despise the Divine lodged in the human body or of the
\nsame Godhead destroying our ignorance by the blazing lamp of knowledge. It is
\nthen the eternal Avatar, this God in man, the divine Consciousness always
\npresent in the human being who manifested in a visible form speaks to the human
\nsoul in the Gita, illumines the meaning of life and the secret of divine action
\nand gives it 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.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nSecondly, there is the typical, almost the symbolic significance of the human
\nKrishna who stands behind the great action of the Mahabharata, not as its hero,
\nbut as its secret centre
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n5 <\/p>\n

bahū<\/font>ni me vyatītāni janmāni sambhavāmi yuge yuge<\/i>.  
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 17<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

and hidden guide. That action is the action of a whole world of men and nations,
\nsome of whom 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 are
\nrepresentatives of that which has to be fulfilled and to them he is counsellor,
\nhelper, friend. Where the action pursues its natural course or the doers of the
\nwork have to suffer at the hands of its enemies and undergo the ordeals which
\nprepare them for mastery, the Avatar is unseen or appears only for occasional
\ncomfort and aid, but at every crisis his hand is felt, yet in such a way that
\nall imagine themselves to be the protagonists and even Arjuna, his nearest
\nfriend and chief instrument, does not perceive that he is an instrument and has
\nto confess at last that all the while he did not really know his divine Friend.
\nHe has received counsel from his wisdom, help from his power, has loved and been
\nloved, has even adored without understanding his divine nature; but he has been
\nguided like all others through his own egoism and the counsel, help and
\ndirection have been given in the language and received by the thoughts of the
\nIgnorance. 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.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThus the figure of 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.  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 18<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nAnd the action in which this divine figure moves is the whole wide action of man
\nin life, not merely the inner life, but all this obscure course of the world
\nwhich we can judge only by the twilight of the human reason as it opens up dimly
\nbefore our uncertain advance the little span in front. This is the
\ndistinguishing feature of the Gita that it is the culmination of such an action
\nwhich gives rise to its teaching and assigns that prominence and bold relief to
\nthe gospel of works which it enunciates with an emphasis and force we do not
\nfind in other Indian Scriptures. Not only in the Gita, but in other passages of
\nthe Mahabharata we meet with Krishna declaring emphatically the necessity of
\naction, but it is here that he reveals its secret and the divinity behind our
\nworks. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe symbolic companionship of Arjuna and Krishna, the human and the divine soul,
\nis expressed 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 <\/p>\n

who do tapasya <\/i>together for the knowledge. But in all three it
\nis the idea of the divine knowledge in which, as the Gita says, all action
\nculminates that is in view; here it is instead the action which leads to that
\nknowledge and in which the divine Knower figures himself. Arjuna and Krishna,
\nthis human and this divine, stand together not as seers in the peaceful
\nhermitage of meditation, but as fighter and holder of the reins in the clamorous
\nfield, in the midst of the hurtling shafts, in the chariot of battle. The
\nTeacher of the Gita is therefore not only the God in man who unveils himself in
\nthe word of knowledge, but the God in man who moves our whole world of action,
\nby and for whom all our humanity exists and struggles and labours, towards whom
\nall human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and
\nsacrifice and the Friend of the human peoples.   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 19<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

II   The Divine Teacher   THE PECULIARITY of the Gita among the great religious books of the world is that it does not stand…<\/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-2252","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\/2252","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=2252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}