{"id":3639,"date":"2013-07-13T01:50:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3639"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:50:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:08","slug":"47-the-core-of-the-gitas-meaning-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\/47-the-core-of-the-gitas-meaning-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","title":{"rendered":"-47_The Core of the Gita’s Meaning.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\nTHE CORE OF THE GITA’S MEANING <\/font>
\n<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nW<\/font>HAT THEN<\/font> is the message of the Gita and what its working value,
\nits spiritual utility to the human mind of the present day after the long
\nages that have elapsed since it was written and the great subsequent
\ntransformations of thought and experience? The human mind moves
\nalways 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
\nand subtly or visibly to alter their value. The vitality of an ancient
\ndoctrine consists in the extent to which it naturally lends itself to
\nsuch a treatment; for that means that whatever may have been the
\nlimitations or the obsolescences of the form of its thought, the truth
\nof substance, the truth of living vision and experience on which its
\nsystem was built is still sound and retains a permanent validity and
\nsignificance. The Gita is a book that has worn extraordinarily well
\nand it is almost as fresh and still in its real substance quite as new,
\nbecause always renewable in experience, as when it first appeared in
\nor was written into the frame of the Mahabharata. It is still received
\nin India as one of the great bodies of doctrine that most authoritatively govern religious thinking and its teaching acknowledged as
\nof the highest value if not wholly accepted by almost all shades of
\nreligious belief and opinion. Its influence is not merely philosophic or
\nacademic but immediate and living, in influence both for thought
\nand action, and its ideas are actually at work as a powerful shaping
\nfactor in the revival and renewal of a nation and a culture. It has
\neven been said recently by a great voice that all we need of spiritual
\ntruth for the spiritual life is to be found in the Gita. It would be to
\nencourage the superstition of the book to take too literally that utterance. The truth of the spirit is infinite and cannot be circumscribed
\nin that manner. Still it may be said that most of the main clues are
\nthere and that after all the later developments of spiritual experience
\nand discovery we can still return to it for a large inspiration and <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-501<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nguidance. Outside India too it is universally acknowledged as one
\nof the world’s great scriptures, although in Europe its thought is better
\nunderstood than its secret of spiritual practice. What is it then that
\ngives this vitality to the thought and the truth of the Gita? <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe central interest of the Gita’s philosophy and Yoga is its attempt,
\nthe 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
\nmost absolute and integral realisation and the outer actualities of
\nman’s life and action. A compromise between the two is common
\nenough, but that can never be a final and satisfactory solution. An
\nethical rendering of spirituality is also common and has its value as
\na law of conduct; but that is a mental solution which does not amount
\nto a complete practical reconciliation of the whole truth of spirit
\nwith the whole truth of life and it raises as many problems as it
\nsolves. One of these is indeed the starting-point of the Gita; it sets out
\nwith an ethical problem raised by a conflict in which we have on one
\nside the dharma of the man of action, a prince and warrior and leader
\nof men, the protagonist of a great crisis, of a struggle on the physical
\nplane, the plane of actual life, between the powers of right and justice and the powers of wrong and injustice, the demand of the
\ndestiny of the race upon him that he shall resist and give battle and
\nestablish, even though through a terrible physical struggle and a giant
\nslaughter, a new era and reign of truth and right and justice, and on
\nthe other side the ethical sense which condemns the means and the
\naction as a sin, recoils from the price of individual suffering and social
\nstrife, unsettling and disturbance and regards abstention from violence and battle as the only way and the one right moral attitude.
\nA spiritualised ethics insists on Ahinsa, on non-injuring and non-killing, as the highest law of spiritual conduct. The battle, if it is to
\nbe fought out at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by
\nsome kind of non-resistance or refusal of participation or only by
\nsoul resistance, and if this does not succeed on the external plane, if
\nthe force of injustice conquers, the individual will still have preserved
\nhis virtue and vindicated by his example the highest ideal. On the
\nother hand, a more insistent extreme of the inner spiritual direction,
\npassing beyond this struggle between social duty and an absolutist
\nethical ideal, is apt to take the ascetic turn and to point away from
\nlife and all its aims and standards of action towards another and
\ncelestial or supracosmic state in which alone beyond the perplexed <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-502<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nvanity and illusion of man’s birth and life and death there can be
\na pure spiritual existence. The Gita rejects none of these things in
\ntheir place,\u2014for it insists on the performance of the social duty, the
\nfollowing of the dharma for the man who has to take his share in
\nthe common action, accepts Ahinsa as part of the highest spiritual-ethical ideal and recognises the ascetic renunciation as a way o\u00a3
\nspiritual salvation. And yet it goes boldly beyond all these conflicting
\npositions; greatly daring, it justifies all life to the spirit as a significant
\nmanifestation of the one Divine Being and asserts the compatibility
\nof a complete human action and a complete spiritual life lived in
\nunion with the Infinite, consonant with the highest Self, expressive of
\nthe perfect Godhead. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nAll the problems of human life arise from the complextiy of our
\nexistence, the obscurity of its essential principle and the secrecy of the
\ninmost power that makes out its determinations and governs its purpose and its processes. If our existence were of one piece, solely
\nmaterial-vital or solely mental or solely spiritual, or even if the others
\nwere entirely or mainly involved in one of these or were quite latent
\nin our subconscient or our superconscient parts, there would be
\nnothing to perplex us; the material and vital law would be imperative or the mental would be clear to its own pure and unobstructed
\nprinciple or the spiritual self-existent and self-sufficient to spirit. The
\nanimals are aware of no problems; a mental god in a world of pure
\nmentality would admit none or would solve them all by the purity of
\na 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 physical-vital, mental
\nand spiritual at once, and he knows not what are the true relations of
\nthese things, which the real reality of his life and his nature, whither
\nthe attraction of his destiny and where the sphere of his perfection. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nMatter and life are his actual basis, the thing from which he starts
\nand on which he stands and whose requirement and law he has to
\nsatisfy if he would exist at all on earth and in the body. The material
\nand vital law is a rule of survival, of struggle, of desire and possession,
\nof self-assertion and the satisfaction of the body, the life and the ego.
\nAll the intellectual reasoning in the world, all the ethical idealism
\nand spiritual absolutism of which the higher faculties of man are
\ncapable, cannot abolish the reality and claim of our vital and material base or prevent the race from following under the imperative <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-503<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ncompulsion of Nature its aims and the satisfaction of its necessities
\nor from making its important problems a great and legitimate part of
\nhuman destiny and human interest and endeavour. And the intelligence of man even, failing to find any sustenance in spiritual or ideal
\nsolutions 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 or
\ninstinctive pursuit of its utmost possible efficiency, well-being and
\norganised satisfaction. A gospel of the will to live or the will to
\npower of a rationalised vital and material perfection becomes the
\nrecognised dharma of the human race and all else is considered either
\na pretentious falsity or a quite subsidiary thing, a side issue of a
\nminor and dependant consequence. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nMatter and life, however, in spite of their insistence and great
\nimportance are not all that man is, nor can he wholly accept mind
\nas nothing but a servant of the life and body admitted to certain pure
\nenjoyments of its own as a sort of reward for its service or regard it
\nas no more than an extension and flower of the vital urge, an ideal
\nluxury contingent upon the satisfaction of the material life. The
\nmind much more intimately than the body and the life is the man,
\nand the mind as it develops insists more and more on making the
\nbody and the life an instrument\u2014an indispensable instrument and
\nyet a considerable obstacle, otherwise there would be no problem\u2014
\nfor its own characteristic satisfactions and self-realisation. The mind
\nof man is not only a vital and physical, but an intellectual, aesthetic,
\nethical, psychic, emotional and dynamic intelligence, and in the
\nsphere of each of its tendencies its highest and strongest nature is
\nto strain towards some absolute of them which the frame of life will
\nnot allow it to capture wholly and embody and make here entirely
\nreal. The mental absolute of our aspiration remains as a partly
\ngrasped shining or fiery ideal which the mind can make inwardly
\nvery present to itself, inwardly imperative on its effort, and can even
\neffectuate partly, but not compel all the facts of life into its image.
\nThere is thus an absolute, a high imperative of intellectual truth and
\nreason sought for by our intellectual being; there is an absolute, an
\nimperative of right and conduct aimed at by the ethical conscience; there is an absolute, an imperative of love, sympathy, compassion, oneness yearned after by our emotional and psychic nature; there is an
\nabsolute, an imperative of delight and beauty quivered to by the <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-504<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\naesthetic soul; there is an absolute, an imperative of inner self-mastery
\nand control of life laboured after by the dynamic will; all these are
\nthere together and impinge upon the absolute, the imperative of
\npossession and pleasure and safe embodied existence insisted on by
\nthe vital and physical mind. And the human intelligence, since it is
\nnot able to realise entirely any of these things, much less all of them
\ntogether, erects in each sphere many standards and dharmas, standards
\nof truth and reason, of right and conduct, of delight and beauty, of
\nlove, sympathy and oneness, of self-mastery and control, of self-preservation and possession and vital efficiency and pleasure, and
\ntries to impose them on life. The absolute shining ideals stand far
\nabove and beyond our capacity and rare individuals approximate to
\nthem as best they can: the mass follow or profess to follow some
\nless magnificent norm, some established possible and relative standard.
\nHuman life as a whole undergoes the attraction and yet rejects the
\nideal. Life resists in the strength of some obscure infinite of its own
\nand wears down or breaks down any established mental and moral
\norder. And this must be either because the two are quite different and
\ndisparate though meeting and interacting principles or because mind
\nhas not the clue to the whole reality of life. The clue must be sought
\nin something greater, an unknown something above the mentality
\nand morality of the human creature. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe mind itself has the vague sense of some surpassing factor of
\nthis kind and in the pursuit of its absolutes frequently strikes against
\nit. It glimpses a state, a power, a presence that is near and within and
\ninmost to it and yet immeasurably greater and singularly distant and
\nabove it; it has a vision of something more essential, more absolute
\nthan its own absolutes, intimate, infinite, one, and it is that which we
\ncall God, Self or Spirit. This then the mind attempts to know, enter,
\ntouch and seize wholly, to approach it or become it, to arrive at some
\nkind of unity or lose itself in a complete identity with that mystery, āścaryam.<\/i> The difficulty is that this spirit in its purity seems something
\nyet farther than the mental absolutes from the actualities of life, something not translatable by mind into its own terms, much less into those
\nof life and action. Therefore we have the intransigeant absolutists of
\nthe spirit who reject the mental and condemn the material being and
\nyearn after a pure spiritual existence happily purchased by the dissolution of all that we are in life and mind, a Nirvana. The rest
\nof spiritual effort is for these fanatics of the Absolute a mental preparation <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-505<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nor a compromise, a spiritualising o\u00a3 life and mind as much as
\npossible. And because the difficulty most constantly insistent on
\nman’s mentality in practice is that presented by the claims of his
\nvital being, by life and conduct and action, the direction taken by\u00bb
\nthis preparatory endeavor consists mainly in a spiritualising of the
\nethical supported by the psychical mind\u2014or rather it brings in the
\nspiritual power and purity to aid these in enforcing their absolute .
\nclaim and to impart a greater authority than life allows to the ethical
\nideal of right and truth of conduct or the psychic ideal of love and
\nsympathy and oneness. These things are helped to some highest expression, given their broadest luminous basis by an assent of the reason ,
\nand will to the underlying truth of the absolute oneness of the spirit ‘
\nand therefore the essential oneness of all living creatures. This kind of
\nspirituality linked on in some way to the demands of the normal mind
\nof man, 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
\nreligions have their individual victories, call in some ray of a higher
\nlight, impose some shadow of a larger spiritual or semi-spiritual rule,
\nbut cannot effect a complete victory, end flatly in a compromise and in
\nthe act of compromise are defeated by life. Its problems remain and
\neven recur in their fiercest forms\u2014even such as this grim problem of
\nKurukshetra. The idealising intellect and ethical mind hope always to
\neliminate them, to discover some happy device born of their own
\naspiration and made effective by their own imperative insistence,
\nwhich will annihilate this nether untoward aspect of life; but it
\nendures and is not eliminated. The spiritualised intelligence on the
\nother hand offers indeed by the voice of religion the promise of some
\nvictorious millennium hereafter, but meanwhile half convinced o\u00a3
\nterrestrial impotence, persuaded that the soul is a stranger and intruder
\nupon earth, declares that after all not here in the life of the body
\nor in the collective life of mortal man but in some immortal Beyond
\nlies the heaven or the Nirvana where alone is to be found the true spiritual existence. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is here that the Gita intervenes with a restatement of the truth
\nof the Spirit, of the Self, of God and of the world and Nature. It
\nextends and remoulds the truth evolved by a later thought from the
\nancient Upanishads and ventures with assured steps on an endeavour
\nto apply its solving power to the problem of life and action. The <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-506<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nsolution offered by the Gita does not disentangle all the problem as
\nit offers itself to modern mankind; as stated here to a more ancient
\nmentality, it does not meet the insistent pressure of the present mind
\no\u00a3 man for a collective advance, does not respond to its cry for a
\ncollective life that will at last embody a greater rational and ethical
\nand, if possible, even a dynamic spiritual ideal. Its call is to the
\nindividual who has become capable of a complete spiritual existence; but for the rest of the race it prescribes only a gradual advance, to be
\nwisely effected by following out faithfully with more and more. of
\nintelligence and moral purpose and with a final turn to spirituality the
\nlaw of their nature. Its message touches the other smaller solutions
\nbut, even when it accepts them partly, it is to point them beyond
\nthemselves to a higher and more integral secret into which is yet only
\nthe few individuals have shown themselves fit to enter. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Gita’s message to the mind that follows after the vital and material life is that all life is indeed a manifestation of the universal
\nPower in the individual, a derivation from the Self, a ray from the
\nDivine, but actually it figures the Self and the Divine veiled in a
\ndisguising Maya, and to pursue the lower life for its own sake is to
\npersist in a stumbling path and to enthrone our nature’s obscure
\nignorance and not at all to find the true truth and complete law of
\nexistence. A gospel of the will to live, the will to power, of the satisfaction of desire, of the glorification of mere force and strength, of
\nthe worship of the ego and its vehement acquisitive self-will and tireless self-regarding intellect is the gospel of the Asura and it can
\nlead only to some gigantic ruin and perdition. The vital and material
\nman must accept for his government a religious and social and ideal
\ndharma 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 the communal life. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe Gita’s message to the mind occupied with the pursuit of intellectual, ethical and social standards, the mind that insists on salvation
\nby the observance of established dharmas, the moral law, social duty
\nand function or the solutions of the liberated intelligence, is that this
\nis indeed a very necessary stage, the dharma has indeed to be observed
\nand, rightly observed, can raise the stature of the spirit and prepare
\nand serve the spiritual life, but still it is not the complete and last
\ntruth of existence. The soul of man has to go beyond to some more <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-507<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nabsolute dharma of man’s spiritual and immortal nature. And this
\ncan only be done if we repress and get rid of the ignorant formulations of the lower mental elements and the falsehood of egoistic personality, impersonalise the action of the intelligence and will, live in
\nthe identity of the one self in all, break out of all ego-moulds into
\nthe impersonal spirit. The mind moves under the limiting compulsion
\nof the triple lower nature, it erects its standards in obedience to the
\ntamasic, rajasic or at highest the sattwic qualities; but the destiny of
\nthe soul is a divine perfection and liberation and that can only be
\nbased in the freedom of our highest self, can only be found by passing
\nthrough its vast impersonality and universality beyond mind into the
\nintegral light of the immeasurable Godhead and supreme Infinite
\nwho is beyond all dharmas. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe Gita’s message to those, absolutist seekers of the Infinite, who
\ncarry impersonality to an exclusive extreme, entertain an intolerant
\npassion for the extinction of life and action and would have as the
\none ultimate aim and ideal an endeavour to cease from all individual
\nbeing in the pure silence of the ineffable Spirit, is that this is indeed
\none path of journey and entry into the Infinite, but the most difficult,
\nthe ideal of inaction a dangerous thing to hold up by precept or example before the world, this way, though great, yet not the best way
\nfor man and this knowledge, though true, yet not the integral knowledge. The Supreme, the all-conscious Self, the Godhead, the Infinite
\nis not solely a spiritual existence remote and ineffable; he is here in the
\nuniverse at once hidden and expressed through man and the gods and
\nthrough all beings and in all that is. And it is by finding him not only
\nin some immutable silence but in the world and its beings and in all
\nself and in all Nature, it is by raising to an integral as well as to
\na highest union with him all the activities of the intelligence, the
\nheart, the will, the life that man can solve at once his inner riddle
\nof Self and God and the outer problem of his active human existence.
\nMade Godlike, God-becoming, he can enjoy the infinite breadth of a
\nsupreme spiritual consciousness that is reached through works no
\nless than through love and knowledge. Immortal and free, he can continue his human action from that highest level and transmute it into
\na supreme and all-embracing divine activity,\u2014that indeed is the ultimate crown and significance here of all works and living and sacrifice
\nand the world’s endeavour. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThis highest message is first for those who have the strength to follow <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-508<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nafter it, the master men, the
\ngreat spirits, the God-knowers, God-doers, God-lovers who can live in God and for God and do their work
\njoyfully for him in the world, a divine work uplifted above the restless darkness of the human mind and the false limitations of the
\nego. At the same time, and here we get the gleam of a larger promise which we may even extend to the hope of a collective turn towards
\nperfection,\u2014for if there is hope for man, why should there not be
\nhope for mankind?\u2014the Gita declares that all can if they will, even
\nto the lowest and sinfullest among men, enter into the path of this
\nYoga. And if there is a true self-surrender and an absolute unegoistic
\nfaith in the indwelling Divinity, success is certain in this path. The
\ndecisive turn is needed; there must be an abiding belief in the Spirit,
\na sincere and insistent will to live in the Divine, to be in self one with
\nhim and in Nature\u2014where too we are an eternal portion of his being
\n\u2014one with his greater spiritual Nature, God-possessed in all our
\nmembers and Godlike. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

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

\nPage-509<\/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":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3639","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\/3639","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=3639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}