Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

V Arjun a, the disciple who receives his initiation on the battle-field, is a counterpart of this concep- tion ; he is the type of the struggling human soul who has not yet received the Jamwledge^ but has grown fit to receive jt by action in the world ir^a close com- panionship and an increasing nearness to the higher and divine SeK in humanity.^ There is a method of explaining the Gita in wmch not only this episode but the whole Mahabharata is turned into an allegory of^he inner life and has nothing to do with our out- ward human life and action, but only with the batt les o f the soul and the_powers that strive within us for possession. That is a view which the general character and the actual language of the epic does not justify and, if pressed, would turn the straight- forward philosophical language of the Gita into a consunt, laborious and somewhat puerile mystifica- tion. The language of the Veda and part at least of the Puranas is plainly symbolic, full of figures and concrete representations of things that lie behind the veil, but the Gita is written in plain terms and professes to solve, the great ethigil and spiritual difficultly which the life of man raises, and it will nordb to go behind this plain language and thought and wrest them to the service of our fancy. But there is this much of truth in the view, that the setting of the doctrine though not sym- bolical, is certainly typical, as indeed die setting of such a discourse as the Gita must necessarily be if 2it is to any relation at all with that which it frames, ^rjuna , as we have seen, is th e represe nta- tive manTff^a^^eat world-struggle and divin ely- gui3eS movement of men and nations; in the Gita he^t ^jfi es the liuman soiil of action brought face to fa^ through that action in its highest and most violent crisis with the problem of human life and its apparent incompatibility with the spiritual state or even with a purely ethical ideal of perfection^ ^ ^riuna is the fighter in the chariot with the divine Krishn a as his char m^er : I 5 the Veda also we have this image of tfie human soul and the divine riding in one chariot through a great battle to tjie goal of a high-aspiring effort. But there it is a pure figure and symbol. The Piyioe_is there Indra, the Master of the World of Light and Immortality,’ the power of divine knowledge which descends to the aid of the human seeker battling with the sons of falsehood, darkness, limitation, mortalitfjKthe battle is with spiritual enemies who bar the \^y to the higher world of our being; and the goal is that plane of vast being resplendent with the light of the supreme Truth and uplifted to the conscious immortality of th^ perfected soul, cA which Indra is the master, ^he hum an so ul is Kutsa, he who constantly s^fa the seer-krmwledge^, S his name implied and he is tie son of i^juna oi Arjuni, Jthe WhiteOne, child of Switra the White Mother; he is, that is to say, the sattwic or purified and light-filled soul which is open to the unbroken glories of the divine knowledge. And when the