But here a question arises, to which the answer has indeed been given already, but must now be made explicit. Supposing this world-existence to be a manifestation of the Divine, why should it be necessary to suppose within it an evolution of consciousness centred here in man, with divine being and divine living as its culmination? Since all is a manifestation of the Absolute and the Absolute is the Divine, all is divine, each form of life, each way of being. We see that the principles of the universal manifestation are for ever the same and, with whatever variations in Time, the principal divisions of existence seem also to be for ever the same. Man like the metal, the plant, the animal, the god, is one of these divisions, a special kind of existence with his own nature, laws, limits, capacities, his swadharma, to use the term of the Gita. Should not then each be considered divine in its own kind and should not the perfection of each being lie in the observation of the law of its own nature, its full play certainly, but not any kind of transcendence? When all are stationary and content in their own being, even the gods, why should man alone be discontent, seek to transcend himself, to grow into the superman, to put on the nature and capacities of the god, to become divine? His perfection should rather lie in a complete human life, in the fullness of his swadharma, and there is no justification for any ideal of a self-transcendence and a divine living. Sachchidananda manifests the world for his self-delight in manifestation and in each form and way of being there is its appropriate way of the delight of being; to look beyond, to seek for an object, aim or good beyond our self-sufficient humanity is to bring in a teleological element into our view of existence which seems to have no justification except in the restless desire and imagination of the human mentality. In other words, the progress of humanity, so far as there is any real progress, must move within the cycles of our known human mentality and psychology,—very much as an old theory conceived of the cosmic manifestation moving in a repetition of unprogressive cycles, for in them progression is compensated for by retrogression and things always remain eventually the same.
Where must this tendency of man, the thinking and self-conscious being, stop and say “I can go no further?” what are his limits,—not the immediate and actual, but the potential and ultimate? Or are there any limits? Undoubtedly, man like other beings has a law of his nature, a swadharma; in its fulfilment must lie his perfection and that perfection must proceed on its lines and within its limits. But the decisive part of his swadharma seems to be this that he is a self-evolving soul, a nexus of the psychological evolution from the ignorance to full self-conscience, and in that then must lie the determining line of his perfection. He has started with a limited self-consciousness and has been constantly enriching and increasing it, constantly gathering into it all that he can realise of the world and of God, of what is around him and of what is above him; is there any reason to suppose that he need stop short of enlarging it into unity with the universal and the infinite? His progress has been a greater and greater conscious participation of the soul in the workings of the force of Nature within him and the character of this greatening has been an increasing mastery of these workings; his constant impulse is to rule himself and his environment; but to indubitable rule he cannot arrive unless he becomes united with the Divine who is the sole real master of Nature. That union then would seem to be his goal. In a word, he is in his nature, his swadharma, a soul participating in its own evolution or self-manifestation and that evolution is a constant self-transcendence and taking up of his lower past self into a higher transfiguring self; he has transcended his beginnings, he has transcended each stage he has reached; he must surely transcend all his present and past self-realisation, until he stands in union with the perfect self-knowledge and mastery of the transcendent Divine above cosmic Nature. For self-conscious Purusha is self-conscious Sachchidananda and enlarging its self-knowledge and self-mastery it must reach in the end the perfect being of Sachchidananda revealed in his eternal Godhead.
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Gita.
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
That, it may be said, need not imply a continuance of rebirth in humanity, but can be pursued from the higher planes or from beyond all planes, because all are connected and the influence from above is equal or superior to the participation below, while it is from the Highest always that the original power derives. This is true, but still the ultimate point of that influence for us in act is the descent of the Highest into human existence to manifest there the full power of the spirit, the Divine in man, the Avatar*, and the ultimate point of our oneness with the Divine in its act upon the cosmos must be analogous. The highest choice for the liberated spirit is its rejection of all lures of separate bliss and its free solidarity with the other selves with whom it has shared the cycle of its births. So long as the Spirit has not manifested its full power and light in the race, this intervention must be its completest help to all the growing Divine in humanity and the consummation which completes and justifies its individual descent into the cosmic existence.
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
There is here at once a departure from the general contemporary mind of Indian thought; in place of its idea of a self-annulment in Nature we get the glimpse of an ampler idea of a self-fulfilment in divine Nature, and there is at least a foreshadowing of the later developments of the religions of Bhakti. Our first experience of what is beyond the normal, the egoistic being in which we live, is still for the Gita the calm of a pervading impersonal immutable self in whose equality and oneness we lose our egoistic personality and cast off in its tranquil purity all our motives of desire and passion; but our second completer vision reveals to us a divine Being from whom all that we are proceeds and to which all that we are belongs, self and nature, world and spirit. One with him in self and spirit, we do not lose but rather recover ourselves in him by an integral self-finding through works founded in his and our spiritual nature, by an integral self-becoming through knowledge of the Divine in whom all exists and who is all, most sovereignly and decisively by an integral self-giving through love and devotion of our whole being to this All and this Supreme, attracted to the Master of our works, to the Inhabitant of our hearts, to the continent of all our conscious existence. To him who is the source of all that we are, we give all that we are, turn into knowledge of him all our knowing and into light of his power all our action. The passion of love in our self-giving carries us up to him; that completes the triple cord of the sacrifice, perfects the triune key of the highest secret, uttamam rahasyam.
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
THE VISION OF GOD THE WORLD-SPIRIT.
THE VISION OF GOD THE WORLD-SPIRIT *
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
The Gita recognises four kinds of worshippers and God-seekers, the arthârthî and ârta, those who seek him for the fulfilment of desire and for divine help in the sorrow and suffering of existence, the jijnâsu, who is moved to seek the Divine in his truth and in that to meet him, and the jnânî who has already the truth and endeavours to live in unity with the Spirit.
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
* Pûrnatâ, prasannatâ, samatâ, bhoga-sâmarthya.
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
SWABHAVA AND SWADHARMA
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
Essays on the Gita
The Avatar gets the mind, life and body as other people do. The conventional idea of the Avatar is that he is a miracle, that he is not subject to the laws of nature. He accepts the human limitations; if he did not, then he would cease to have any meaning for man. The preparation of body, vital, mind is a certain movement that takes place in nature; nothing takes place in his soul. If he were to use the freedom of his soul, he might grow twenty arms. But he does not. He is not above somewhere and does not come down miraculously. He is everywhere and as the Avatar he has to manifest the divinity.
The ideals of man are mental constructions which he foists upon his impulses and emotions; some of them are reflections of the Truth, some are perversions. For example, the spiritual ideal of Unity is the unity or oneness of the Atman and the ideal of Humanity is differently conceived by different people. Reflection of the Truth on the mental plane is one thing and realisation of the Truth on the mental level is another. One may not have the realisation on the mental level but get something of the glow of Truth there, and thus is what is meant by reflection. Realisation of the Truth on the vital plane is the realisation of unity with all life, of the infinite in life (as Tagore express it, “The life that courses in my veins dances in the stars”), or one may have the realisation on the mental level of the infinite in life. Physical love is meant to be the counterpart, on the physical plane, of spiritual love. Under the stress from above, and the urge from within, physical love can get transformed into spiritual love. The Divine Love must not only come down but transform the lower love.
Disciple: There are some followers of the school of non-violence in Indian politics who want to prove that the Gita preaches non-violence. They depend on the Mahatma’s interpretation of the Gita.
Disciple: In the _Avadhuta Gita_, attributed to Dattatreya, great stress is laid on Vairagya, renunciation of the world. It teaches the abandonment of the world and nature.
Disciple: Sometimes we had discussions about Ahimsa and I pointed out the sixth chapter of the _Essays on the Gita_ to my friends of the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad and I found they could not reply to it.
Sri Aurobindo: I believe Gandhi does not know what actually happens to the man’s nature when he takes to non-violence. He thinks that men get purified by it. But when men suffer, or subject themselves to voluntary suffering, what happens is that their vital being gets strengthened. These movements affect the vital being only and not any other part. Now, when you cannot oppose the force that oppresses, you say that you will suffer. That suffering is vital and it gives strength. When the man who has thus suffered gets power he becomes a worse oppressor. That is what I have written in the _Essays on the Gita_ that when a nation gets freedom by the suffering of its leaders and other men, it oppresses other nations in its turn. It is almost always the case with those who suppress their vital being. It allows the pressure on itself, gets strong and then finds vent in some other direction. The same thing happened to the Puritans in England. Cromwell and his men came to power and became the worst oppressors. In Christianity the principle of non-violence is there but it is meant to be practised for religious and spiritual development. It may be partial but it can certainly develop certain types of spiritual temperaments. What one _can_ do is to transform the spirit of violence. But in this practice of Satyagraha it is not transformed. When you insist on such a one-sided principle what happens is that cant, hypocrisy and dishonesty get in and there is no purification at all. Purification can come by the transformation of the impulse of violence, as I said. In that respect the old system in India was much better. The man who had the fighting spirit became the Kshatriya and then the fighting spirit was raised above the ordinary vital influence. The attempt was to spiritualise it. It succeeded in doing what passive resistance cannot and will not achieve. The Kshatriya was the man who would not allow any oppression, who would fight it out and he was the man who would not oppress anybody. That was the ideal.
Disciple: Sri Krishna and Arjuna can serve as examples of men who resorted to what the Mahatma calls ‘violence’.
Sri Aurobindo: It is absurd to make food such an important thing in the spiritual life. It is a secondary matter whether one takes vegetarian or non-vegetarian diet, so far as the spiritual life is concerned. The real thing is equality or Samata. If that is there then it is immaterial whether one takes fish or vegetarian diet. Philosophically, it is meaningless to say this has more life and that has less.
Disciple: You spoke of Samata. Why should one establish equality in the Prana, the Vital, before one does it in the mind?
Sri Aurobindo: I do not understand why one should. Very few people realise the true meaning of Samata. By Samata, is meant a certain attitude of the whole being towards the world and its happenings. This world is full of so many things which are horrible and terrible. Samata means that one should be able to look at them from a certain poise without being perplexed or moved. It does not mean that one will go on killing others indiscriminately or out of a personal motive. That would be untruth. But it means that one must be able to look at things without being moved. What X calls ‘pity’ is something quite different from compassion and both are different from Samata which is an attitude of the whole being. Pity and sentimentalism are results of nervous repulsion, some movement in the vital being. I myself, when I was young, could not read anything related to cruelty without feeling that repulsion and a feeling of hatred for those who practised it. I could not kill even a bug or a mosquito. This was not because I believed in Ahimsa but because I had a nervous repulsion. Later, even when I had no mental objection, I could not harm anything because the body rejected the act. When I was in jail I was subjected to all sorts of mental tortures for the first fifteen days. I had to look upon scenes of all kinds of suffering and then the nervous repulsion passed away.
That the vegetable kingdom has got life is not something new to know, and it is not necessary to acquire Samata to take fish. I used to take it when I was a child and when I had no Samata. What is required is: one should have no repulsion. As a matter of fact I cannot take fish nowadays, but that means nothing. I give it to the cats all right.
When there is Samata then there comes _Samarasatva_ — equal enjoyment, from everything one gets the _rasa_ — essential delight, from every kind of food. Even the food that we call badly cooked has a _rasa_ of its own. But one can agree to a little bit of tact. It is no use casting fish in the face of a Jain or forcing smoke in the face of an orthodox Tamil Brahmin.
Disciple: Is there any stress in the Gita on bringing the Supermind down?
Sri Aurobindo: No. Its insistence is on Karma, on action, not so much on the Supermind. Besides, many other things are there in the Gita.
The first thing this working of the Higher Power does is to establish Shanti, peace, in all the parts of the being and an opening above. This peace is not mere mental Shanti, it is hill of power and, whatever action takes place in it, Samata, equality, is its basis, and the Shanti and Samata are never disturbed. What comes from above is peace, power and joy. It also brings about changes in various parts of our nature so that they can bear the pressure of the Higher Power.
Disciple: In the days of the Khilafat agitation they used to say: “Swaraj is Khilafat” (meaning thereby the identification of Khilafat agitation with the fight for Swaraj); “Khilafat is cow” (because the cow, the emblem of Hinduism, should be protected by the Muslims); and we used to say “Yes, Swaraj is a cow!” (_Laughter_)
Disciple: The last would be in the higher standards! (_Laughter_)In his commentary on the Gita he tries to show that the war is between good and evil tendencies in man, — it is only a figure of speech.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, I read it. There is the same mixture of which I have already spoken, only by his reading of books, I am afraid, he has made it worse. There was a mixture of Tolstoy, Christianity and Jainism. Now he has added the Veda, Koran and Gita to it.
Sri Aurobindo: I did not go through the whole thing — it was very long — but there is a compromise about non-violence. He says one can give it up in the case of robbers, looters and foreign invasion. He is also wonder-struck that his interpretation of the Gita is seriously questioned by a Shastri. I am rather wonder-struck at his claim to an infallible interpretation of the Gita.
Everyone is trying to maintain _samatā._ Everyone is quiet and is trying hard to remain calm. But today all the barriers of humanity are swept away by the flood of Divine Love. The soul has its _samatā_ but the whole nature is in agitation as unknown waters have rushed into it. Knowledge is laid on the shelf — and it is all a flood of love. Today the soul has received the certitude of the Divine’s Victory as it had never done before.
In this Yoga also something similar is to be done, though in a different manner. He has, first, to try to understand _his own_ nature and get rid of egoistic motives from his actions and of desires from the vital being. He must try to acquire Samata and Sattwic balance. That is to say, he should reject lower motives and learn to act from higher motives and with a Sattwic temperament. All our actions proceed from a certain inner attitude and he has to see whether he can change the motive of desire for a higher one.
He can read the first few chapters of the _Essays on the Gita_ and try to understand Karma Yoga. Some sort of Karma Yoga is the best preparation for this Yoga. He cannot get the current of the Higher Power now; he must make himself fit for the Higher Power. The real Shakti cannot come unless the Adhar is purified. She _can_ force the way, but in that case there will be all confusion and the Adhar may break.
Indian culture knew the value of morality, and also its limitations. The Upanishads and the Gita are loud with and full of the idea of going beyond morality. For instance, when the Upanishad says: “He does not need to think whether what he is doing is good or bad” — Sadhu, Asadhu. Such a man attains a consciousness in which there is no need to think about morality because the action proceeds from the Truth.
Not that such a man does not make a plan with his mind for himself and for others, but even after making his plan if he finds that the forces have changed he does not hesitate to turn round and adopt another course. Look at Indian politicians: all ideas, ideas — they are busy with ideas. Take the Hindu-Moslem problem. I don’t know why our politicians accepted Gandhi’s Khilafat agitation. With the mentality of the ordinary Mahomedan it was bound to produce the reaction it has produced: You fed the force, it gathered power and began to make demands which the Hindu mentality had to rise up and reject. That does not require Supermind to find out, it requires common sense. Then, the Mahomedan reality and the Hindu reality began to break heads at Calcutta. The leaders are busy trying to square the realities with their mental ideas instead of facing them straight.
When the Supermind comes and sets you to work, what form that work will take it is not possible to say from beforehand. There are infinite possibilities, and the Truth-Force will determine the work for each according to his _svadharma_ and according to the development of circumstances. The mind can catch glimpses of the nature of work that will be accomplished, but these can be falsified. I have certain ideas in my mind about the future work but I do not accept them as final. If I communicate these ideas to you, you may misunderstand and misapply them. You may hastily try to execute them and make various mental formations and constructions which may be an impediment to the coming down of the higher Truth.
I suppose I take too great an interest in these things: that is what enables my mind to get fastened to them. The highest parts of my mind have fallen silent: I no longer have any interest in spiritual books, like the Bhagavad-Gita or others. Only this mechanical part remains active.
Sri Aurobindo: You are talking about the process of separation of Purusha and Prakriti as given in the Gita. Well, what about the light that used to come from above – was it coming from inside or from outside?
Having thus received a command and abandoning all hankering after fruits, one should do the work as an instrument. This is one way of doing work. But this is not the way of our yoga. We want to acquire the very power from which such commands come and organize it and not merely be the instruments, but instead, to cooperate with the power whose instruments we are. For this yoga it is necessary to abandon every kind of work. It will not do to work for philanthropic purposes. Some work has to be retained but only as a field of experiment. Under this condition we cannot be engaged in philanthropy.
Sri Aurobindo: But the Gita’s classification is with regard more to the character of the food than to the food taken.
Even though the Gita gave currency to quite a different idea of Yoga and even of Samadhi, the popular mind in India has believed that Yoga means Raja Yoga, in most cases at least. It is apparent that Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is quite different from the Raja Yoga of Patanjali. It does not take the mental consciousness and its condition as the constant point of reference; for, its aim is not to secure a mental state which might reflect the Infinite but to rise above the mind. Besides, it adds the process of descent of the Supramental Consciousness into human nature which necessitates a complete transformation of the ignorant human nature into the divine: it transforms the _aparā prakṛti_ into the _parā prakṛti._
Sri Aurobindo: One of the logical conclusions of the Theory of Illusion was the idea that you must reject everything violently and that you can’t get the Truth unless you are disgusted with everything in the world. That is what is understood to be Vairagya. But I don’t see any reason why one should be disgusted with everything before one can take to the spiritual life. What we do is that we see the imperfection in the world and we do not accept the ordinary life which is subject to ignorance and falsehood. But we do not despise it — we do not look upon it with disgust and contempt. We look upon it with calm and equality — Samata — and try to understand what it is and what place it occupies in the Lila and its purpose.
He is largely influenced by Tolstoy and the Bible and by Jainism in his preachings; at any rate, more than by the Indian scriptures — the Upanishads or the Gita which he interprets in the light of his own ideas.
Sri Aurobindo: That is a mistake – Gandhi is moral, not spiritual. He has a strong moral will. When it is said that Gandhi is a greater Christian than many a European, that statement is perfectly true. Gandhi is a Christian. He has been influenced more by the Bible and Tolstoy than by the Bhagavadgita and he interprets the Gita in that light. He is really a European under an Indian skin.
Anilbaran: _They are of both types. They are intellectual: for instance, when I was writing an article expounding the relation between the Sankhya and the Gita, many points became clear during my meditation. They are practical: such as, when this morning it became clear to me that the way our national leaders are now acting is leading them to their own degeneration and also impeding our nation’s progress._
Sri Aurobindo: That is natural, because you are dynamic by nature. It is for this reason that I hesitated to draw you to this path. The Karmayoga of the Gita would have suited you better. That is your svadharma [The true law of one’s own being and action]. You have however within you an inclination towards completeness.
Sri Aurobindo: The mind is running on all sides to think about many things, – what we call thoughts coming from outside. We must withdraw the mind from these distractions and make it abide in the self. Thus guarding the peace within we shall have to do the work without. Now, what the Gita has not mentioned but what we say is this: the Truth-power must be brought down from above into that state of peace, and this higher power – Parashakti – will directly guide the vehicle – ādhāra – and transform it.
