{"id":2259,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2259"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:26","slug":"47-the-core-of-the-gitas-meaning-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\/47-the-core-of-the-gitas-meaning-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","title":{"rendered":"-47_The Core of the Gita’s Meaning.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Core of the Gita’s Meaning
\n<\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nW<\/font>HAT THEN<\/b> is the message of the Gita and what its
\nworking value, its spiritual utility to the human mind of the present day after the long ages that have elapsed
\nsince it was written and the great subsequent transformations of thought and experience? The human mind moves always forward, alters its viewpoint and enlarges its thought substance, and the effect of these changes is to render past systems of
\nthinking obsolete or, when they are preserved, to extend, to modify and subtly or visibly to alter their value. The vitality of
\nan ancient doctrine consists in the extent to which it naturally lends itself to such a treatment; for that means that whatever
\nmay have been the limitations or the obsolescences of the form of its thought, the truth of substance, the truth of living vision
\nand experience on which its system was built is still sound and retains a permanent validity and significance. The Gita is a book
\nthat has worn extraordinarily well and it is almost as fresh and still in its real substance quite as new, because always renewable
\nin experience, as when it first appeared in or was written into the frame of the Mahabharata. It is still received in India as
\none of the great bodies of doctrine that most authoritatively govern religious thinking and its teaching acknowledged as of
\nthe highest value if not wholly accepted by almost all shades of religious belief and opinion. Its influence is not merely philosophic or academic but immediate and living, an influence both for thought and action, and its ideas are actually at work as a
\npowerful shaping factor in the revival and renewal of a nation and a culture. It has even been said recently by a great voice that
\nall we need of spiritual truth for the spiritual life is to be found in the Gita. It would be to encourage the superstition of the
\nbook to take too literally that utterance. The truth of the spirit is infinite and cannot be circumscribed in that manner. Still it
\n  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 562<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nmay be said that most of the main clues are there and that after all the later developments of spiritual experience and discovery
\nwe can still return to it for a large inspiration and guidance. Outside India too it is universally acknowledged as one of the
\nworld’s great scriptures, although in Europe its thought is better understood than its secret of spiritual practice. What is it then
\nthat gives this vitality to the thought and the truth of the Gita? <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe central interest of the Gita’s philosophy and Yoga is its
\nattempt, the idea with which it sets out, continues and closes, to reconcile and
\neven effect a kind of unity between the inner spiritual truth in its most
\nabsolute and integral realisation and the outer actualities of man’s life and action. A compromise
\nbetween the two is common enough, but that can never be a final and satisfactory solution. An ethical rendering of spirituality is
\nalso common and has its value as a law of conduct; but that is a mental solution which does not amount to a complete practical
\nreconciliation of the whole truth of spirit with the whole truth of life and it raises as many problems as it solves. One of these is
\nindeed the starting-point of the Gita; it sets out with an ethical problem raised by a conflict in which we have on one side the
\ndharma of the man of action, a prince and warrior and leader of men, the protagonist of a great crisis, of a struggle on the
\nphysical plane, the plane of actual life, between the powers of right and justice and the powers of wrong and injustice, the
\ndemand of the destiny of the race upon him that he shall resist and give battle and establish even though through a terrible
\nphysical struggle and a giant slaughter a new era and reign of truth and right and justice, and on the other side the ethical sense
\nwhich condemns the means and the action as a sin, recoils from the price of individual suffering and social strife, unsettling and
\ndisturbance and regards abstention from violence and battle as the only way and the one right moral attitude. A spiritualised
\nethics insists on Ahinsa, on non-injuring and non-killing as the highest law of spiritual conduct. The battle, if it is to be fought
\nout at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal of participation or only by soul
\nresistance, and if this does not succeed on the external plane,   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 563<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

if the force of injustice conquers, the individual will still have preserved his virtue and vindicated by his example the highest
\nideal. On the other hand a more insistent extreme of the inner spiritual direction, passing beyond this struggle between social
\nduty and an absolutist ethical ideal, is apt to take the ascetic turn and to point away from life and all its aims and standards
\nof action towards another and celestial or supracosmic state in which alone beyond the perplexed vanity and illusion of man’s
\nbirth and life and death there can be a pure spiritual existence. The Gita rejects none of these things in their place,
\n\u2014 for it
\ninsists on the performance of the social duty, the following of the dharma for the man who has to take his share in the
\ncommon action, accepts Ahinsa as part of the highest spiritual-ethical ideal and recognises the ascetic renunciation as a way
\nof spiritual salvation. And yet it goes boldly beyond all these conflicting positions; greatly daring, it justifies all life to the spirit
\nas a significant manifestation of the one Divine Being and asserts the compatibility of a complete human action and a complete
\nspiritual life lived in union with the Infinite, consonant with the highest Self, expressive of the perfect Godhead.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAll the problems of human life arise from the complexity of our existence, the obscurity of its essential principle and the secrecy of the inmost power that makes out its determinations and governs its purpose and its processes. If our existence were of one
\npiece, solely material-vital or solely mental or solely spiritual, or even if the others were entirely or mainly involved in one of these
\nor were quite latent in our subconscient or our superconscient parts, there would be nothing to perplex us; the material and
\nvital law would be imperative or the mental would be clear to its own pure and unobstructed principle or the spiritual
\nself-existent and self-sufficient to spirit. The animals are aware of no problems; a mental god in a world of pure mentality would
\nadmit none or would solve them all by the purity of a mental rule or the satisfaction of a rational harmony; a pure spirit
\nwould be above them and self-content in the infinite. But the existence of man is a triple web, a thing mysteriously
\nphysical-vital, mental and spiritual at once, and he knows not what are  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 564<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthe true relations of these things, which the real reality of his life and his nature, whither the attraction of his destiny and where
\nthe sphere of his perfection. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nMatter and life are his actual basis, the thing from which he
\nstarts and on which he stands and whose requirement and law he has to satisfy if he would exist at all on earth and in the body.
\nThe material and vital law is a rule of survival, of struggle, of desire and possession, of self-assertion and the satisfaction
\nof the body, the life and the ego. All the intellectual reasoning in the world, all the ethical idealism and spiritual absolutism of
\nwhich the higher faculties of man are capable cannot abolish the reality and claim of our vital and material base or prevent the
\nrace from following under the imperative compulsion of Nature its aims and the satisfaction of its necessities or from making its
\nimportant problems a great and legitimate part of human destiny and human interest and endeavour. And the intelligence of man
\neven, failing to find any sustenance in spiritual or ideal solutions that solve everything else but the pressing problems of our
\nactual human life, often turns away from them to an exclusive acceptance of the vital and material existence and the reasoned
\nor instinctive pursuit of its utmost possible efficiency, well-being and organised satisfaction. A gospel of the will to live or the
\nwill to power or of a rationalised vital and material perfection becomes the recognised dharma of the human race and all else
\nis considered either a pretentious falsity or a quite subsidiary thing, a side issue of a minor and dependent consequence.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nMatter and life however in spite of their insistence and great importance are not all that man is, nor can he wholly accept
\nmind as nothing but a servant of the life and body admitted to certain pure enjoyments of its own as a sort of reward for its
\nservice or regard it as no more than an extension and flower of the vital urge, an ideal luxury contingent upon the satisfaction of
\nthe material life. The mind much more intimately than the body and the life is the man, and the mind as it develops insists more
\nand more on making the body and the life an instrument \u2014 an indispensable instrument and yet a considerable obstacle, otherwise there would be no problem \u2014 for its own characteristic  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 565<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

satisfactions and self-realisation. The mind of man is not only a vital and physical, but an intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, psychic,
\nemotional and dynamic intelligence, and in the sphere of each of its tendencies its highest and strongest nature is to strain
\ntowards some absolute of them which the frame of life will not allow it to capture wholly and embody and make here entirely
\nreal. The mental absolute of our aspiration remains as a partly grasped shining or fiery ideal which the mind can make inwardly
\nvery present to itself, inwardly imperative on its effort, and can even effectuate partly, but not compel all the facts of life into its
\nimage. There is thus an absolute, a high imperative of intellectual truth and reason sought for by our intellectual being; there is
\nan absolute, an imperative of right and conduct aimed at by the ethical conscience; there is an absolute, an imperative of love,
\nsympathy, compassion, oneness yearned after by our emotional and psychic nature; there is an absolute, an imperative of delight and beauty quivered to by the aesthetic soul; there is an absolute, an imperative of inner self-mastery and control of life
\nlaboured after by the dynamic will; all these are there together and impinge upon the absolute, the imperative of possession and
\npleasure and safe embodied existence insisted on by the vital and physical mind. And the human intelligence, since it is not able to
\nrealise entirely any of these things, much less all of them together, erects in each sphere many standards and dharmas, standards of
\ntruth and reason, of right and conduct, of delight and beauty, of love, sympathy and oneness, of self-mastery and control, of
\nself-preservation and possession and vital efficiency and pleasure, and tries to impose them on life. The absolute shining ideals
\nstand far above and beyond our capacity and rare individuals approximate to them as best they can: the mass follow or profess
\nto follow some less magnificent norm, some established possible and relative standard. Human life as a whole undergoes the
\nattraction and yet rejects the ideal. Life resists in the strength of some obscure infinite of its own and wears down or breaks
\ndown any established mental and moral order. And this must be either because the two are quite different and
\ndisparate though
\nmeeting and interacting principles or because mind has not the   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 566<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nclue to the whole reality of life. The clue must be sought in something greater, an unknown something above the mentality
\nand morality of the human creature. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe mind itself has the vague sense of some surpassing factor
\nof this kind and in the pursuit of its absolutes frequently strikes against it. It glimpses a state, a power, a presence that is near
\nand within and inmost to it and yet immeasurably greater and singularly distant and above it; it has a vision of something
\nmore essential, more absolute than its own absolutes, intimate, infinite, one, and it is that which we call God, Self or Spirit. This
\nthen the mind attempts to know, enter, touch and seize wholly, to approach it or become it, to arrive at some kind of unity or <\/p>\n

lose itself in a complete identity with that mystery, āścaryam<\/i>.
\nThe difficulty is that this spirit in its purity seems something yet farther than the mental absolutes from the actualities of
\nlife, something not translatable by mind into its own terms, much less into those of life and action. Therefore we have the
\nintransigent absolutists of the spirit who reject the mental and condemn the material being and yearn after a pure spiritual
\nexistence happily purchased by the dissolution of all that we are in life and mind, a Nirvana. The rest of spiritual effort is for
\nthese fanatics of the Absolute a mental preparation or a compromise, a spiritualising of life and mind as much as possible.
\nAnd because the difficulty most constantly insistent on man’s mentality in practice is that presented by the claims of his vital
\nbeing, by life and conduct and action, the direction taken by this preparatory endeavour consists mainly in a spiritualising of
\nthe ethical supported by the psychical mind \u2014 or rather it brings in the spiritual power and purity to aid these in enforcing their
\nabsolute claim and to impart a greater authority than life allows to the ethical ideal of right and truth of conduct or the psychic
\nideal of love and sympathy and oneness. These things are helped to some highest expression, given their broadest luminous basis
\nby an assent of the reason and will to the underlying truth of the absolute oneness of the spirit and therefore the essential
\noneness of all living creatures. This kind of spirituality linked on in some way to the demands of the normal mind of man,
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 567<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

persuaded to the acceptance of useful social duty and current law of social conduct, popularised by cult and ceremony and
\nimage is the outward substance of the world’s greater religions. These religions have their individual victories, call in some ray of
\na higher light, impose some shadow of a larger spiritual or semi-spiritual rule, but cannot effect a complete victory, end flatly
\nin a compromise and in the act of compromise are defeated by life. Its
\nproblems remain and even recur in their fiercest forms \u2014
\neven such as this grim problem of Kurukshetra. The idealising intellect and ethical mind hope always to eliminate them, to
\ndiscover some happy device born of their own aspiration and made effective by their own imperative insistence, which will
\nannihilate this nether untoward aspect of life; but it endures and is not eliminated. The spiritualised intelligence on the other
\nhand offers indeed by the voice of religion the promise of some victorious millennium hereafter, but meanwhile half convinced
\nof terrestrial impotence, persuaded that the soul is a stranger and intruder upon earth, declares that after all not here in the
\nlife of the body or in the collective life of mortal man but in some immortal Beyond lies the heaven or the Nirvana where alone is
\nto be found the true spiritual existence. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt is here that the Gita intervenes with a restatement of the
\ntruth of the Spirit, of the Self, of God and of the world and Nature. It extends and remoulds the truth evolved by a later
\nthought from the ancient Upanishads and ventures with assured steps on an endeavour to apply its solving power to the problem
\nof life and action. The solution offered by the Gita does not disentangle all the problem as it offers itself to modern mankind;
\nas stated here to a more ancient mentality, it does not meet the insistent pressure of the present mind of man for a collective
\nadvance, does not respond to its cry for a collective life that will at last embody a greater rational and ethical and if possible
\neven a dynamic spiritual ideal. Its call is to the individual who has become capable of a complete spiritual existence; but for
\nthe rest of the race it prescribes only a gradual advance, to be wisely effected by following out faithfully with more and
\nmore of intelligence and moral purpose and with a final turn to  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 568<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nspirituality the law of their nature. Its message touches the other smaller solutions but, even when it accepts them partly, it is to
\npoint them beyond themselves to a higher and more integral secret into which as yet only the few individuals have shown
\nthemselves fit to enter. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita’s message to the mind that follows after the vital
\nand material life is that all life is indeed a manifestation of the universal Power in the individual, a derivation from the Self,
\na ray from the Divine, but actually it figures the Self and the Divine veiled in a disguising Maya, and to pursue the lower
\nlife for its own sake is to persist in a stumbling path and to enthrone our nature’s obscure ignorance and not at all to find
\nthe true truth and complete law of existence. A gospel of the will to live, the will to power, of the satisfaction of desire, of
\nthe glorification of mere force and strength, of the worship of the ego and its vehement acquisitive self-will and tireless
\nself-regarding intellect is the gospel of the Asura and it can lead only to some gigantic ruin and perdition. The vital and material man
\nmust accept for his government a religious and social and ideal dharma by which, while satisfying desire and interest under right
\nrestrictions, he can train and subdue his lower personality and scrupulously attune it to a higher law both of the personal and
\nthe communal life. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita’s message to the mind occupied with the pursuit of
\nintellectual, ethical and social standards, the mind that insists on salvation by the observance of established dharmas, the moral
\nlaw, social duty and function or the solutions of the liberated intelligence, is that this is indeed a very necessary stage, the
\ndharma has indeed to be observed and, rightly observed, can raise the stature of the spirit and prepare and serve the spiritual
\nlife, but still it is not the complete and last truth of existence. The soul of man has to go beyond to some more absolute dharma of
\nman’s spiritual and immortal nature. And this can only be done if we repress and get rid of the ignorant formulations of the
\nlower mental elements and the falsehood of egoistic personality, impersonalise the action of the intelligence and will, live in the
\nidentity of the one self in all, break out of all ego-moulds into the  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 569<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

impersonal spirit. The mind moves under the limiting compulsion of the triple lower nature, it erects its standards in obedience
\nto the tamasic, rajasic or at highest the sattwic qualities; but the destiny of the soul is a divine perfection and liberation and that
\ncan only be based in the freedom of our highest self, can only be found by passing through its vast impersonality and universality beyond mind into the integral light of the immeasurable Godhead and supreme Infinite who is beyond all dharmas.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita’s message to those, absolutist seekers of the Infinite, who carry impersonality to an exclusive extreme, entertain
\nan intolerant passion for the extinction of life and action and would have as the one ultimate aim and ideal an endeavour to
\ncease from all individual being in the pure silence of the ineffable Spirit, is that this is indeed one path of journey and entry
\ninto the Infinite, but the most difficult, the ideal of inaction a dangerous thing to hold up by precept or example before the
\nworld, this way, though great, yet not the best way for man and this knowledge, though true, yet not the integral knowledge.
\nThe Supreme, the all-conscious Self, the Godhead, the Infinite is not solely a spiritual existence remote and ineffable; he is
\nhere in the universe at once hidden and expressed through man and the gods and through all beings and in all that is. And it
\nis by finding him not only in some immutable silence but in the world and its beings and in all self and in all Nature, it
\nis by raising to an integral as well as to a highest union with him all the activities of the intelligence, the heart, the will, the
\nlife that man can solve at once his inner riddle of self and God and the outer problem of his active human existence. Made
\nGodlike, God-becoming, he can enjoy the infinite breadth of a supreme spiritual consciousness that is reached through works
\nno less than through love and knowledge. Immortal and free, he can continue his human action from that highest level and
\ntransmute it into a supreme and all-embracing divine activity, \u2014 that indeed is the ultimate crown and significance here of all
\nworks and living and sacrifice and the world’s endeavour. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis highest message is first for those who have the strength
\nto follow after it, the master men, the great spirits, the God 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 570<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nknowers, God-doers, God-lovers who can live in God and for God and do their work joyfully for him in the world, a divine
\nwork uplifted above the restless darkness of the human mind and the false limitations of the ego. At the same time, and here
\nwe get the gleam of a larger promise which we may even extend to the hope of a collective turn towards perfection,
\n\u2014 for if there
\nis hope for man, why should there not be hope for mankind? \u2014 the Gita declares that all can if they will, even to the lowest
\nand sinfullest among men, enter into the path of this Yoga. And if there is a true self-surrender and an absolute unegoistic faith
\nin the indwelling Divinity, success is certain in this path. The decisive turn is needed; there must be an abiding belief in the
\nSpirit, a sincere and insistent will to live in the Divine, to be in self one with him and in Nature
\n\u2014 where too we are an eternal
\nportion of his being \u2014 one with his greater spiritual Nature, God-possessed in all our members and Godlike.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita in the development of its idea raises many issues, such as the determinism of Nature, the significance of the universal manifestation and the ultimate status of the liberated soul, questions that have been the subject of unending and inconclusive debate. It is not necessary in this series of essays of which the object is a scrutiny and positive affirmation of the substance
\nof the Gita and a disengaging of its contribution to the abiding spiritual thought of humanity and its kernel of living practice,
\nto enter far into these discussions or to consider where we may differ from its standpoint or conclusions, make any reserves
\nin our assent or even, strong in later experience, go beyond its metaphysical teaching or its Yoga. It will be sufficient to
\nclose with a formulation of the living message it still brings for man the eternal seeker and discoverer to guide him through the
\npresent circuits and the possible steeper ascent of his life up to the luminous heights of his spirit.
\n  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 571<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XXIII   The Core of the Gita’s Meaning   WHAT THEN is the message of the Gita and what its working value, its spiritual utility…<\/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-2259","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\/2259","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=2259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}