{"id":3637,"date":"2013-07-13T01:50:07","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3637"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:50:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:07","slug":"01-our-demand-and-need-from-the-gita-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\/01-our-demand-and-need-from-the-gita-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","title":{"rendered":"-01_Our Demand and need from the Gita.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nOUR DEMAND AND NEED FROM THE GITA <\/font>
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/font>
\nWORLD<\/font> abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with
\nrevelations and half-revelations, with religions and philosophies, sects and
\nschools and systems. To these the many minds of a half-ripe knowledge or no
\nknowledge at all attach themselves with exclusiveness and passion and will have
\nit that this or the other hook is alone the eternal Word of God and all others
\nare either impostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that
\nphilosophy is the last word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are
\neither errors or saved only by such partial truth in them as links them to the
\none true philosophical cult Even the discoveries of physical Science have been
\nelevated into a creed and in its name religion and spirituality banned as
\nignorance and superstition, philosophy as frippery and moonshine. And to these
\nbigoted exclusions and vain wranglings even the wise have often lent themselves,
\nmisled by some spirit of darkness that has mingled with their light and
\novershadowed it with some cloud of intellectual egoism or spiritual pride.
\nMankind seems now indeed inclined to grow a little modester and wiser; we no
\nlonger slay our fellows in the name of God’s truth or because they have minds
\ndifferently trained or differently constituted from ours; we are less ready to
\ncurse and revile our neighbour because he is wicked or presumptuous enough to
\ndiffer from us in opinion; we are ready even to admit that Truth is everywhere
\nand cannot be our sole monopoly; we are beginning to look at other religions and
\nphilosophies for the truth and help they contain and no longer merely in order
\nto damn them as false or criticise what we conceive to be their errors. But we
\nare still apt to declare that our truth gives us the<\/i> supreme knowledge
\nwhich other religions or philosophies have missed or only imperfectly grasped so
\nthat they deal either with subsidiary and inferior aspects of the truth of
\nthings or can merely prepare less evolved minds for the heights to which we have
\narrived. And we are still prone to force upon ourselves or others the whole
\nsacred mass of the book or gospel we admire, insisting that <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-3 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nall shall be accepted as
\neternally valid truth and no iota or underline or diaeresis denied its part of
\nthe plenary inspiration. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt may therefore be useful in approaching an
\nancient Scripture, such as the Veda, Upanishads or Gita, to indicate precisely
\nthe spirit in which we approach it and what exactly we think we may derive from
\nit that is of value to humanity and its future. First of all, there ‘ is
\nundoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which we are seeking, from which all other
\ntruth derives, by the light of which all other truth finds its right place,
\nexplanation and relation to the scheme of knowledge. But precisely for that
\nreason it cannot be shut up in a single trenchant formula, it is not likely to
\nbe found in its entirety or in all its bearings in any single philosophy or
\nscripture or uttered altogether and for ever by any one teacher, thinker,
\nprophet or Avatar. Nor has it been wholly found by us if our view of it
\nnecessitates the intolerant exclusion of the truth underlying other systems; for
\nwhen we reject passionately, we mean simply that we cannot appreciate and
\nexplain. Secondly, this Truth, though it is one and eternal, expresses itself in
\nTime and through the mind of man; therefore every Scripture must necessarily
\ncontain two elements, one temporary, perishable, belonging to the ideas of the
\nperiod and country in which it was produced, the other eternal and imperishable
\nand applicable in all ages and countries. Moreover, in the statement of the
\nTruth the actual form given to it, the system and arrangement, the metaphysical
\nand intellectual mould, the precise expression used must be largely subject to
\nthe mutations of Time and cease to have the same force; for the human intellect
\nmodifies itself always; continually dividing and putting together it is obliged
\nto shift its divisions continually and to rearrange its syntheses; it is always
\nleaving old expression and symbol for new or, it uses the old, it so changes its
\nconnotation or at least its exact content and association that we can never be
\nquite sure of understanding an ancient book of this kind precisely in the sense
\nand spirit it bore to its contemporaries. What is of entirely permanent value is
\nthat which besides being universal has been experienced, lived and seen with a
\nhigher than the intellectual vision. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nI hold it therefore of small importance to extract
\nfrom the Gita its exact metaphysical connotation as it was understood by the men
\nof the time,\u2014even it that were accurately possible. That it is not possible, is
\nshown by the divergence of the original commentaries which have been and are
\nstill being written upon it; for they all agree in each <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\nPage-4 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ndisagreeing with all the others, each finds in the
\nGita its own system of metaphysics and trend of religious thought. Nor will even
\nthe most painstaking and disinterested scholarship and the most luminous
\ntheories of the historical development of Indian philosophy save us from
\ninevitable error. But what we can do with profit is to seek in the Gita for the
\nactual living truths it contains, apart from their metaphysical form, to extract
\nfrom it what can help us or the world at large and to put it in the most natural
\nand vital form and expression we can find that will be suitable to the mentality
\nand helpful to the spiritual needs of our present-day humanity. No doubt in this
\nattempt we may mix a good deal of error born of our own individuality and of the
\nideas in which we live, as did greater men before us, but if we steep ourselves
\nin the spirit of this great Scripture and, above all, if we have tried to live
\nin that spirit, we may be sure of finding in it as much real truth as we are
\ncapable of receiving as well as the spiritual influence and actual help that,
\npersonally, we were intended to derive from it. And that is after all what
\nScriptures were written to give; the rest is academical disputation or
\ntheological dogma. Only those Scriptures, religions, philosophies which can be
\nthus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly
\nreshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience of a
\ndeveloping humanity, continue to be of living importance to mankind. The rest
\nremain as monuments of the past, but have no acutal force or vital impulse for
\nthe future. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nIn the Gita there is very little that is merely
\nlocal or temporal and its spirit is so large, profound and universal that even
\nthis little can easily be universalised without the sense of the teaching
\nsuffering any diminution or violation; rather by giving an ampler scope to it
\nthan belonged to the country and epoch, the teaching gains in depth, truth and
\npower. Often indeed the Gita itself suggests the wider scope that can in this
\nway be given to an idea in itself local or limited. Thus it dwells on the
\nancient Indian system and idea of sacrifice as an interchange between gods and
\nmen,\u2014a system and idea which have long been practically obsolete in India itself
\nand are no longer real to the general human mind; but we find here a sense so
\nentirely subtle, figurative and symbolic given to the word "sacrifice" and the
\nconception of the gods is so little local or mythological, so entirely cosmic
\nand philosophical that we can easily accept both as expressive of a practical
\nfact of psychology and general law of Nature and so apply     <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\nPage-5 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nthem to the modern conceptions
\nof interchange between life and life and o\u00a3 ethical sacrifice and self-giving as
\nto widen and deepen these and cast over them a more spiritual aspect and the
\nlight of a profounder and more far-reaching Truth. Equally the idea of action
\naccording to the Shastra, the fourfold order of society, the allusion to the
\nrelative position of the four orders or the comparative spiritual disabilities
\nof Shudras and women seem at first sight local and temporal, and, if they are
\ntoo much pressed in their literal sense, narrow so much at least of the
\nteaching, deprive it of its universality and spiritual depth and limit its
\nvalidity for mankind at large. But if we look behind to the spirit and sense and
\nnot at the local name and temporal institution, we see that here too the sense
\nis deep and true and the spirit philosophical, spiritual and universal. By
\nShastra we perceive that the Gita means the law imposed on itself by humanity as
\na substitute for the purely egoistic action of the natural unregenerate man and
\na control on his tendency to seek in the satisfaction of his desire the standard
\nand aim of his life. We see too that the fourfold order of society is merely the
\nconcrete form of a spiritual truth which is itself independent of the form; it
\nrests on the conception of right works as a rightly ordered expression of the
\nnature of the individual being through whom the work is done, that nature
\nassigning him his line and scope in life according to his inborn quality and his
\nself-expressive function. Since this is the spirit in which the Gita advances
\nits most local and particular instances, we are justified in pursuing always the
\nsame principle and looking always for the deeper general truth which is sure to
\nunderlie whatever seems at first sight merely local and of the time. For we
\nshall find always that the deeper truth and principle is implied in the grain of
\nthe thought even when it is not expressly stated in its language. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nNor shall we deal in any other spirit with the
\nelement of philosophical dogma or religious creed which either enters into the
\nGita or hangs about it owing to its use of the philosophical terms and religious
\nsymbols current at the time. When the Gita speaks of Sankhya and Yoga, we shall
\nnot discuss beyond the limits of what is just essential for our statement, the
\nrelations of the Sankhya of the Gita with its one Purusha and strong Vedantic
\ncolouring to the nontheistic or "atheistic" Sankhya that has come down to us
\nbringing with it its scheme of many Purushas and one Prakriti, nor of the Yoga
\nof the Gita, many-sided, subtle, rich and flexible to the theistic doctrine and <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-6<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe fixed, scientific, rigorously defined and
\ngraded system of the Yoga of Patanjali. In the Gita the Sankhya and Yoga are
\nevidently only two convergent parts of the same Vedantic truth or rather two
\nconcurrent ways of approaching its realisation, the one philosophical,
\nintellectual, analytic, the other intuitional, devotional, practical, ethical,
\nsynthetic, reaching knowledge through experience. The Gita recognises no real
\ndifference in their teachings. Still less need we discuss the theories which
\nregard the Gita as the fruit of some particular religious system or tradition.
\nIts teaching is universal whatever may have been its origins. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe philosophical system of the Gita, its
\narrangement of truth, is not that part of its teaching which is the most vital,
\nprofound, eternally durable; but most of the material of which the system is
\ncomposed, the principal ideas suggestive and penetrating which are woven into
\nits complex harmony, are eternally valuable and valid; for they are not merely
\nthe luminous ideas or striking speculations of a philosophic intellect, but
\nrather enduring truths of spiritual experience, verifiable facts of our highest
\npsychological possibilities which no attempt to read deeply the mystery of
\nexistence can afford to neglect. Whatever the system may be, it is not, as the
\ncommentators strive to make it, framed or intended to support any exclusive
\nschool of philosophical thought or to put forward predominantly the claims of
\nany one form of Yoga. The language of the Gita, the structure of thought, the
\ncombination and balancing of ideas belong neither to the temper of a sectarian
\nteacher nor to the spirit of a rigorous analytical dialectics cutting off one
\nangle of the truth to exclude all the others; but rather there is a wide,
\nundulating, encircling movement of ideas which is the manifestation of a vast
\nsynthetic mind and a rich synthetic experience. This is one of those great
\nsyntheses in which Indian spirituality has been as rich as in its creation of
\nthe more intensive, exclusive movements of knowledge and religious realisation
\nthat follow out with an absolute concentration one clue, one path to its extreme
\nissues. It does not cleave asunder, but reconciles and unifies. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe thought of the Gita is not pure Monism although
\nit sees in one unchanging, pure, eternal Self the foundation of all cosmic
\nexistence, nor Mayavada although it speaks of the Maya of the three modes of
\nPrakriti omnipresent in the created world; nor is it qualified Monism although
\nit places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the
\nJiva and lays most stress on dwelling in God rather <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-7 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthan 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 Avatar of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as
\nthe supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual superiority
\nof the status of the indefinable relationless Brahman over that of this Lord of
\nbeings who is the Master of the universe and the Friend of all creatures. Like
\nthe earlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later synthesis at once
\nspiritual and intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid determination as
\nwould injure its universal comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite
\nto that of the polemist commentators who found this Scripture established as one
\nof the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a weapon
\nof offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a
\nweapon for dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of
\nspiritual truth and experience and the view it gives us embraces all the
\nprovinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build
\nwalls or hedges to confine our vision. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThere have been other syntheses in the long history
\nof Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being
\nof man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power,
\njoy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the
\nsymbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden
\nfrom the physical sense and the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis
\nwas in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and
\nblissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine
\nfullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The
\nUpanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it
\ntheir starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge;
\nthey draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced
\nby the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and
\nfruitful period of spiritual seeking. The Gita starts from this Vedantic
\nsynthesis and upon the basis of its essential ideas builds another harmony of
\nthe three great means and powers, Love, Knowledge and Works, through which the
\nsoul of man can directly approach and cast itself into the Eternal, There is yet <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-8 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nanother, the Tantric,1 which though less subtle and
\nspiritually profound is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the
\nGita, \u2014for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels
\nthem to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to
\nembrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila2 of the Divine; and in
\nsome directions it is more immediately rich and fruitful, for it brings forward
\ninto the foreground along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched
\ndevotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use
\nof the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all
\nits planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention.
\nMoreover it grasps at that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, possessed
\nby the Vedic Rishis but thrown into the background by the intermediate ages,
\nwhich is destined to fill so large a place in any future synthesis of human
\nthought, experience and aspiration. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nWe of the coming day stand at the head of a new age
\nof development which must lead to such a new and larger synthesis. We are not
\ncalled upon to be orthodox Vedantins of any of the three schools or Tantrics or
\nto adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves
\nwithin the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit
\nourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being,
\nknowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it
\nout of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but
\nto the noons of the future. A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have
\nnot only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India
\nand of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism, but to take
\nfull account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and
\nseeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead
\nin returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to
\nthe consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil.
\nAll this 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 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1<\/sup>All the
\nPuranic tradition, it must be remembered, draws the richness of its contents
\nfrom the Tantra.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n 2<\/sup> The
\ncosmic Play. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-9<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ntaken those which preceded them for their
\nstarting-point, so also must that of the future, to be on firm ground, proceed
\nfrom what the great bodies of realised spiritual thought and experience in the
\npast have given. Among them the Gita takes a most important place. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nOur object, then, in studying the Gita will not be
\na scholastic or academical scrutiny of its thought, nor to place its philosophy
\nin the history of metaphysical speculation, nor shall we deal with it in the
\nmanner of the analytical dialectician. We approach it for help and light and our
\naim must be to distinguish its essential and living message, that in it on which
\nhumanity has to seize for its perfection and its highest spiritual welfare. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-10<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I   OUR DEMAND AND NEED FROM THE GITA   THE WORLD abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with revelations and half-revelations, with religions and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","wpcat-90-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637","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=3637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}