Essays on the Gita
Volume 19
THE COMPEETE WORKS OE SRI AUROBINDO
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1997
Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry
PRINTED IN INDIA
Essays on the Gita
Publisher’s Note
The first series of Essays on the Gita appeared in the
monthly review Ary a between August 1916 and July
1918. It was revised by Sri Aurobindo and published as
a book in 1922.
The second series appeared in the Arya between Au¬
gust 1918 and July 1920. In 1928 Sri Aurobindo brought
out an extensively revised edition in book form.
For the present edition, the text has been thoroughly
checked against all previous editions and against the
manuscripts of the revised Arya.
First Series
Our Demand and Need from the Gita 3
The Divine Teacher 12
The Human Disciple 20
The Core of the Teaching 29
Kurukshetra 39
Man and the Battle of Life 47
The Creed of the Aryan Fighter 57
Sankhya and Yoga 68
Sankhya, Yoga and Vedanta 81
The Yoga of the Intelligent Will 94
Works and Sacrifice 105
The Significance of Sacrifice 114
The Lord of the Sacrifice
The Principle of Divine Works 134
The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood 145
The Process of Avatarhood 158
The Divine Birth and Divine Works 168
The Divine Worker 1 77
Equality 188
Equality and Knowledge 200
The Determinism of Nature 212
Beyond the Modes of Nature 224
Nirvana and Works in the World 234
The Gist of the Karmayoga 247
Second Series
Part I — The Synthesis of Works, Love and Knowledge
The Two Natures 263
The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge 278
The Supreme Divine
The Secret of Secrets
The Divine Truth and Way
Works, Devotion and Knowledge
The Supreme Word of the Gita
God in Power of Becoming
The Theory of the Vibhuti
The Vision of the World-Spirit — Time the Destroyer
The Vision of the World-Spirit — The Double Aspect
The Way and the Bhakta
Part II — The Supreme Secret
The Field and its Knower
xrv
Above the Gunas
The Three Purushas
The Fullness of Spiritual Action
Deva and Asura
The Gunas, Faith and Works
The Gunas, Mind and Works
Swabhava and Swadharma
Towards the Supreme Secret
The Supreme Secret
The Core of the Gita’s Meaning
The Message of the Gita
Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, c. 1915
' »Rva
the is the cosmic spirit ui Time and
gives the commaiul to the divine .iciion «( the libe¬ rated human hegy. _He js hnih, Ak^l^ira and Kshar.i, and yet lie is otlier^lh.iii either (ifttieie oppnsitcs. (7/(i- tiifth l>iirttfliiif tic.tnviih f>,triimAli»‘tyHtUthrilah,\%> hhUitf mill m'isJiyii t'ibliiiiiyiii'viiytt if-nirah, “But otlier than these two is iliat highest spirit called the siipicme Self, which enters i1k> three woilds and npbciirs them , the im¬ perishable Lord." This verse is the keyword of the Gila's reconciliation of these two apparently opposite aspects of our existence.
The idea of the Puriishotlama has lieen prepared, al¬ luded to, adumbrated, assumed even from the beginning, but it is only now in the fi^^een^^chaplcr that it is cx|iressly slated and the distinction given- a n?)mv. And it Ls instruc¬ tive to see how it i^ nnw imme<li.itcly approached and dc- velopcrl. To tujt into the divine nature, we have been told, one must first fix oneself in a perfect spiritual equ.i- lilv and a<>rise alroye Uie lower nature of the three guna'| 0 hx onrselves in the impersonality, the iinper- turb.able superiority to all action, the tniritv from all ddy nition and limjtation by uualily which fiafure dniie Purushotiama manifestSS^ the eternity aiij unity of the self, V the is >1^2
city of tlic Purifihotfajn^^^oul manifestation. The infi¬ nite h.as an eternal powei; an(finS^i|i" ^liiy of ^his ^i vi nc ^
N il luj^^ncy personality fino^mjKeJnuwe i^high^ /
spiiiliul^meaningjf but Wremijir T ffe egoistic,
separative, ohlivioi/s ]^rj>oii.yitv of thy lower Prakrili; iti^rj^*^/ is soinething exalterl, immortaliJiid^iy;mg.^Tlia,t myslery|-ji^X»r^f \
itseilwtnc eternal l)i\'inc,orwli'om ft "is a portion,
1^-* ** com pt^ep^-y of knowledge Onds '
itself ih tlmljo^iM^/irat^wjSQh? s.acrifice of works I
receives by U its consiimmatioh and perfect sanction. It is then through these things that the soul of man fulfils it-
^^lerk^ niisAiil t
^ a" -/C#
Essays on the Gita First Series
Our Demand and Need from the Gita
The world abounds with scriptures sacred and pro¬ fane, with revelations and half-revelations, with religions and philosophies, sects and schools and systems. To these the many minds of a half-ripe knowledge or no knowledge at all attach themselves with exclusiveness and passion and will have it that this or the other book is alone the eternal Word of God and all others are either impostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that philosophy is the last word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are either errors or saved only by such partial truth in them as links them to the one true philosophical cult. Even the discoveries of physical Science have been elevated into a creed and in its name religion and spirituality banned as ignorance and superstition, philosophy as frippery and moonshine. And to these bigoted exclusions and vain wranglings even the wise have often lent themselves, misled by some spirit of darkness that has mingled with their light and overshadowed it with some cloud of intellectual egoism or spir¬ itual pride. Mankind seems now indeed inclined to grow a little modester and wiser; we no longer slay our fellows in the name of God’s truth or because they have minds differently trained or differently constituted from ours; we are less ready to curse and revile our neighbour because he is wicked or presumptuous enough to differ from us in opinion; we are ready even to admit that Truth is everywhere and cannot be our sole monopoly; we are beginning to look at other religions and philosophies for the truth and help they contain and no longer merely in order to damn them as false or criticise what we conceive to be their errors. But we are still apt to declare that our truth gives us the supreme knowledge which other religions or philosophies
Essays on the Gita
have missed or only imperfectly grasped so that they deal either with subsidiary and inferior aspects of the truth of things or can merely prepare less evolved minds for the heights to which we have arrived. And we are still prone to force upon ourselves or others the whole sacred mass of the book or gospel we admire, insisting that all shall be accepted as eternally valid truth and no iota or underline or diaeresis denied its part of the plenary inspiration.
It may therefore be useful in approaching an ancient Scrip¬ ture, such as the Veda, Upanishads or Gita, to indicate precisely the spirit in which we approach it and what exactly we think we may derive from it that is of value to humanity and its future. First of all, there is undoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which we are seeking, from which all other truth derives, by the light of which all other truth finds its right place, explanation and relation to the scheme of knowledge. But precisely for that reason it cannot be shut up in a single trenchant formula, it is not likely to be found in its entirety or in all its bearings in any single philosophy or scripture or uttered altogether and for ever by any one teacher, thinker, prophet or Avatar. Nor has it been wholly found by us if our view of it necessitates the intolerant exclusion of the truth underlying other systems; for when we reject passionately, we mean simply that we cannot appreciate and explain. Secondly, this Truth, though it is one and eternal, expresses itself in Time and through the mind of man; therefore every Scripture must necessarily contain two elements, one temporary, perishable, belonging to the ideas of the period and country in which it was produced, the other eternal and im¬ perishable and applicable in all ages and countries. Moreover, in the statement of the Truth the actual form given to it, the system and arrangement, the metaphysical and intellectual mould, the precise expression used must be largely subject to the mutations of Time and cease to have the same force; for the human intellect modifies itself always; continually dividing and putting together it is obliged to shift its divisions continually and to rearrange its syntheses; it is always leaving old expression and symbol for new or, if it uses the old, it so changes its connotation or at least
Our Demand and Need from the Gita
its exact content and association that we can never be quite sure of understanding an ancient book of this kind precisely in the sense and spirit it bore to its contemporaries. What is of entirely permanent value is that which besides being universal has been experienced, lived and seen with a higher than the intellectual vision.
I hold it therefore of small importance to extract from the Gita its exact metaphysical connotation as it was understood by the men of the time, — even if that were accurately possible. That it is not possible, is shown by the divergence of the original commentaries which have been and are still being written upon it; for they all agree in each disagreeing with all the others, each finds in the Gita its own system of metaphysics and trend of religious thought. Nor will even the most painstaking and disinterested scholarship and the most luminous theories of the historical development of Indian philosophy save us from in¬ evitable error. But what we can do with profit is to seek in the Gita for the actual living truths it contains, apart from their metaphysical form, to extract from it what can help us or the world at large and to put it in the most natural and vital form and expression we can find that will be suitable to the mentality and helpful to the spiritual needs of our present-day humanity. No doubt in this attempt we may mix a good deal of error born of our own individuality and of the ideas in which we live, as did greater men before us, but if we steep ourselves in the spirit of this great Scripture and, above all, if we have tried to live in that spirit, we may be sure of finding in it as much real truth as we are capable of receiving as well as the spiritual influence and actual help that, personally, we were intended to derive from it. And that is after all what Scriptures were written to give; the rest is academical disputation or theological dogma. Only those Scriptures, religions, philosophies which can be thus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth con¬ stantly reshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience of a developing humanity, continue to be of living importance to mankind. The rest remain as monuments of the past, but have no actual force or vital impulse for the future.