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

bow and inexhaustible „quiyer ^yen to him by the go^ for that tremendous hour, ‘Ht is more for my welfare that the sons of Dhritarashtra armed should slay me unarmed and unresisting.' I will not fighj^ The character of this inner crisis is therefore not the questioning of the thinker; it is not a recoil from the appearances of life and a turning of the eye inward in search of the truth of things, the real meaning _of exist enc e and a solution or an e^C^e from the dark riddle of the world. It is the ^nsational, emotional and moral revolt of the man KiVherto satisfied^th actiori iricTifs current stan- dards who finds himself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they are in violent conflict with each other and with themselves and there is no moral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharmaA That for the soul of action in the mental being is the worst possible crisis, failure and overthrow. The revolt itself is the most elemental and simple possible ; sensationally, the elemental feeling of horror, pity and disgust; vitally/ the loss of Attraction and faith in the recognised and familiar objects of jption and aims of Jife; emo tionallyT the recoil of the ordinal feelinj^ social man, aff^tion, reverence, d^re of a common h appme sT and ..^tisfaction, from a stem duty outraging them all ; morally, the elementary sen^ of sin and 1^11 and 'rejection of ‘‘blood-stained

• Dhanna aieaiis literally that which one lays hold of and which holds things together, the law, the norm, the rule of nature, , action and 4ifc* THE HUMAN DISCIPLE enjoyments*' ; practically, the sense that the stan- HardFof action have led to a result which destroys the practical aims of action. But the whole upshot is that all-embracing inner bankruptcy which Arjuna expresses when he says that his jyhple ^nscm^ being, not the thought alone but heart and vital desires and all, are utterly bewildered arid can" Tind nowhere the dharma, nowhere any valid law of action. JFor this alone he takes refuge as a disciple with Krishna; give me, he practically asks^ that which I have lost, a true law,^ a clear rule of action, a path by which I can again confidently walk. He does, not ask for^the secret jrfjife or of the world, the meaning and purpose of it all, but for a dharm ^

Ye t it is precisely this secre^t for which he does not ask, or at least so much of the knowledge as is necessary to lead himinto a higher life, to which '^e divine Xeacii^r«^tends_ to lea^ this disciple; for he meanj him to give up s^ dharmas except the one broad and vast rule of living consciously in the Divine and acdng fipm thaL^nsciousr^^^ There- fore after testing the completeness of his revolt from Ae Ordinary standards of conduct, he proceeds to tell him much that has to do jvith^ Ae state of the Jpul, but nothing of any du twsâd ^r ule of action. He must be equal in souF, atendpnjthe^^ire of t!Se fruits jpXwOTk, rise atove his intellectual notions of sm jynd vixtue) lire and act in Yoga wih a mind in Samadhi, firmly fixed, that is to say, m the Divi ne aLm^ Arjuna is not satisfied: he wishes to know