The seventeenth chapter begins from a practical question: what of those who act with faith but without the full rule of the shastra? Krishna answers by turning to the nature of faith itself. Faith is no arbitrary opinion but the expression of the whole formed consciousness of a man; he is made of his faith, and as is his faith, so verily is he (17·3). Faith is the soul’s living assent to whatever it holds for its truth and its good.
This faith too is shaped by the gunas. Sattwic faith turns toward clarity, truth, harmony and the higher powers; rajasic faith toward force, ambition, desire and display; tamasic faith toward darkness, fear, inertia and distorted forms of worship. Sri Aurobindo’s reading makes this an essential part of the Gita’s psychology: even religion, austerity and sacrifice are not spiritually pure simply because they wear sacred forms, for their real quality depends upon the consciousness behind them.
Krishna applies this measure to food and to sacrifice, to austerity and to gift. Sattwic sacrifice is offered as a thing that ought to be done, without any desire for its fruit and with the mind composed in right understanding; rajasic sacrifice is performed for a result or for ostentation; tamasic sacrifice is made without faith, without the due offering, without the sacred word or the gift. Austerity likewise has its grades, the disciplines of body, speech and mind, which are sattwic when done with faith and without desire, rajasic when done for honour and show, and tamasic when driven by delusion or by the self-torture that injures the instruments of life (17·19).
This distinction matters especially for spiritual practice. The Gita rejects the violent austerities that torment the body and so disturb the Divine seated within it. Spiritual discipline is not a hostility to life but the purification and consecration of the instruments. Gift follows the same law: the sattwic gift is given as a duty, in the right place and time and to the right person, without expectation of return; the rajasic gift looks for a recompense or a reward; the tamasic gift is bestowed with contempt or carelessly and in the wrong place.
The chapter closes with the formula OM TAT SAT, the threefold designation of the Brahman by which the works of sacrifice, gift and austerity are turned away from egoistic possession and toward the Real (17·23). OM consecrates the act; Tat, “That,” surrenders the claim of ego and of fruit; Sat affirms the truth, the being and the good. Whatever is done without faith, Krishna ends, is asat, unreal, and is of no avail here or hereafter. The seventeenth chapter thus prepares the final teaching by showing that works are to be judged not by their outward form alone but by their inner quality, their faith, their motive and their relation to the Divine.
