कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत्प्रवृद्धःलोकान्समाहर्तुमिह प्रवृत्तः ।ऋतेऽपि त्वां न भविष्यन्ति सर्वेयेऽवस्थिताः प्रत्यनीकेषु योधाः ॥
kālo’smi lokakṣayakṛtpravṛddhaḥlokānsamāhartumiha pravṛttaḥṛte’pi tvāṁ na bhaviṣyanti sarveye’vasthitāḥ pratyanīkeṣu yodhāḥ
The Blessed Lord said: I am the Time-Spirit, destroyer of the world, arisen huge-statured for the destruction of the nations. Even without thee all of these warriors shall be not, who are ranked in the opposing armies.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
arisen for the destruction of these peoples.
But the determinism of Prakriti is not the last word of the Gita. The equality of the will and the rejection of fruits are only3·30 means for entering with the mind and the heart and the understanding into the divine consciousness and living in it; and the Gita expressly says that they are to be employed as a means as long as the disciple is unable so to live or even to seek by practice the gradual development of this higher state. And what is this Divine, whom Krishna declares himself to be? It is the Purushottama beyond the Self that acts not, beyond the Prakriti that acts, foundation of the one, master of the other, the Lord of whom all is the manifestation, who even in our present subjection to Maya sits in the heart of His creatures governing the18·61 works of Prakriti, He by whom the armies on the field of Kurukshetra have already been slain while yet they live and who uses11·32–34 Arjuna only as an instrument or immediate occasion of this great slaughter. Prakriti is only His executive force. The disciple has to rise beyond this Force and its three modes or guṇas; he has to14·25–26 become triguṇātīta. Not to her has he to surrender his actions, over which he has no longer any claim or “right”, but into the being of the Supreme. Reposing his mind and understanding, heart and will in Him, with self-knowledge, with God-knowledge, with world-knowledge, with a perfect equality, a perfect devotion, an absolute self-giving, he has to do works as an offering to the Master of all self-energisings and all sacrifice. Identified in will, conscious with that consciousness, That shall decide and initiate the action. This is the solution which the Divine Teacher offers to the disciple.
But what, then, is it that makes the difficulty for the man who has to take the world as it is and act in it and yet would live, within, the spiritual life? What is this aspect of existence which appals his awakened mind and brings about what the title of the first chapter of the Gita calls significantly the Yoga of the dejection of Arjuna, the dejection and discouragement felt by the human being when he is forced to face the spectacle of the universe as it really is with the veil of the ethical illusion, the illusion of self-righteousness torn from his eyes, before a higher reconciliation with himself is effected? It is that aspect which is figured outwardly in the carnage and massacre of Kurukshetra and spiritually by the vision of the Lord of all things as Time arising to devour and destroy the creatures whom it has made. This is the vision of the Lord of all existence as the universal Creator but also the universal Destroyer, of whom the ancient Scripture can say in a ruthless image, “The sages and the heroes are his food and death is the spice of his banquet.” It is one and the same truth seen first indirectly and obscurely in the facts of life and then directly and clearly in the soul’s vision of that which manifests itself in life. The outward aspect is that of world-existence and human existence proceeding by struggle and slaughter; the inward aspect is that of the universal Being fulfilling himself in a vast creation and a vast destruction. Life a battle and a field of death, this is Kurukshetra; God the Terrible, this is the vision that Arjuna sees on that field of massacre.
Thus, if we are to appreciate in its catholicity the teaching of the Gita, we must accept intellectually its standpoint and courageous envisaging of the manifest nature and process of the world. The divine charioteer of Kurukshetra reveals himself on one side as the Lord of all the worlds and the Friend and omniscient Guide of all creatures, on the other as Time the Destroyer “arisen for the destruction of these peoples.”11·32 The Gita, following in this the spirit of the catholic Hindu religion, affirms this also as God; it does not attempt to evade the enigma of the world by escaping from it through a side-door. If, in fact, we do not regard existence merely as the mechanic action of a brute and indifferent material Force or, on the other hand, as an equally mechanical play of ideas and energies arising out of an original Non-Existence or else reflected in the passive Soul or the evolution of a dream or nightmare in the surface consciousness of an indifferent, immutable Transcendence which is unaffected by the dream and has no real part in it,—if we accept at all, as the Gita accepts, the existence of God, that is to say of the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, yet always transcendent Being who manifests the world and Himself in the world, who is not the slave but the lord of His creative Consciousness, Nature or Force (Maya, Prakriti or Shakti), who is not baffled or thwarted in His world-conception or design by His creatures, man or devil, who does not need to justify Himself by shifting the responsibility for any part of His creation or manifestation on that which is created or manifested, then the human being has to start from a great, a difficult act of faith. Finding himself in a world which is apparently a chaos of battling powers, a clash of vast and obscure forces, a life which subsists only by constant change and death, menaced from every side by pain, suffering, evil and destruction, he has to see the omnipresent Deity in it all and conscious that of this enigma there must be a solution and beyond this Ignorance in which he dwells a Knowledge that reconciles, he has to take his stand upon this faith, “Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust in Thee.” All human thought or faith that is active and affirmative, whether it be theistic, pantheistic or atheistic, does in fact involve more or less explicitly and completely such an attitude. It admits and it believes: admits the discords of the world, believes in some highest principle of God, universal Being or Nature which shall enable us to transcend, overcome or harmonise these discords, perhaps even to do all three at once, to harmonise by overcoming and transcending.
Destruction, replies the Godhead, is the will of my workings11·32 with which I stand here on this field of Kurukshetra, the field of the working out of the Dharma, the field of human action,—as we might symbolically translate the descriptive phrase,1·1 dharma-kṣetre kuru-kṣetre,—a world-wide destruction which has come in the process of the Time-Spirit. I have a foreseeing purpose which11·33 fulfils itself infallibly and no participation or abstention of any human being can prevent, alter or modify it; all is done by me already in my eternal eye of will before it can at all be done by man upon earth. I as Time have to destroy the old structures and to build up a new, mighty and splendid kingdom. Thou as a human instrument of the divine Power and Wisdom hast in this struggle which thou canst not prevent to battle for the right and slay and conquer its opponents. Thou too, the human soul in Nature, hast to enjoy in Nature the fruit given by me, the empire of right and justice. Let this be sufficient for thee,—to be one with God in thy soul, to receive his command, to do his will, to see calmly a supreme purpose fulfilled in the world.11·32–34 “I am Time the waster of the peoples arisen and increased whose will in my workings is here to destroy the nations. Even without thee all these warriors shall be not, who are ranked in the opposing armies. Therefore arise, get thee glory, conquer thy enemies and enjoy an opulent kingdom. By me and none other already even are they slain, do thou become the occasion only, O Savyasachin. Slay, by me who are slain, Drona, Bhishma, Jayadratha, Karna and other heroic fighters; be not pained and troubled. Fight, thou shalt conquer the adversary in the battle.” The fruit of the great and terrible work is promised and prophesied, not as a fruit hungered for by the individual,—for to that there is to be no attachment,—but as the result of the divine will, the glory and success of the thing to be done accomplished, the glory given by the Divine to himself in his Vibhuti. Thus is the final and compelling command to action given to the protagonist of the world-battle.
It is the Timeless manifest as Time and World-Spirit from whom the command to action proceeds. For certainly the Godhead11·32 when he says, “I am Time the Destroyer of beings,” does not mean either that he is the Time-Spirit alone or that the whole essence of the Time-Spirit is destruction. But it is this which is the present will of his workings, pravṛtti. Destruction is always a simultaneous or alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation. More, destruction is the first condition of progress. Inwardly, the man who does not destroy his lower self-formations, cannot rise to a greater existence. Outwardly also, the nation or community or race which shrinks too long from destroying and replacing its past forms of life, is itself destroyed, rots and perishes and out of its debris other nations, communities and races are formed. By destruction of the old giant occupants man made himself a place upon earth. By destruction of the Titans the gods maintain the continuity of the divine Law in the cosmos. Whoever prematurely attempts to get rid of this law of battle and destruction, strives vainly against the greater will of the World-Spirit. Whoever turns from it in the weakness of his lower members, as did Arjuna in the beginning,—therefore was his shrinking condemned as a small and false pity, an inglorious, an un-Aryan and unheavenly feebleness of heart and impotence of spirit, klaibyam, kṣudraṁ hṛdaya-daurbalyam2·3, —is showing not true virtue, but a want of spiritual courage to face the sterner truths of Nature and of action and existence. Man can only exceed the law of battle by discovering the greater law of his immortality. There are those who seek this where it always exists and must primarily be found, in the higher reaches of the pure spirit, and to find it turn away from a world governed by the law of Death. That is an individual solution which makes no difference to mankind and the world, or rather makes only this difference that they are deprived of so much spiritual power which might have helped them forward in the painful march of their evolution.
What then is the master man, the divine worker, the opened channel of the universal Will to do when he finds the World-Spirit turned towards some immense catastrophe, figured before his eyes as Time the destroyer arisen and increased for the destruction of the nations, and himself put there in the forefront whether as a fighter with physical weapons or a leader and guide or an inspirer of men, as he cannot fail to be by the very force of his nature and the power within him, svabhāvajena svena karmaṇā18·60? To abstain, to sit silent, to protest by non-intervention? But abstention will not help, will not prevent the fulfilment of the destroying Will, but rather by the lacuna it creates increase confusion. Even without thee, cries the Godhead, my will of destruction would still be accomplished, ṛte’pi tvām. If Arjuna11·32 were to abstain or even if the battle of Kurukshetra were not to be fought, that evasion would only prolong and make worse the inevitable confusion, disorder, ruin that are coming. For these things are no accident, but an inevitable seed that has been sown and a harvest that must be reaped. They who have sown the wind, must reap the whirlwind. Nor indeed will his own nature allow him any real abstention, prakṛtis tvāṁ niyokṣyati. This the Teacher tells Arjuna at the close, “That which in thy egoism18·59–60 thou thinkest saying, I will not fight, vain is this thy resolve: Nature shall yoke thee to thy work. Bound by thy own action which is born of the law of thy being, what from delusion thou desirest not to do, that thou shalt do even perforce.” Then to give another turn, to use some kind of soul force, spiritual method and power, not physical weapons? But that is only another form of the same action; the destruction will still take place, and the turn given too will be not what the individual ego, but what the World-Spirit wills. Even, the force of destruction may feed on this new power, may get a more formidable impetus and Kali arise filling the world with a more terrible sound of her laughters. No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid. To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved mankind the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation. But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the fierce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the Powers that are profiteers of egoistic force and their servants cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet.
“The Supreme has manifested the world from his spiritual essence and in his own infinite existence and manifested himself too variously in the world. All things are his powers and figures10·19 and to the powers and figures of him there is no end, because he himself is infinite. As a pervading and containing impersonal self-existence he informs and sustains equally and without any partiality, preference or attachment to any person or thing or happening or feature all this infinite manifestation in Time and the universe. This pure and equal Self does not act, but supports impartially all the action of things. And yet it is the Supreme, but as the cosmic Spirit and the Time Spirit, who wills and conducts and determines the action of the world through his multitudinous power-to-be, that power of the Spirit which we call Nature. He creates, sustains and destroys his creations. He is seated too in the heart of every living creature and from there as a secret Power in the individual, no less than from his universal presence in the Cosmos, he originates by force of Nature, manifests some line of his mystery in quality of nature and in executive energy of nature, shapes each thing and being separately according to its kind and initiates and upholds all action. It is this transcendent first origination from the Supreme and this constant universal and individual manifestation of Him in things and beings which makes the complex character of the cosmos.
Other writings
So much depends on Time & God’s immediate purpose that it is more important to seek out His purpose than to attach ourselves to our own nostrums. The Kala Purusha, Zeitgeist & Death Spirit, has risen to his dreadful work—lokakshayakritpravriddhas—increasing to destroy a world,—and who shall stay the terror & mightiness & irresistibility of Him? But He is not only destroying the world that was, He is creating the world that shall be; it is therefore more profitable for us to discover & help what He is building than to lament & hug in our arms what He is destroying. But it is not easy to discover His drift, & we often admire too much temporary erections which are merely tents for the warriors in this Kurukshetra and take them for the permanent buildings of the future.
कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत् प्रवृद्धो लोकान् समाहर्तुमिह प्रवृत्तः । ऋतेऽपि त्वां न भविष्यन्ति सर्वे येऽवस्थिताः प्रत्यनीकेषु योधाः ।। तस्मात्त्वमुत्तिष्ठ यशो लभस्व जित्वा शत्रून् भुङ्क्ष्व राज्यं समृद्धम् । मयैवैते निहताः पूर्वमेव निमित्तमात्रं भव सव्यसाचिन् ।।
“I am Time who waste and destroy the peoples; lo, I have arisen in my might, I am here to swallow up the nations. Even without thee all they shall not be, the men of war who stand arrayed in the opposing squadrons. Therefore do thou arise and get thee great glory, conquer thy foes and enjoy a great and wealthy empire. For these, they were slain even before and it is I who have slain them; be the occasion only, O Savyasachin.”
Who could resist the purpose of the Zeitgeist? There were strong men in India then by the hundred, great philosophers and Yogins, subtle statesmen, leaders of men, kings of thought and action, the efflorescence of a mighty intellectual civilisation at its height. A little turning to the right instead of to the left on the part of a few of these would, it might seem, have averted the whole catastrophe. So Arjuna thought when he flung aside his bow. He was the whole hope of the Pandavas and without him their victory must seem a mere dream and to fight an act of madness. Yet it is to him that the Zeitgeist proclaims the utter helplessness of the mightiest and the sure fulfilment of God’s decree. “Even without thee all they shall not be, the men of war who stand arrayed in the opposing squadrons.” For these men are only alive in the body; in that which stands behind and fulfils itself they are dead men. Whom God protects who shall slay? Whom God has slain who shall protect? The man who slays is only the occasion, the instrument by which the thing done behind the veil becomes the thing done on this side of it. That which was true of the great slaying at Kurukshetra is true of all things that are done in this world, of all the creation, destruction and preservation that make up the līlā.
If the first answer might seem to come in the same words that answered the appeal of Arjuna, “I am the Time-Spirit, destroyer of the world, arisen huge-statured for the destruction of the nations,”
*kālo’smi loka-kṣaya-kṛt pravṛddho lokān samāhartum iha pravṛttaḥ,*
and the voice the same to those who would shrink back hesitating from participation in the devastating struggle and massacre, “Without thee even all these shall cease to be who stand in the opposing hosts, for already have I slain them in my foreseeing will; know thyself to be an instrument only of an end predestined,”—still in the end it is the Friend of man, the Charioteer of his battle and his journey who appears in the place of the form of destruction and the outcome of all the ruin is the dharmarājya, the kingdom of the Dharma. To humanity as to the warrior of Kurukshetra the concluding message has been uttered, “Therefore arise, destroy the foe, enjoy a rich and happy kingdom.” But the kingdom of what Dharma? It is doubtful enough whether as the nations were blind to the nature of the destruction that was coming, they may not be at least purblind to the nature of the construction that is to be created. An increase of mechanical freedom to be lavished or doled out according to the needs, interests, hesitations of the old-world forces that still remain erect, a union effected by a patchwork of the remnants of the past and the unshaped materials of the future, a credit and debit account with fate writing off so much of the evil and error of the past as can no longer be kept and writing up as good capital,—with some diminutions by way of acquitment of conscience, part payment of overdue debts,—all that has not been hopelessly destroyed, an acceptance of the change already effected by the tempest or made immediately inevitable and a new system of embankments to prevent the farther encroachments of the flood, is not likely to put a successful term to the cataclysm. Even if a short-sighted sagacity could bring this about for a time by a combined effort of successful and organised egoisms making terms with the powerful Idea-forces that are abroad as the messengers of the Time-Spirit, still it would be only an artificial check leading to a new upheaval in the not distant future. A liquidation of the old bankrupt materialistic economism which will enable it to set up business again under a new name with a reserve capital and a clean ledger, will be a futile attempt to cheat destiny. Commercialism has no doubt its own dharma, its ideal of utilitarian justice and law and adjustment, its civilisation presided over by the sign of the Balance, and, its old measures being now annulled, it is eager enough to start afresh with a new system of calculated values. But a dharmarājya of the half-penitent Vaishya is not to be the final consummation of a time like ours pregnant with new revelations of thought and spirit and new creations in life, nor is a golden or rather a copper-gilt age of the sign of the Balance to be the glorious reward of this anguish and travail of humanity. It is surely the kingdom of another and higher dharma that is in preparation.
Writings in Bengali
ও তৈয়ারী হইবার সময়। বিশ্বরূপদর্শনে কর্ম্মের আরম্ভ। বিশ্বরূপদর্শন অনেক প্রকার হইতে পারে — যেমন সাধনা, যেমন সাধকের স্বভাব। কালীর বিশ্বরূপদর্শনে সাধক জগৎময় অপরূপ নারীরূপ দেখেন, এক অথচ অগণন দেহযুক্ত, সর্ব্বত্র সেই নিবিড়-তিমির-প্রসারক ঘনকৃষ্ণ কুন্তলরাশি আকাশ ছাইয়া রহিয়াছে, সর্ব্বত্র সেই রক্তাক্ত খড়্গের আভা নয়ন ঝলসিয়া নৃত্য করিতেছে, জগৎময় সেই ভীষণ অট্টহাসির স্রোত বিশ্বব্রহ্মাণ্ড চূর্ণ-বিচূর্ণ করিতেছে। এই সকল কথা কবির কল্পনা নহে, অতিপ্রাকৃত উপলব্ধিকে অসম্পূর্ণ মানবভাষায় বর্ণনা করিবার বিফল চেষ্টা নহে। ইহা কালীর আত্মপ্রকাশ, ইহা আমাদের মায়ের প্রকৃত রূপ, — যাহা দিব্যচক্ষুতে দেখা হইয়াছে, তাহার অনতিরঞ্জিত সরল সত্য বর্ণনা। অর্জ্জুন কালীর বিশ্বরূপ দেখেন নাই, দেখিয়াছিলেন কালরূপী শ্রীকৃষ্ণের সংহারক বিশ্বরূপ। একই কথা। দিব্যচক্ষুতে দেখিলেন, বাহ্যজ্ঞানহীন সমাধিতে নহে — যাহা দেখিলেন, ব্যাসদেব তাহার অবিকল অনতিরঞ্জিত বর্ণনা করিলেন। স্বপ্ন নহে, কল্পনা নহে, সত্য, জাগ্রত সত্য।
কলিযুগে ভারতের অবনতি হইয়াছে, তাহা কেহ অস্বীকার করিতে পারে না। কিন্তু অবনতি আনয়ন করিবার জন্য ভগবান কখন অবতীর্ণ হন নাই। ধর্ম্মরক্ষা, বিশ্বরক্ষা, লোকরক্ষার জন্য অবতার। বিশেষতঃ কলিযুগেই ভগবান পূর্ণভাবে অবতীর্ণ হন, তাহার কারণ, কলিতে মানুষের অবনতির অধিক ভয়, অধর্ম্মবৃদ্ধি স্বাভাবিক, অতএব মানবজাতির রক্ষার জন্য, অধর্ম্মনাশ ও ধর্ম্মস্থাপনের জন্য, কলির গতি রুদ্ধ করিবার জন্য এই যুগে পুনঃ পুনঃ অবতার হয়। শ্রীকৃষ্ণ যখন অবতীর্ণ হইলেন, কলির রাজ্য আরম্ভ হইবার সময় হইয়াছিল, তাঁহারই আবির্ভাবে ভীত হইয়া কলি নিজের রাজ্যে পদস্থাপন করিতে পারেন নাই, তাঁহারই প্রসাদে পরীক্ষিত কলিকে পঞ্চ গ্রাম দান করিয়া তাঁহারই যুগে তাঁহার একাধিপত্য স্থগিত করিয়া রাখিলেন। যে কলিযুগের আদি হইতে শেষ পর্য্যন্ত কলির সঙ্গে মানবের ঘোর সংগ্রাম চলিতেছে ও চলিবে, সেই সংগ্রামের সহায় ও নায়করূপে ভগবানের অবতার ও বিভূতি কলিতে ঘন ঘন আসেন, সেই সংগ্রামের উপযোগী ব্রহ্মতেজ, জ্ঞান, ভক্তি, নিষ্কাম কর্ম্মের শিক্ষা ও রক্ষা করিতে ভগবান কলির মুখে মানবশরীর ধারণ করিয়াছিলেন। ভারতের রক্ষা মানবকল্যাণের ভিত্তি ও আশাস্থল। ভগবান কুরুক্ষেত্রে ভারতের রক্ষা করিয়াছেন। সেই রক্তসমুদ্রে নূতন জগতের লীলাপদ্মে কালরূপী বিরাটপুরুষ বিহার করিতে আরম্ভ করিলেন।
Letters
What you say is right. This attitude that the Divine has need of the sadhak and not the sadhak of the Divine, is utterly wrong and absurd. When people are accepted here, they are given a chance of a great Divine Grace, of being instruments in a great work. To suppose that the Divine cannot do his work without the help of this or that person is surely most arrogant and illogical. They ought to remember the Gita’s ऋतेऽपि त्वां, “even without thee” the work can be done, and its निमित्तमात्रं भव.
