Chapter Two : The Divine Teacher

Chapter Two : The Divine Teacher ..............................Shrikant Soman
The peculiarity of the Gita among the great religious books of the worlds is that it does not stand apart as a work by itself. It is not the fruit of the spiritual life of a creative personality like Christ, Mahomed or Buddha. It is also not of an epoch of pure spiritual searching like the Veda and Upanishads. Gita is given as an episode in an epic history of nations. This history is related to wars, men and their deeds. It arises out of a critical moment in the soul of one of its leading personages. The moment is when he stands face to face with the crowning action of his life. The time is when he is called upon to do the work terrible, violent and sanguinary. The critical point is wen he must either recoil from it altogether or carry it through to its inexorable completion.

The modern criticism supposes that the Gita is a later composition inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author. This was supposedly done in order to invest its teaching with the authority and popularity of the great national epic. We are here hardly concerned with this supposition. There seems to me to be strong grounds against this supposition. Moreover, the evidence, both extrinsic and internal, in support of this supposition is in the last degree scanty and insufficient.

For the arguments sake let us assume that the evidence is a sound evidence. Even in such a scenario, we have to note that the author has taken pains to interweave his work inextricably into the vast web of the larger poem. More ever, he is careful again and again to remind us of the situation from which the teaching has arisen. He returns to it prominently, not only at the end, but also in the middle of his profoundest philosophical disquisitions. In this background, we must accept the 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. It is having a bearing upon a practical crisis in the application of ethics and spirituality to human life.

Firstly we must determine if we would grasp the central drift of the ideas of the Gita. Then only we can understand
What that crisis stands
What is the significance of the battle of Kurukhsetra
Its effect on Arjuna’s inner being

Very obviously a great body of the profoundest teaching can not be built round an ordinary occurrence. There has to be
Gulfs of deep suggestion and hazardous difficulty behind its superficial and outward aspects
The crisis should be such as can not be governed well enough by the ordinary everyday standards of thought and action
There are indeed three things in the Gita which are spiritually significant. They are almost symbolic. They are typical of the profoundest relations and problems of the spiritual life and of human existence at its roots. These three things are :
The divine personality of the Teacher
His characteristic relations with his disciple
Occasion of his teaching

We have to understand the symbolic meaning of these three things. These meanings are :
The teacher is God himself descended into humanity
The disciple is the first, as we might say in modern language, the representative man of his age. He is closest friend and chosen instrument of the Avatar. He is Avatar’s protagonist in an immense work and struggle. The secret purpose of this struggle is unknown to the actors in it. They are 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. It is at the moment when the anguish and moral difficulty and blind violence of its apparent movements forces itself with the sock of a visible revelation on the mind of its representative man. It raises the whole question of :
The meaning of God in the world
The goal and drift and sense of human life and conduct.

India has from ancient times held strongly a belief in
The reality of the Avatars.
The descent into Form
The revelation of the Godhead in humanity
In the West this belief has never really stamped itself upon the mind. This is because it has been presented through exoteric Christianity as a theological dogma. It did not have any roots in the reason and general consciousness and attitude towards life. On the other hand, in India it has grown up and persisted as a logical outcome of the Vedantic view of life. It has taken firm root in the consciousness of the race. All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be other than a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation. There is a gradation between the supreme being of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in the finite. The conscious embodied soul is the spark of the divine Fire. This soul in man opens out to self-knowledge as it develops out of ignorance of self into self-being. In the same way the Divine pours itself into the forms of the cosmic existence. It is revealed ordinarily in an efflorescence of
Its powers
In energies and magnitudes of its knowledge, love and joy
Developed force of being
in degrees and faces of its divinity.
On the other hand the height of the conditioned manifestation of the Divine is reached when the divine Consciousness and Power takes upon itself the human form and the human mode of action. It possesses it not only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal self-knowledge. It is when the Unborn knows itself and acts in the frame of the mental being and the appearance of birth. It is the full and conscious descent of the Godhead. We can then call it the Avatar.

The Vaishnava form of Vedantism has laid most stress upon this conception of Avatar. It expresses the relation of ‘God in man’ with the ‘man in God’ by the double figure of Nara-Narayana. It is associated historically with the origin of a religious school. It is very similar in its doctrines to the teaching of the Gita. Nara is the human soul which is the eternal companion of the Divine. It finds itself only when it awakens to that companionship. As the Gita says, it then begins to live in God. Narayana is the divine Soul. It is always present in our humanity. It is the secret guide, friend and helper of the human being. It is the “Lord who abides within the heart of creatures” as per the Gita. The supreme uplifting of the embodied human conscious-being into the unborn and eternal happens when the veil of that secret sanctuary is withdrawn from within us. Man then speaks face to face with God, hears the divine voice, receives the divine light and acts in the divine power. He then becomes capable of that dwelling in God. He gives up his whole consciousness into the Divine. This the Gita upholds as the best or highest secret of things – uttamam rahasyam.

This eternal divine Consciousness is always present in every human being. This God is always in man. When he partly or wholly takes possession of the human consciousness then we have the manifest Avatar. For this to happen, the God has to become in visible human shape the guide, teacher and leader of the world. We are not here referring to the case of the men who while living in their humanity yet feel something of the power or light or love of the divine Gnosis informing and conducting them. This is not Avatar. What we need is the direct action from that divine Gnosis itself, direct from its central force and plentitude. Then only we can call him the manifest Avatar. The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in every man. The human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world. This happens only in the case of manifest Avatar.

When we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood we see that the external aspect has only a secondary importance. This may be from the point of view of the fundamental teaching of Gita which is our present subject or for spiritual life generally. Such controversies would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time. On the other hand there is a raging controversy in Europe over the historicity of Christ. An Indian would concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any religious importance. In the final analysis, it does not matter whether a Jesus son of the carpenter Joseph was actually born in Nazareth or Bethlehem. It also does not matter whether he lived and taught and was done to death on a real or trumped-up charge of sedition. What is of relevance is to know by spiritual experience the inner Christ, to live uplifted in the light of his teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law by that atonement of man with God. The crucifixion is just the symbol of this atonement. We are mainly concerned if the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being. If this be so, then it does not matter whether or not a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in Judea. Same is the case with Krishna. He matters to us as the eternal incarnation of the Divine. We are here not seriously interested in the historical teacher and leader of men.

Therefore in seeking the kernel of the thought of the Gita we need only concern ourselves with the spiritual significance of the human-divine Krishna of the Mahabharata. He is presented to us as the teacher of Arjuna on the battle-field of Kurukshetra. It is certainty that the historical Krishna existed. His name is cited first in the Chhandogya Upanishad. Here all we can gather about him is that he was well-known in spiritual tradition as a knower of the Brahman. In fact so well known in his personality and the circumstances of his life that it was sufficient to refer to him by the name of his mother as Krishna son of Devaki. This identified correctly the Krishna as we know him. In the same Upanishad we find mention of King Dhritarashtra son of Vichitravirya. Both of these persons are leading personages in the action of the Mahabharata. The tradition has therefore associated both of them closely. Therefore we may fairly conclude that they were actually contemporaries and that the epic is to a great extent dealing with historical occurrence imprinted firmly on the memory of the race. We know too that Krishna and Arjuna were the object of religious worship in the pre-Christian centuries. There is some reason to suppose that they were so in connection with a religious and philosophical tradition.
From this tradition the Gita may have gathered
Many of its elements.
Even the foundation of its synthesis of knowledge, devotion and works.
Perhaps also that the human Krishna was the founder, restorer or atleast one of the early teachers of this school
In spite of its later form the Gita may well represent the teaching of Krishna in Indian thought. The connection of that teaching with
The historical Krishna
Arjuna
The war of Kurukshetra
may be something more than a dramatic fiction.
In the Mahabharata Krishna is represented both as the historical character and the Avatar. His worship and Avatarhood must therefore have been well established by the time when the old story and poem or epic tradition of the Bharatas took its present form. This is apparently from the fifth to the first centuries B.C. Story or legend of the Avatar’s early life in Vrindavan has also been hinted in the poem. This has been developed by the Puranas into an intense and powerful spiritual symbol. It has exercised very profound influence on the religious mind of India. We also have an account of the life of Krishna in the Harivansha. It is very evidently full of legends which perhaps formed the basis of the Puranic accounts.

All this information is of considerable historical importance. However, it has no importance at all to our present purpose. We are concerned only with the figure of the divine Teacher as it is presented to us in the Gita. We are also concerned with the Power for which it there stands in the spiritual illumination of the human being. The Gita accepts the human Avatarhood. This is seen when the Lord speaks of the repeated and the constant manifestation of the Divine in humanity. He the eternal Unborn assumes to clothe itself apparently in finite form, the condition of becoming which we call birth. This he does by his Maya and by the power of the infinite Consciousness. But is not this upon which stress is laid. The stress is laid on
The transcendent, the cosmic and the internal Divine.
Source of all things
Master of all
Godhead secret in man

When the Gita speaks of the
Doer of violent Asuric austerities troubling the God within
Sin of those who despise the Divine lodged in the human body
Same Godhead destroying our ignorance by the blazing lamp of knowledge.
it is referring to this internal divinity.

The divine who speaks to the human soul in the Gita is this eternal Avatar and the God in man. It is the divine Consciousness always present in the human being who manifested in a visible form. He illumines the meaning of life and the secret of the divine action. He gives it the light of the divine knowledge and guidance. He offers assuring and fortifying word of the Master of existence in the hour when it comes face with the painful mystery of the world. This is what the Indian religious consciousness seeks to make near to itself. This it does in whatever form This includes :
Symbolic human image it enshrines in its temples
In the worship of its Avatars.
In the devotion to the human Guru through whom the voice of the one world-Teacher makes itself heard.
Through these it strives to awaken to that inner voice, to unveil that form of the Formless and stand face to face with that manifest divine Power, Love and Knowledge.

Secondly, there is the typical, almost the symbolic significance of the human Krishna. He stands behind the great action of the Mahabharata. This is not as its hero but as its secret centre and hidden guide. That action is the action of a whole world of men and nations.
1 Leader - Some of these men have come as helpers of an effort. They do not personally profit by the result of these efforts. To these people Krishna is a leader.
2 Opponent - Some of these men are the opponents. To these men he is also an opponent. He is the baffler of their designs and their slayer.
3 Instigator - To some men he seems to be an instigator of all evil. He is the destroyer of their old order and familiar world and secure conventions of virtue and good.
4 Counsellor – Some are representatives of that which has to be fulfilled and to them he is the counsellor, helper and friend.
5 Unseen Aid - Where the action pursues its natural course or the doers of the work have to suffer at the hands of its enemies and undergo the ordeals which prepare them for mastery. In such situations the Avatar is unseen or appears only for occasional comfort and aid. But at every crisis his hand is felt. However it is done in such a way that all imagine themselves to be the protagonists.

Even Arjuna, his nearest friend and chief instrument does not perceive that he is an instrument. He has to confess at last that all the while he did not really know his divine Friend. Arjuna has received counsel from the wisdom of Krishna, help from his power, has loved and been loved, has even adored without understanding his divine nature. Like all the other men Arjuna has been guided through his own egoism. The counsel, help and direction have been given in the language and received by the thoughts of the Ignorance. Krishna does not reveal his Avatarhood even to those whom he has chosen for his work till the time of final crisis. This is the moment when all has been pushed to the terrible issue of the struggle on the field of Kurukshetra. This is when the Avatar stands at last as the charioteer in the battle-car which carries the destiny of the fight. Even at this moment he does not pose himself as the fighter but as the charioteer.

Thus the figure of Krishna becomes, as it were, the symbol of the divine dealings with humanity. Like the life of Arjuna and other personages of the Mahabharata and the fierce battle of Kurukshetra, we are moved through our egoism and ignorance. We think that we are the doers of the work. We vaunt ourselves as the real causes of the result. We only occasionally see that which moves us. We see it as some vague or even some human and earthly fountain of knowledge. We see it as aspiration, force, some Principle or Light or Power which we acknowledge. We adore without knowing what it is. This goes on until the occasion arises that forces us to stand arrested before the Veil.

The whole wide action of man in life is covered by the action in which this divine figure moves. It covers not merely the inner life but all this obscure course of the world. We can judge it only by the twilight of the human reason. This happens when it dimly opens up the little span in front of our uncertain advance. Gita is the culmination of such an Divine action. It is its distinguishing feature from other Scriptures. This action gives rise to its teaching. It assigns prominence and bold relief to the gospel of works. This gospel is enunciated by Gita. It is done with an emphasis and force which we do not find in other Scriptures. Krishna emphatically declares the necessity of action not only in Gita but also in other passages of the Mahabharata. However in Gita only he reveals its secret and the divinity behind our works.

The symbolic companionship of Arjuna and Krishna and of the human and the divine soul is also expressed elsewhere in Indian thought. We can find it in the heavenward journey of Indra and Kutsa seated in one chariot. We also meet it in the figure of two birds upon one tree in the Upanishad. It is also there in the twin figures of Nara and Narayana – the seers who tapasya together for the knowledge. In all these three examples of companionship, the main focus is on the idea of Divine Knowledge in which all action culminates. On the other hand we find in Gita that the emphasis is on the action which leads to that knowledge and in which the divine Knower figures Himself. Arjuna as human and Krishna as divine stand together not as seers in the peaceful hermitage of meditation. Instead, they appear as fighter and holder of the reins in the clamorous field. It is in the midst of the hurtling shafts of the chariot of the battle.
The Teacher of the Gita is therefore not just the God in man who unveils Himself in the world of knowledge. He is more importantly the God in man who moves our whole world of action. Our humanity exists and struggles and labours by and for this God. Towards this God all human life travels and progresses. He is the secret Master of works and sacrifice and the Friend of the human peoples.
............................ based on Sri Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita