{"id":2272,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2272"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:31","slug":"01-our-demand-and-need-from-the-gita-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\/01-our-demand-and-need-from-the-gita-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","title":{"rendered":"-01_Our Demand and Need from the Gita.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

 
\nSri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, c. 1915
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

A page of the Arya <\/i>as revised by Sri Aurobindo
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\nEssays on the Gita<\/font><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nFirst Series<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\n

\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOur Demand and Need<\/font><\/b>
\nfrom the Gita<\/font><\/b>  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE
\nWORLD<\/b> abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with revelations and
\nhalf-revelations, with religions and philosophies, sects and schools and
\nsystems. To these the many minds of a half-ripe knowledge or no knowledge at all
\nattach themselves with exclusiveness and passion and will have it that this or
\nthe other book is alone the eternal Word of God and all others are either
\nimpostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that philosophy is the
\nlast word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are either errors or
\nsaved only by such partial truth in them as links them to the one true
\nphilosophical cult. Even the discoveries of physical Science have been elevated
\ninto a creed and in its name religion and spirituality banned as ignorance and
\nsuperstition, philosophy as frippery and moonshine. And to these bigoted
\nexclusions and vain wranglings even the wise have often lent themselves, misled
\nby some spirit of darkness that has mingled with their light and overshadowed it
\nwith some cloud of intellectual egoism or spiritual pride. Mankind seems now
\nindeed inclined to grow a little modester and wiser; we no longer slay our
\nfellows in the name of God’s truth or because they have minds differently
\ntrained or differently constituted from ours; we are less ready to curse and
\nrevile our neighbour because he is wicked or presumptuous enough to differ from
\nus in opinion; we are ready even to admit that Truth is everywhere and cannot be
\nour sole monopoly; we are beginning to look at other religions and philosophies
\nfor the truth and help they contain and no longer merely in order to damn them
\nas false or criticise what we conceive to be their errors. But we are still apt
\nto declare that our truth gives us
\nthe <\/i>supreme knowledge which other religions or philosophies  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 3<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

have missed or only imperfectly grasped so that they deal either with subsidiary
\nand inferior aspects of the truth of things or can merely prepare less evolved
\nminds for the heights to which we have arrived. And we are still prone to force
\nupon ourselves or others the whole sacred mass of the book or gospel we admire,
\ninsisting that all shall be accepted as eternally valid truth and no iota or
\nunderline or diaeresis denied its part of the plenary inspiration.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt may therefore be useful in approaching an ancient Scripture, such as the
\nVeda, Upanishads or Gita, to indicate precisely the spirit in which we approach
\nit and what exactly we think we may derive from it that is of value to humanity
\nand its future. First of all, there is undoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which
\nwe are seeking, from which all other truth derives, by the light of which all
\nother truth finds its right place, explanation and relation to the scheme of
\nknowledge. But precisely for that reason it cannot be shut up in a single
\ntrenchant formula, it is not likely to be found in its entirety or in all its
\nbearings in any single philosophy or scripture or uttered altogether and for
\never by any one teacher, thinker, prophet or Avatar. Nor has it been wholly
\nfound by us if our view of it necessitates the intolerant exclusion of the truth
\nunderlying other systems; for when we reject passionately, we mean simply that
\nwe cannot appreciate and explain. Secondly, this Truth, though it is one and
\neternal, expresses itself in Time and through the mind of man; therefore every
\nScripture must necessarily contain two elements, one temporary, perishable,
\nbelonging to the ideas of the period and country in which it was produced, the
\nother eternal and imperishable and applicable in all ages and countries.
\nMoreover, in the statement of the Truth the actual form given to it, the system
\nand arrangement, the metaphysical and intellectual mould, the precise expression
\nused must be largely subject to the mutations of Time and cease to have the same
\nforce; for the human intellect modifies itself always; continually dividing and
\nputting together it is obliged to shift its divisions continually and to
\nrearrange its syntheses; it is always leaving old expression and symbol for new
\nor, if it uses the old, it so changes its connotation or at least  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 4<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nits exact content and association that we can never be quite sure of
\nunderstanding an ancient book of this kind precisely in the sense and spirit it
\nbore to its contemporaries. What is of entirely permanent value is that which
\nbesides being universal has been experienced, lived and seen with a higher than
\nthe intellectual vision.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nI hold it therefore of small importance to extract from the Gita its exact
\nmetaphysical connotation as it was understood by the men of the time,\u2014even if
\nthat were accurately possible. That it is not possible, is shown by the
\ndivergence of the original commentaries which have been and are still being
\nwritten upon it; for they all agree in each disagreeing with all the others,
\neach finds in the Gita its own system of metaphysics and trend of religious
\nthought. Nor will even the most painstaking and disinterested scholarship and
\nthe most luminous theories of the historical development of Indian philosophy
\nsave us from inevitable error. But what we can do with profit is to seek in the
\nGita for the actual living truths it contains, apart from their metaphysical
\nform, to extract from it what can help us or the world at large and to put it in
\nthe most natural and vital form and expression we can find that will be suitable
\nto the mentality and helpful to the spiritual needs of our present-day humanity.
\nNo doubt in this attempt we may mix a good deal of error born of our own
\nindividuality and of the ideas in which we live, as did greater men before us,
\nbut if we steep ourselves in the spirit of this great Scripture and, above all,
\nif we have tried to live in that spirit, we may be sure of finding in it as much
\nreal truth as we are capable of receiving as well as the spiritual influence and
\nactual help that, personally, we were intended to derive from it. And that is
\nafter all what Scriptures were written to give; the rest is academical
\ndisputation or theological dogma. Only those Scriptures, religions, philosophies
\nwhich can be thus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth
\nconstantly reshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience
\nof a developing humanity, continue to be of living importance to mankind. The
\nrest remain as monuments of the past, but have no actual force or vital impulse
\nfor the future.   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 5<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

\nIn the Gita there is very little that is merely local or temporal and its spirit
\nis so large, profound and universal that even this little can easily be
\nuniversalised without the sense of the teaching suffering any diminution or
\nviolation; rather by giving an ampler scope to it than belonged to the country
\nand epoch, the teaching gains in depth, truth and power. Often indeed the Gita
\nitself suggests the wider scope that can in this way be given to an idea in
\nitself local or limited. Thus it dwells on the ancient Indian system and idea of
\nsacrifice as an interchange between gods and men,\u2014a system and idea which have
\nlong been practically obsolete in India itself and are no longer real to the
\ngeneral human mind; but we find here a sense so entirely subtle, figurative and
\nsymbolic given to the word "sacrifice" and the conception of the gods is so
\nlittle local or mythological, so entirely cosmic and philosophical that we can
\neasily accept both as expressive of a practical fact of psychology and general
\nlaw of Nature and so apply them to the modern conceptions of interchange between
\nlife and life and of ethical sacrifice and self-giving as to widen and deepen
\nthese and cast over them a more spiritual aspect and the light of a profounder
\nand more far-reaching Truth. Equally the idea of action according to the
\nShastra, the fourfold order of society, the allusion to the relative position of
\nthe four orders or the comparative spiritual disabilities of Shudras and women
\nseem at first sight local and temporal, and, if they are too much pressed in
\ntheir literal sense, narrow so much at least of the teaching, deprive it of its
\nuniversality and spiritual depth and limit its validity for mankind at large.
\nBut if we look behind to the spirit and sense and not at the local name and
\ntemporal institution, we see that here too the sense is deep and true and the
\nspirit philosophical, spiritual and universal. By Shastra we perceive that the
\nGita means the law imposed on itself by humanity as a substitute for the purely
\negoistic action of the natural unregenerate man and a control on his tendency to
\nseek in the satisfaction of his desire the standard and aim of his life. We see
\ntoo that the fourfold order of society is merely the concrete form of a
\nspiritual truth which is itself independent of the form; it rests on the
\nconception of right works as a rightly ordered  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 6<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nexpression of the nature of the individual being through whom the work is done,
\nthat nature assigning him his line and scope in life according to his inborn
\nquality and his self-expressive function. Since this is the spirit in which the
\nGita advances its most local and particular instances, we are justified in
\npursuing always the same principle and looking always for the deeper general
\ntruth which is sure to underlie whatever seems at first sight merely local and
\nof the time. For we shall find always that the deeper truth and principle is
\nimplied in the grain of the thought even when it is not expressly stated in its
\nlanguage.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nNor shall we deal in any other spirit with the element of philosophical dogma or
\nreligious creed which either enters into the Gita or hangs about it owing to its
\nuse of the philosophical terms and religious symbols current at the time. When
\nthe Gita speaks of Sankhya and Yoga, we shall not discuss beyond the limits of
\nwhat is just essential for our statement, the relations of the Sankhya of the
\nGita with its one Purusha and strong Vedantic colouring to the non-theistic or
\n"atheistic" Sankhya that has come down to us bringing with it its scheme of many
\nPurushas and one Prakriti, nor of the Yoga of the Gita, many-sided, subtle, rich
\nand flexible to the theistic doctrine and the fixed, scientific, rigorously
\ndefined and graded system of the Yoga of Patanjali. In the Gita the Sankhya and
\nYoga are evidently only two convergent parts of the same Vedantic truth or
\nrather two concurrent ways of approaching its realisation, the one
\nphilosophical, intellectual, analytic, the other intuitional, devotional,
\npractical, ethical, synthetic, reaching knowledge through experience. The Gita
\nrecognises no real difference in their teachings. Still less need we discuss the
\ntheories which regard the Gita as the fruit of some particular religious system
\nor tradition. Its teaching is universal whatever may have been its origins.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe philosophical system of the Gita, its arrangement of truth, is not that part
\nof its teaching which is the most vital, profound, eternally durable; but most
\nof the material of which the system is composed, the principal ideas suggestive
\nand penetrating which are woven into its complex harmony, are eternally valuable
\nand valid; for they are not merely the luminous ideas or   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 7<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

striking speculations of a philosophic intellect, but rather enduring truths of
\nspiritual experience, verifiable facts of our highest psychological
\npossibilities which no attempt to read deeply the mystery of existence can
\nafford to neglect. Whatever the system may be, it is not, as the commentators
\nstrive to make it, framed or intended to support any exclusive school of
\nphilosophical thought or to put forward predominantly the claims of any one form
\nof Yoga. The language of the Gita, the structure of thought, the combination and
\nbalancing of ideas belong neither to the temper of a sectarian teacher nor to
\nthe spirit of a rigorous analytical dialectics cutting off one angle of the
\ntruth to exclude all the others; but rather there is a wide, undulating,
\nencircling movement of ideas which is the manifestation of a vast synthetic mind
\nand a rich synthetic experience. This is one of those great syntheses in which
\nIndian spirituality has been as rich as in its creation of the more intensive,
\nexclusive movements of knowledge and religious realisation that follow out with
\nan absolute concentration one clue, one path to its extreme issues. It does not
\ncleave asunder, but reconciles and unifies. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe thought of the Gita is not pure Monism although it sees in one unchanging,
\npure, eternal Self the foundation of all cosmic existence, nor Mayavada although
\nit speaks of the Maya of the three modes of Prakriti omnipresent in the created
\nworld; nor is it qualified Monism although it places in the One his eternal
\nsupreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays most stress on
\ndwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual
\nconsciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the
\ndouble principle of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it
\npresents to us Krishna, who is the Avatara of Vishnu according to the Puranas,
\nas the supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual
\nsuperiority of the status of the indefinable relationless Brahman over that of
\nthis Lord of beings who is the Master of the universe and the Friend of all
\ncreatures. Like the earlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later
\nsynthesis at once spiritual and intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid
\ndetermination as would injure its universal  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 8<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\ncomprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite to that of the polemist
\ncommentators who found this Scripture established as one of the three highest
\nVedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a weapon of offence and
\ndefence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a weapon for
\ndialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual truth
\nand experience and the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that
\nsupreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to
\nconfine our vision. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThere have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start
\nwith the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest
\nflights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with
\nthe cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material
\nuniverse into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and
\nthe material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the
\nVedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the
\nincreasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads
\nmeet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning
\nexperience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and
\nprofound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great
\nharmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated
\nknowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual
\nseeking. The Gita starts from this Vedantic synthesis and upon the basis of its
\nessential ideas builds another harmony of the three great means and powers,
\nLove, Knowledge and Works, through which the soul of man can directly approach
\nand cast itself into the Eternal. There is yet another, the Tantric,1<\/font><\/sup> which
\nthough less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than
\nthe synthesis of the Gita,\u2014for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the
\nspiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual
\nconquest and enables us to embrace the whole
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1 All the Puranic tradition, it must be remembered, draws the richness of its
\ncontents from the Tantra.  
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 9<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

of Life in our divine scope as the Lila2<\/font><\/sup> of the Divine; and in some directions
\nit is more immediately rich and fruitful, for it brings forward into the
\nforeground along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of
\ndivine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body
\nand of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes,
\nto which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention. Moreover it
\ngrasps at that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, possessed by the Vedic
\nRishis but thrown into the background by the intermediate ages, which is
\ndestined to fill so large a place in any future synthesis of human thought,
\nexperience and aspiration.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nWe of the coming day stand at the head of a new age of development which must
\nlead to such a new and larger synthesis. We are not called upon to be orthodox
\nVedantins of any of the three schools or Tantrics or to adhere to one of the
\ntheistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners
\nof the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to
\ncreate our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of
\nthe men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and
\npotentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the
\nfuture. A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to
\nassimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the
\nworld and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism, but to take full account
\nof the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and,
\nbeyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning
\nupon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the
\nconsciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil. All
\nthis points to a new, a very rich, a very vast synthesis; a fresh and widely
\nembracing harmonisation of our gains is both an intellectual and a spiritual
\nnecessity of the future. But just as the past syntheses have taken those which
\npreceded them for their starting-point, so also must that of the future,
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n2 The cosmic Play.  
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 10<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nto be on firm ground, proceed from what the great bodies of realised spiritual
\nthought and experience in the past have given. Among them the Gita takes a most
\nimportant place. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nOur object, then, in studying the Gita will not be a scholastic or academical
\nscrutiny of its thought, nor to place its philosophy in the history of
\nmetaphysical speculation, nor shall we deal with it in the manner of the
\nanalytical dialectician. We approach it for help and light and our aim must be
\nto distinguish its essential and living message, that in it on which humanity
\nhas to seize for its perfection and its highest spiritual welfare.  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 11<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, c. 1915    A page of the Arya as revised by Sri Aurobindo Essays on the Gita   First…<\/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-2272","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\/2272","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=2272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}