चतुर्विधा भजन्ते मां जनाः सुकृतिनोऽर्जुन ।आर्तो जिज्ञासुरर्थार्थी ज्ञानी च भरतर्षभ ॥
caturvidhā bhajante māṁ janāḥ sukṛtino’rjunaārto jijñāsurarthārthī jñānī ca bharatarṣabha
Among the virtuous ones who turn towards Me (the Divine) with devotion, O Arjuna, there are four kinds of bhaktas; the suffering, the seeker for good in the world, the seeker for know-ledge, and those who adore Me with knowledge, O Lord of the Bharatas.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
AI translation
Essays on the Gita
For note that it is bhakti with knowledge which the Gita demands from the disciple and it regards all other forms of devotion as good in themselves but still inferior; they may do well by the way, but they are not the thing at which it aims in the soul’s culmination. Among those who have put away the sin of the rajasic egoism and are moving towards the Divine, the Gita distinguishes between four kinds of bhaktas. There are those who turn to him as a refuge from sorrow and suffering in the world, ārta. There are those who seek him as the giver of7·16–18 good in the world, arthārthī. There are those who come to him in the desire for knowledge, jijñāsu. And lastly there are those who adore him with knowledge, jñānī. All are approved by the Gita, but only on the last does it lay the seal of its complete sanction. All these movements without exception are high and good, udārāḥ sarva evaite, but the bhakti with knowledge excels them all, viśiṣyate. We may say that these forms are successively the bhakti of the vital-emotional and affective nature,* that of the practical and dynamic nature, that of the reasoning intellectual nature, and that of the highest intuitive being which takes up all the rest of the nature into unity with the Divine. Practically, however, the others may be regarded as preparatory movements. For the Gita itself here says that it is only at the end of7·19 many existences that one can, after possession of the integral knowledge and after working that out in oneself through many lives, attain at the long last to the Transcendent. For the knowledge of the Divine as all things that are is difficult to attain and rare on earth is the great soul, mahātmā, who is capable of fully so seeing him and of entering into him with his whole being, in15·19 every way of his nature, by the wide power of this all-embracing knowledge, sarvavit sarvabhāvena.
It may be asked how is that devotion high and noble, udāra, which seeks God only for the worldly boons he can give or as a refuge in sorrow and suffering, and not the Divine for its own sake? Do not egoism, weakness, desire reign in such an adoration and does it not belong to the lower nature? Moreover, where there is not knowledge, the devotee does not approach the Divine in his integral all-embracing truth, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti, but constructs imperfect names and images of the Godhead which are only reflections of his own need, temperament and nature, and he worships them to help or appease his natural longings. He constructs for the Godhead the name and form of Indra or Agni, of Vishnu or Shiva, of a divinised Christ or Buddha, or else some composite of natural qualities, an indulgent God of love and mercy, or a severe God of righteousness and justice, or an awe-inspiring God of wrath and terror and flaming punishments,7·19–20 or some amalgam of any of these, and to that he raises his altars without and in his heart and mind and falls down before it to demand from it worldly good and joy or healing of his wounds or a sectarian sanction for an erring, dogmatic, intellectual, intolerant knowledge. All this up to a certain point is true enough. Very rare is the great soul who knows that Vasudeva the omnipresent Being is all that is, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ. Men are led away by various outer desires which take from them the working of the inner knowledge, kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ. Ignorant, they resort to other godheads, imperfect forms of the deity which correspond to their desire, prapadyante ’nyadevatāḥ. Limited, they set up this or that rule and cult, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya, which satisfies the need of their nature. And in all this it is a compelling personal determination, it is this narrow need of their own nature that they follow and take for the highest truth, — incapable yet of the infinite and its largeness. The Godhead in these forms gives them their desires if their faith is whole; but these fruits and gratifications are temporary and it is a petty intelligence and unformed reason which makes the pursuit of them its principle of religion and life. And so far as there is a spiritual attainment by this way, it is only to the gods; it is only the Divine in formations of mutable nature and as the giver of her results that they realise. But those who adore the transcendent and integral Godhead embrace all this and transform it all, exalt the gods to their7·22–5 highest, Nature to her summits, and go beyond them to the very Godhead, realise and attain to the Transcendent. Devān deva-yajo yānti mad-bhaktā yānti mām api.
The Synthesis of Yoga
The devotee on the other hand tends to look down on the sawdust dryness of mere knowledge. And it is true that philosophy by itself without the rapture of spiritual experience is something as dry as it is clear and cannot give all the satisfaction we seek, that its spiritual experience even, when it has not left its supports of thought and shot up beyond the mind, lives too much in an abstract delight and that what it reaches, is not indeed the void it seems to the passion of the heart, but still has the limitations of the peaks. On the other hand, love itself is not complete without knowledge. The Gita distinguishes between three initial kinds of Bhakti, that which seeks refuge in the Divine from the sorrows of the world, ārta, that which, desiring, approaches the Divine as the giver of its good, arthārthī, and that which attracted by what it already loves, but does not yet know, yearns to know this divine Unknown, jijñāsu; but it gives the palm to the Bhakti that knows. Evidently the intensity of passion which says, “I do not understand, I love,” and, loving, cares not to understand, is not love’s last self-expression, but its first, nor is it its highest intensity. Rather as knowledge of the Divine grows, delight in the Divine and love of it must increase. Nor can mere rapture be secure without the foundation of knowledge; to live in what we love, gives that security, and to live in it means to be one with it in consciousness, and oneness of consciousness is the perfect condition of knowledge. Knowledge of the Divine gives to love of the Divine its firmest security, opens to it its own widest joy of experience, raises it to its highest pinnacles of outlook.
The relations which arise out of this attitude towards the Divine, are that of the divine Father and the Mother with the child and that of the divine Friend. To the Divine as these things the human soul comes for help, for protection, for guidance, for fruition,—or if knowledge be the aim, to the Guide, Teacher, Giver of light, for the Divine is the Sun of knowledge,—or it comes in pain and suffering for relief and solace and deliverance, it may be deliverance either from the suffering itself or from the world-existence which is the habitat of the suffering or from all its inner and real causes.* In these things we find there is a certain gradation. For the relation of fatherhood is always less close, intense, passionate, intimate, and therefore it is less resorted to in the Yoga which seeks for the closest union. That of the divine Friend is a thing sweeter and more intimate, admits of an equality and intimacy even in inequality and the beginning of mutual self-giving; at its closest when all idea of other giving and taking disappears, when this relation becomes motiveless except for the one sole all-sufficing motive of love, it turns into the free and happy relation of the playmate in the Lila of existence. But closer and more intimate still is the relation of the Mother and the child, and that therefore plays a very large part wherever the religious impulse is most richly fervent and springs most warmly from the heart of man. The soul goes to the Mother-Soul in all its desires and troubles and the divine Mother wishes that it should be so, so that she may pour out her heart of love. It turns to her too because of the self-existent nature of this love and because that points us to the home towards which we turn from our wanderings in the world and to the bosom in which we find our rest.
- These are three of the four classes of devotee which are recognised by the Gita, ārta, arthārthī, jijñāsu, the distressed, the seeker of personal objects and the seeker of God-knowledge.
Writings in Bengali
জিজ্ঞাসু ভক্ত কোন অর্থসিদ্ধির জন্য বা ভগবানকে সন্তুষ্ট করিবার জন্য স্তবস্তোত্র করেন না, তাঁহার পক্ষে স্তবস্তোত্র শুদ্ধ ভগবানের স্বরূপ উপলব্ধির এবং স্বীয় ভাবপুষ্টির উপায়। জ্ঞানী ভক্তের পক্ষে সেই প্রয়োজনও থাকে না, কেননা তাঁহার স্বরূপ উপলব্ধি হইয়াছে, তাঁহার ভাব সুদৃঢ় ও সুপ্রতিষ্ঠিত হইয়াছে, কেবল ভাবোচ্ছ্বাসের জন্য স্তবস্তোত্রের প্রয়োজন। গীতায় বলে, এই চারিশ্রেণীর ভক্ত সকলেই উদার, কেহ উপেক্ষণীয় নহে, সকলে ভগবানের প্রিয়, কিন্তু জ্ঞানী ভক্ত সর্ব্বশ্রেষ্ঠ, কারণ জ্ঞানী ও ভগবান একাত্ম। ভগবান ভক্তের সাধ্য, অর্থাৎ আত্মরূপে জ্ঞাতব্য ও প্রাপ্য, জ্ঞানী ভক্তে ও ভগবানে আত্মা ও পরমাত্মা সম্বন্ধ হয়, জ্ঞান, প্রেম ও কর্ম্ম — এই তিন সূত্রে আত্মা ও পরমাত্মা পরস্পরে আবদ্ধ। কর্ম্ম আছে, সেই কর্ম্ম ভগবদ্দত্ত, তাহার মধ্যে কোন প্রয়োজন বা স্বার্থ নাই, প্রার্থনীয় কিছুই নাই; প্রেম আছে, সেই প্রেম কলহ ও অভিমানশূন্য — নিঃস্বার্থ, নিষ্কলঙ্ক, নির্ম্মল; জ্ঞান আছে, সেই জ্ঞান শুষ্ক ও ভাবরহিত নহে, গভীর, তীব্র আনন্দ ও প্রেমে পূর্ণ। সাধ্য এক হইলেও যেমন সাধক তেমনই সাধন, তেমনই ভিন্ন ভিন্ন সাধকের এক সাধনের ভিন্ন ভিন্ন প্রয়োগ।
The Arya — text not in the CWSA
Gita VII. 1–28
Evening talks
Disciple: The Gita speaks of four kinds of Bhaktas: _ārta_ — distressed, _jijñāsu_ — seeking knowledge, _arthārthī_— one who wants to serve some purpose, and _jñānī_— the man of knowledge. What is the meaning of _arthārthī_?
Sri Aurobindo: When Yoga was first suggested to me I did not readily accept it, as at that time my idea was that Yoga takes one away from life and work and I was aspiring to bring about the liberation of my country. About two years before I met Lele, I began Yogic practice, as I expected that Yoga gives extraordinary powers. Thus I came to Yoga as an _arthārthī_, my object being the service of my country and humanity. But all that has changed in the course of time.
