{"id":3623,"date":"2013-07-13T01:50:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3623"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:50:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:01","slug":"06-man-and-the-battle-of-life-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn\/06-man-and-the-battle-of-life-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","title":{"rendered":"-06_Man and the Battle of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nMAN AND THE BATTLE OF LIFE <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nT<\/font>HUS<\/font>,
\nIF<\/font> we are to appreciate in its catholicity the teaching of
\nthe Gita, we must accept intellectually its standpoint and courageous envisaging
\nof the manifest nature and process of the world. The divine charioteer of
\nKurukshetra reveals Himself on one side as the Lord of all the worlds and the
\nFriend and omniscient Guide of all creatures, on the other as Time the Destroyer
\n"arisen for the destruction of these peoples." The Gita, following in this the
\nspirit of the catholic Hindu religion affirms this also as God; it does not
\nattempt to evade the enigma of the world by escaping from it through a
\nside-door. If, in fact, we do not regard existence merely as the mechanic action
\nof a brute and indifferent material Force or, on the other hand, as an equally
\nmechanical play of ideas and energies arising out of an original Non-Existence
\nor else reflected in the passive Soul or the evolution of a dream or nightmare
\nin the surface consciousness of an indifferent, immutable Transcendence which is
\nunaffected by the dream and has no real part in it,\u2014if we accept at all, as the
\nGita accepts, the existence of God, that is to say, of the omnipresent,
\nomniscient, omnipotent, yet always transcendent Being who manifests the world
\nand Himself in the world, who is not the slave but the lord of His creative
\nConsciousness, Nature or Force (Maya, Prakriti or Shakti), who is not baffled or
\nthwarted in His world-conception or design by His creatures, man or devil, who
\ndoes not need to justify Himself by shifting the responsibility for any part of
\nHis creation or manifestation on that which is created or manifested, then the
\nhuman being has to start from a great, a difficult act of faith. Finding himself
\nin a world which is apparently a chaos of battling powers, a clash of vast and
\nobscure forces, a life which subsists only by constant change and death, menaced
\nfrom every side by pain, suffering, evil and destruction, he has to see the
\nomnipresent Deity in it all and conscious that of this enigma there must be a
\nsolution and beyond this Ignorance in which he dwells a Knowledge that
\nreconciles, he has to
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\n
\ntake his stand upon this faith, "Though Thou slay
\nme, yet will I trust in Thee." All human thought or faith that is active and
\naffirmative, whether it be theistic, pantheistic or atheistic, does in fact
\ninvolve more or less explicitly and completely such an attitude. It admits and
\nit believes: admits the discords of the world, believes in some highest
\nprinciple of God, universal Being or Nature which shall enable us to transcend,
\novercome or harmonise these discords, perhaps even to do all three at once, to
\nharmonise by overcoming and transcending. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThen, as to human life in its actualities, we have
\nto accept its aspect of a struggle and a battle mounting into supreme crises
\nsuch as that of Kurukshetra. The Gita, as we have seen, takes for its frame such
\na period of transition and crisis as humanity periodically experiences in its
\nhistory, in which great forces clash together for a huge destruction and
\nreconstruction, intellectual, social, moral, religious, political, and these in
\nthe actual psychological and social stage of human evolution culminate usually
\nthrough a violent physical convulsion of strife, war or revolution. The Gita
\nproceeds from the acceptance of the necessity in Nature for such vehement crises
\nand it accepts not only the moral aspect, the struggle between righteousness and
\nuprighteousness, between the self-affirming law of Good and the forces that
\noppose its progression, but also the physical aspect, the actual armed war or
\nother vehement physical strife between the human beings who represent the
\nantagonistic powers. We must remember that the Gita was composed at a time when
\nwar was even more than it is now a necessary part of human activity and the idea
\nof its elimination from the scheme of life would have been an absolute chimera.
\nThe gospel of universal peace and goodwill among mentor without a universal and
\nentire mutual goodwill there can be no real and abiding peace\u2014has never
\nsucceeded for a moment in possessing itself of human life during the historic
\ncycle of our progress, because morally, socially, spiritually the race was not
\nprepared and the poise of Nature in its evolution would not admit of its being
\nimmediately prepared for any such transcendence. Even now we have not actually
\nprogressed beyond the feasibility of a system of accommodation between
\nconflicting interests which may minimise the recurrence of the worst forms of
\nstrife. And towards this consummation the method, the approach which humanity
\nhas been forced by its own nature to adopt, is a monstrous mutual massacre
\nunparallelled <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-44<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nin history; a universal war, full of bitterness and
\nirreconcilable hatred, is the straight way and the triumphant means modern man
\nhas found for the establishment of universal peace! That consummation, too,
\nfounded not upon any fundamental change in human nature, but upon intellectual
\nnotions, economic convenience, vital and sentimental shrinkings from the loss of
\nlife, discomfort and horror of war, effected by nothing better than political
\nadjustments, gives no very certain promise of firm foundation and long duration.
\nA day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready
\nspiritually, morally, socially for the reign of universal peace; meanwhile the
\naspect of battle and the nature and function of man as a fighter have to be
\naccepted and accounted for by any practical philosophy and religion. The Gita,
\ntaking life as it is and not only as it may be in some distant future, puts the
\nquestion how this aspect and function of life, which is really an aspect and
\nfunction of human activity in general, can be harmonised with the spiritual
\nexistence. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe Gita is therefore addressed to a fighter, a man
\nof action, one whose duty in life is that of war and protection, war as a part
\nof government for the protection of those who are excused from that duty,
\ndebarred from protecting themselves and therefore at the mercy of the strong and
\nthe violent, war, secondly and by a moral extension of this idea, for the
\nprotection of the weak and the oppressed and for the maintenance of right and
\njustice, in the world. For all these ideas, the social and practical, the moral
\nand the chivalrous enter into the Indian conception of the Kshatriya, the man
\nwho is a warrior and ruler by function and a knight and king in his nature.
\nAlthough the more general and universal ideas of the Gita are those which are
\nthe most important to us, we ought not to leave out of consideration altogether
\nthe colouring and trend they take from the peculiar Indian culture and social
\nsystem in the midst of which they arose. That system differed from the modern in
\nits conception. To the modern mind man is a thinker, worker or producer and a
\nfighter all in one, and the tendency of the social system is to lump all these
\nactivities and to demand from each individual his contribution to the
\nintellectual, economical and military life and needs of the community without
\npaying any heed to the demands of his individual nature and temperament. The
\nancient Indian civilisation laid peculiar stress on the individual nature,
\ntendency, temperament and sought to determine by it the ethical type, function
\nand place in the society. Nor <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\n
\ndid it consider man primarily as a social being or
\nthe fullness of his social existence as the highest ideal, but rather as a
\nspiritual being in process of formation and development and his social life,
\nethical law, play of temperament and exercise of function as means and stages of
\nspiritual formation. Thought and knowledge, war and government, production and
\ndistribution, labour and service were carefully differentiated functions of
\nsociety, each assigned to those who were naturally called to it and providing
\nthe right means by which they could individually proceed towards their spiritual
\ndevelopment and self-perfection. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe modern idea of a common obligation in all the
\nmain departments of human activity has its advantages; it helps to greater
\nsolidarity, unity and fullness in the life of the community and a more all-round
\ndevelopment of the complete human being as opposed to the endless divisions and
\nover-specialisation and the narrowing and artificial shackling of the life of
\nthe individual to which the Indian system eventually led. But it has also its
\ndisadvantages and in certain of its developments the too logical application of
\nit has led to grotesque and disastrous absurdities. This is evident enough in
\nthe character of modern war. From the idea of a common military obligation
\nbinding on every individual to defend and fight for the community by which he
\nlives and profits, has arisen the system by which the whole manhood of the
\nnation is hurled into the bloody trench to slay and be slain, thinkers, artists,
\nphilosophers, priests, merchants, artisans all torn from their natural
\nfunctions, the whole life of the community disorganised, reason and conscience
\noverridden, even the minister of religion who is salaried by the State or called
\nby his function to preach the gospel of peace and love forced to deny his creed
\nand become a butcher of his fellow-men! Not only are conscience and nature
\nviolated by the arbitrary fiat of the military State, but national defence
\ncarried to an insane extreme makes its best attempt to become a national
\nsuicide. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nIndian civilisation, on the contrary, made it its
\nchief aim to minimise the incidence and disaster of war. For this purpose it
\nlimited the military obligation to the small class who by their birth, nature
\nand traditions were marked out for this function and found in it their natural
\nmeans of self-development through the flowering of the soul in the qualities of
\ncourage, disciplined force, strong helpfulness and chivalrous nobility for which
\nthe warrior’s life pursued under <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\n
\nthe stress of a high ideal gives a field and
\nopportunities. The rest o\u00a3 the community was in every way guarded from slaughter
\nand outrage; their life and occupations were as little interfered with as
\npossible and the combative and destructive tendencies of human nature were given
\na restricted field, confined in a sort of lists so as to do the minimum amount
\nof harm to the general life of the race, while at the same time by being
\nsubjected to high ethical ideals and every possible rule of humanity and
\nchivalry the function of war was obliged to help in ennobling and elevating
\ninstead of brutalising those who performed it. It must be remembered that it is
\nwar of this kind and under these conditions that the Gita had in view, war
\nconsidered as an inevitable part of human life, but so restricted and regulated
\nas to serve like other activities the ethical and spiritual development which
\nwas then regarded as the whole real object of life, war destructive within
\ncertain carefully fixed limits of the bodily life of individual men but
\nconstructive of their inner life and of the ethical elevation of the race. That
\nwar in the past has, when subjected to an ideal, helped in this elevation, as in
\nthe development of knighthood and chivalry, the Indian ideal of the Kshatriya,
\nthe Japanese ideal of the Samurai, can only be denied by the fanatics of
\npacifism. When it has fulfilled its function, it may well disappear; for if it
\ntries to survive its utility, it will appear as an unrelieved brutality of
\nviolence stripped of its ideal and constructive aspects and will be rejected by
\nthe progressive mind of humanity; but its past service to the race must be
\nadmitted in any reasonable view of our evolution. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe physical fact of war, however, is only a
\nspecial and outward manifestation of a general principle in life and the
\nKshatriya is only the outward manifestation and type of a general characteristic
\nnecessary to the completeness of human perfection. War typifies and embodies
\nphysically the aspect of battle and struggle which belongs to all life, both to
\nour inner and our outer living, in a world whose method is a meeting and
\nwrestling of forces which progress by mutual destruction towards a continually
\nchanging adjustment expressive of a progressive harmonising and hopeful of a
\nperfect harmony based upon some yet ungrasped potentiality of oneness. The
\nKshatriya is the type and embodiment of the fighter in man who accepts this
\nprinciple in life and faces it as a warrior striving towards mastery, not
\nshrinking from the destruction of bodies and forms, but through it all aiming at
\nthe realisation of some principle of right, justice, law <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\nwhich shall be the basis of the
\nharmony towards which the struggle tends. The Gita accepts this aspect of the
\nworld-energy and the physical fact of war which embodies it, and it addresses
\nitself to the man of action, the striver and fighter, the Kshatriya,\u2014war which
\nis the extreme contradiction of the soul’s high aspiration to peace within and
\nharmlessness1<\/sup> without, the striver and fighter whose necessary turmoil of
\nstruggle and action seems to be the very contradiction of the soul’s high ideal
\nof calm mastery and self-possession,\u2014and it seeks for an issue from the
\ncontradiction, a point at which its terms meet and a poise which shall be the
\nfirst essential basis of harmony and transcendence. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nMan meets the battle of life in the manner most
\nconsonant with  the essential quality most dominant in his nature. There
\nare, according to the Sankhya philosophy accepted in this respect by the Gita,
\nthree essential qualities or modes of the world-energy and therefore also of
\nhuman nature, sattva,<\/i> the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction,
\nrajas,<\/i> the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion,
\ntamas,<\/i> the mode of ignorance and inertia. Dominated by tamas,<\/i> man
\ndoes not so much meet the rush and shock of the world-energies whirling about
\nhim and converging upon him as he succumbs to them, is overborne by them,
\nafflicted, subjected; or, at the most, helped by the other qualities, the
\ntamasic man seeks only somehow to survive, to subsist so long as he may, to
\nshelter himself in the fortress of an established routine of thought and action
\nin which he feels himself to a certain extent protected from the battle, able to
\nreject the demand which his higher nature makes upon him, excused from accepting
\nthe necessity of farther struggle and the ideal of an increasing effort and
\nmastery. Dominated by rajas,<\/i> man flings himself into the battle and
\nattempts to use the struggle of forces for his own egoistic benefit, to slay,
\nconquer, dominate, enjoy; or, helped by a certain measure of the sattwic
\nquality, the rajasic man makes the struggle itself a means of increasing inner
\nmastery, joy, power, possession. The battle of life becomes his delight and
\npassion partly for its own sake, for the pleasure of activity and the sense of
\npower, partly as a means of his increase and natural self-development. Dominated
\nby sattva,<\/i> man seeks in the midst-of the strife for a principle of law,
\nright, poise, harmony, peace, satisfaction. The purely sattwic man tends to seek
\nthis within, <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1<\/sup> Ahimsā.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

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

\n

\n
\nwhether for himself alone or with an impulse to
\ncommunicate it, when won, to other human minds, but usually by a sort of inner
\ndetachment from or else an outer rejection of the strife and turmoil of the
\nactive world-energy; but if the sattwic mind accepts partly the rajasic impulse,
\nit seeks rather to impose this poise and harmony upon the struggle and apparent
\nchaos, to vindicate a victory for peace, love and harmony over the principle of
\nwar, discord and struggle. All the attitudes adopted by the human mind towards
\nthe problem of life either derive from the domination of one or another of these
\nqualities or else from an attempt at balance and harmony between them. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut there comes also a stage in which the mind
\nrecoils from the whole problem and, dissatisfied with the solutions given by the
\nthreefold mode of Nature, traigunya,<\/i> seeks for some higher solution
\noutside of it or else above it. It looks for an escape either into something
\nwhich is outside and void of all qualities and therefore of all activity or in
\nsomething which is superior to the three qualities and master of them and
\ntherefore at once capable of action and unaffected, undominated by its own
\naction, in the nirguna<\/i> or the trigunātīta.<\/i> It aspires to an
\nabsolute peace and unconditioned existence or to a dominant calm and superior
\nexistence. The natural movement of the former attitude is towards the
\nrenunciation of the world, sannyāsa;<\/i> of the latter towards superiority to
\nthe claims of the lower nature and its whirl of actions and reactions, and its
\nprinciple is equality and the inner renunciation of passion and desire. The
\nformer is the first impulse of Arjuna recoiling from the calamitous culmination
\nof all his heroic activity in the great cataclysm of battle and massacre,
\nKurukshetra; losing his whole past principle of action, inaction and the
\nrejection of life and its claims seem to him the only issue. But it is to an
\ninner superiority and not to the physical renunciation of life and action that
\nhe is called by the voice of the divine Teacher. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nArjuna is the Kshatriya, the rajasic man who
\ngoverns his rajasic action by a high sattwic ideal. He advances to this gigantic
\nstruggle, to this Kurukshetra with the full acceptance of the joy of battle, as
\nto "a holiday of fight," but with a proud confidence in the righteousness of his
\ncause; he advances in his rapid chariot tearing the hearts of his enemies with
\nthe victorious clamour of his war-conch; -for he wishes to look upon all these
\nKings of men who have come here to champion against him the cause of
\nunrighteousness and establish as <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\n
\na rule or life the disregard of law, justice and
\ntruth which they would replace by the rule or a selfish and arrogant egoism.
\nWhen this confidence is shattered within him, when he is smitten down from his
\ncustomary attitude and mental basis of life, it is by the uprush of the tamasic
\nquality into the rajasic man, inducing a recoil of astonishment, grief, horror,
\ndismay, dejection, bewilderment of the mind and the war of reason against
\nitself, a collapse towards the principle of ignorance and inertia. As a result
\nhe turns towards renunciation. Better the life of the mendicant living upon alms
\nthan this dharma<\/i> of the Kshatriya, this battle and action culminating in
\nundiscriminating massacre, this principle of mastery and glory and power which
\ncan only be won by destruction and bloodshed, this conquest of bloodstained
\nenjoyments, this vindication of justice and right by a means which contradicts
\nall righteousness and this affirmation of the social law by a war which destroys
\nin its process and result all that constitutes society. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nSannyāsa<\/i> is the renunciation of life and
\naction and of the threefold modes of Nature, but it has to be approached through
\none or other of the three qualities. The impulse may be tamasic, a feeling of
\nimpotence, fear, aversion, disgust, horror of the world and life; or it may be
\nthe rajasic quality tending towards tamas, an impulse of weariness of the
\nstruggle, grief, disappointment, refusal to accept any longer this vain turmoil
\nof activity with its pains and its eternal discontent. Or the impulse may be
\nthat of rajas tending towards sattwa, the impulse to arrive at something
\nsuperior to anything life can give, to conquer a higher state, to trample down
\nlife itself under the feet of an inner strength which seeks to break all bonds
\nand transcend all limits. Or it may be sattwic, an intellectual perception of
\nthe vanity of life and the absence of any real goal or justification for this
\never-cycling world-existence or else a spiritual perception of the Timeless, the
\nInfinite, the Silent, the nameless and formless Peace beyond. The recoil of
\nArjuna is the tamasic recoil from action of the sattwa-rajasic man. The Teacher
\nmay confirm it in its direction, using it as a dark entry to the purity and
\npeace of the ascetic life; or he may purify it at once and raise it towards the
\nrare altitudes of the sattwic tendency of renunciation. In fact, he does
\nneither. He discourages the tamasic recoil and the tendency to renunciation and
\nenjoins the continuance of action and even of the same fierce and terrible
\naction, but he points the disciple towards another and inner renunciation which
\nis the <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n

\nreal issue from his crisis and
\nthe way towards the soul’s superiority to the world-Nature and yet its calm and
\nself-possessed action in the world. Not a physical asceticism, but an inner
\naskesis is the teaching of the Gita. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

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