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1web of the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen ; he returns to it prominently, not dnly at the end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept me insistence of the author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple. The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life. For what that crisis stands, what is the significance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on Arjuna’s inner being, we have first to determine if we would grasp the central drift of the ideas of the Gita.
2Very obviously a great body of the profoundest teaching cannot be built round an ordinary occur- rence which has no gulfs of deep suggestion and hazardous difficulty behind its superficial and out- ward aspects and can be governed well enough by the ordinary everyday standards of thought and action. There are indeed tluree things in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost symlwlic, typical of the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human existence at jts^wte ; they are the divine personality of the Teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and e^ oc^sion_ of his teaching. JThe teacher is G<xi Eimself descended into humanity ; the disciple is B 17
3the first, as we might say in modern language, the rg)resentotive man of^Jiis age, closest friend and chosen instrument of the Avatar, his protagonist in iilii Tmmense work and struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to the actors in it, known only to the incarnate Godhead who guides it all from behind the veil of his unfathomable mind of knowledge ; the occasion is the violent crisis of that work and struggle at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty and blind violence of its apparent movements forces itself with the shock of a visible revelation on the mind of its representative man and raises the whole question of the meaning of God in the world and the goal and drift and sense of human life and conduct. India has from ancient times held strongly a behrf jnjthe. re^ of the Avatam, the descent into for^ the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedanfic" "View of life and t^en firm root in the coi^ousn^ of 5 55lelic e'~ir^ of ^d because He is
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1web of the larger poem, but is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen ; he returns to it prominently, not dnly at the end, but in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. We must accept me insistence of the author and give its full importance to this recurrent preoccupation of the Teacher and the disciple. The teaching of the Gita must therefore be regarded not merely in the light of a general spiritual philosophy or ethical doctrine, but as bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life. For what that crisis stands, what is the significance of the battle of Kurukshetra and its effect on Arjuna’s inner being, we have first to determine if we would grasp the central drift of the ideas of the Gita.
2Very obviously a great body of the profoundest teaching cannot be built round an ordinary occur- rence which has no gulfs of deep suggestion and hazardous difficulty behind its superficial and out- ward aspects and can be governed well enough by the ordinary everyday standards of thought and action. There are indeed tluree things in the Gita which are spiritually significant, almost symlwlic, typical of the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human existence at jts^wte ; they are the divine personality of the Teacher, his characteristic relations with his disciple and e^ oc^sion_ of his teaching. JThe teacher is G<xi Eimself descended into humanity ; the disciple is B 17
3the first, as we might say in modern language, the rg)resentotive man of^Jiis age, closest friend and chosen instrument of the Avatar, his protagonist in iilii Tmmense work and struggle the secret purpose of which is unknown to the actors in it, known only to the incarnate Godhead who guides it all from behind the veil of his unfathomable mind of knowledge ; the occasion is the violent crisis of that work and struggle at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty and blind violence of its apparent movements forces itself with the shock of a visible revelation on the mind of its representative man and raises the whole question of the meaning of God in the world and the goal and drift and sense of human life and conduct. India has from ancient times held strongly a behrf jnjthe. re^ of the Avatam, the descent into for^ the revelation of the Godhead in humanity. In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma without any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. But in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedanfic" "View of life and t^en firm root in the coi^ousn^ of 5 55lelic e'~ir^ of ^d because He is
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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