Chapter 3 - The Human Disciple

The Human Disciple

We have just seen that the divine Teacher of the Gita is the eternal Avatar. He is the Divine who has descended into the human consciousness.  He is the Lord who is seated within the heart of all beings. From behind the veil, he guides all our thought and action and heart’s seeking. At the same time He also directs from behind the veil of visible and sensible forms and forces and tendencies the great universal action of the world. This is the same world which he has manifested in his own being.

When we are able to pull apart this veil and get behind our apparent self to see face to face this real Self, at that time all the strife of our upward endeavour and seeking finds its culmination.

For this purpose :

• We need to get behind our apparent self to this real Self and realize our whole being in this true Lord of our being.
• We need to give up our personality to and into this one real Person.
• We have to merge our ever-dispersed and ever-converging mental activities into His plenary light.
• We have to offer up our errant and struggling will and energies into His vast, luminous and undivided Will.
• We have to at once renounce and satisfy all our dissipated outward-moving desires and emotions in the plentitude of His self-existent Bliss.

The knowledge of all the highest teaching other than eternal knowledge of this World Teacher is only the reflection and partial word. This is voice to which the hearing of our soul has to awaken.

Arjuna is a counterpart of this conception. He is the disciple who receives his initiation on the battlefield. He is the type of the struggling human soul who has not yet received the knowledge. However, he has grown fit to receive this divine knowledge by action in the world in a close companionship and an increasing nearness to the higher and divine Self in humanity. Some have preferred to explain Gita in such a particular method that this episode as well as the whole of Mahabharata is turned into

• An allegory of the inner life.
• It has nothing to do with our outward human life and action.
• It concerns only with the battles of the soul and the powers that strive within us for possession.

However, that view is not justified by the general character and the actual language of the epic. If we still persist in representing it in this manner, it would turn the straightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a constant, laborious and somewhat childish mystification. Agreed that the language of the Veda and part at least of the Puranas is plainly symbolic. It is full of figures and concrete representations of things that lie behind the veil. On the other hand, the Gita is written in plain terms and professes to solve the great ethical and spiritual difficulties raised by the life of man. It will not serve our purpose to forcibly look behind this plain language and thought and wrest them to the service of our fancy. However, there is at least this much truth in the view that the setting of the doctrine though not symbolical, is certainly typical. It is quite natural for the setting of such a discourse as the Gita. This is essential if the Gita is to have any relation at all with that which it frames. We have seen that Arjuna is the representative man of a great world-knowledge and divinely-guided movement of men and nations. In the Gita he typifies the human soul of action brought face to face through that action in its highest and most violent crisis. This crisis is related to the problem of human life and its apparent incompatibility with the spiritual state. This incompatibility is even with a purely ethical ideal of perfection.

Arjuna is the fighter in the chariot with the divine Krishna as his charioteer. The Veda also depict this image of the human soul and the divine riding in one chariot through a great battle to the goal of a high-aspiring effort. However, in Veda it is a pure figure and a symbol. This is explained as follows :

Divine : There Indra is the Divine. He is master of the world of Light and Immortality. He is the power of divine knowledge. This power descends to the aid of the human seeker battling with the sons of falsehood, darkness, limitation and mortality.

Battle : The battle is with the spiritual enemies. These enemies obstruct the way to the higher world of our being.

Goal : And the goal is that place of vast being which is resplendent with the light of the supreme Truth and uplifted to the conscious immortality of the perfected soul. Indra is the master of this perfected soul.

Human Soul : Kutsa is the human soul. He constantly seeks the seer-knowledge, as his name implies. He is the son of Arjuna or Arjuni. The White One, child of Switra the White Mother.  

The Human Soul represents the sattwic or purified and light-filled soul. He is open to the unbroken glories of the divine knowledge. End of the journey is the home of the Indra. By the time the chariot has reached the end of its journey the human Kutsa has grown into an exact likeness of his divine companion. He can only be distinguished by Suchi, who is the wife of Indra. Suchi can do this because she is “truth-conscious”.

This parable is obviously of the inner life of man. It is a figure of the human growing into the likeness of the eternal divine by the increasing illumination of Knowledge. On the other hand, Gita starts from action and Arjuna is the man of action and not of knowledge. He is the fighter, never the seer or the thinker.

From the beginning of the Gita this characteristic temperament of the disciple (i.e. man of action and not of knowledge) is clearly indicated. It is also maintained throughout.

It becomes evident :

• In the manner in which he is awakened to the sense of what he is doing.
• The great slaughter of which he is to be the chief instrument
• In the thoughts which immediately rise in him
• In the standpoint and the psychological motives which make him recoil from the whole terrible catastrophe.

They are not the thoughts, the standpoint, the motives of a philosophical or even of a deeply reflective mind. They are also not of a spiritual temperament confronted with the same or a similar problem.  We might say that they are those of the practical or the pragmatic man. They are of the emotional, sensational, moral and intelligent human being who is not habituated to profound and original reflection or any sounding of the depths. They belong to a human being who is accustomed rather to high but fixed standards of thought and action and a confident treading through all vicissitudes and difficulties. This human being now finds all his standards failing him and all the basis of his confidence in himself and his life strip away from under him at a single stroke. That is the nature of the crisis which he undergoes.

In the language of the Gita, Arjuna is a man subject to the action of the three Guna or modes of the Nature-Force. He is habituated to move unquestioningly in that field. This is the case with the generality of men. He justifies his name only in being so far pure and sattwic as to be governed by high and clear principles and impulses. He can habitually control his lower nature by the noblest Law which he knows. He is not of a violent Asuric disposition. He is also not the slave of his passions.

He is trained to :

• A high calm and self-control
• An unswerving performance of his duties
• For firm obedience to the best principles of the time and society in which he has lived
• The religion and ethics to which he has been brought up.

He is egoistic like other men, but with the purer or sattwic egoism which regards the moral law and society and the claims of others. He is not driven only or predominantly by his own interests, desires and passions. He has lived and guided himself by the Shastra, the moral and social code. The thought which preoccupies him, the standard which he obeys is the dharma. Dharma is the collective Indian conception of the religious, social and moral rule of conduct. He adheres to especially that part of Dharma which is appropriate to the station and function to which he belongs. He is the Kshatriya, the high-minded, self-governed, chivalrous prince and warrior and leader of Aryan men. He has reached this high point of his life by following always this rule of Dharma, conscious of virtue and right dealing. And at this point, he suddenly finds that it has led him to become the protagonist of a terrific and unparalleled slaughter. It has led him to a monstrous civil war involving all the cultured Aryan nations. It will sure lead to the complete destruction of the flower of their manhood. It threatens their ordered civilization with chaos and collapse.

It is typical again of the pragmatic man that it is through his sensations that he awakens to the meaning of his action. He has asked his friend and charioteer to place him between the two armies. The purpose of this placement is not any profounder idea. It is with the proud intention of viewing and looking in the face these myriads of the champions of unrighteousness. He has to meet, conquer and slay these men. For him this fight is the “holiday of fight”. He has to do this so that the right may prevail. The revelation of the meaning of a civil and domestic war comes home to him as he gazes both these armies. This is a war in which not only men of the same race, the same nation, the same clan but also those of the same family and household stand upon opposite sides. He must meet and slay as enemies all persons whom the social man holds most dear and sacred. They include the worshipped teacher and preceptor, the old friend, comrade and companion in arms, grandsires, uncles, son, connections by blood and connections by marriage. All these social ties have to be cut asunder by the sword. It is not the case that he did not know these things before. Having known them, he has never realized it at all. He was too much obsessed by his claims and wrongs and by the principles of his life, the struggle for the right, the duty of the Kshatriya to protect justice and the law and fight and beat down injustice and law-less violence.  He has neither thought out deeply nor felt it in his heart and at the core of his life. And now it is shown to his vision by the divine charioteer. It is placed sensationally before his eyes. It has come home to him like a blow delivered at the very centre of his sensational, vital and emotional being.

1         The first result of this realisation is a violent sensational and physical crisis. This realisation has produced disgust of the action and its material objects and even of life itself. The Arjuna then rejects the vital aim pursued by egoistic humanity in its action – happiness and enjoyment. He rejects the vital aim of the Kshatriya - victory and rule and power and government of men. He thinks that after all what is this fight for justice ? When reduced to its practical terms this fight amounts to nothing more than a fight for the interests of himself, his brothers and his party. It is for possession and enjoyment and rule. He concludes that at such a horrible costs these things are not worth having. The rationale of this conclusion is that these things are of no value in themselves. They serve only as a means to the right maintenance of social and national life. Ironically it is these very aims that in the person of his kin and his race he is about to destroy.

2        Having thus rationalized his action, ,Arjuna then gets overwhelmed by the cry of the emotions. These are they for whose life and happiness are desires, our “own people”. Who would consent to slay these for the sake of all the earth, or even for the kingdom of the three worlds ? What pleasure can there be in life, what happiness, what satisfaction in oneself after such a deed ?

3        The whole thing is a dreadful sin, - for now the moral sense awakens to justify the revolt of the sensations and the emotions. It is a sin, there is no right nor justice in mutual slaughter. This is particularly true in the case of those who are to be slain are the natural objects of reverence and of love and those without whom one would not care to live. It is no virtue to violate these sacred feelings. It would amount to nothing less than a heinous crime. Arjuna accepts that the offence, the aggression, the first sin, the crimes of greed and selfish passion came from the other side. He understands that the other side is therefore responsible to have brought things to such a pass. However, in spite of this background, the armed resistance to these wrongs committed would be itself a sin and crime worse than theirs. The other side is blinded by passion and they are unconscious of the guilt. On the other hand, on this side it would be with a clear sense of guilt that the sin would be committed. And for what purpose ? Just for the sake of maintenance of family morality, of the social law and the law of the nation ? These are the very standards that will be destroyed by this civil war. The family itself will be brought to the point of annihilation. It will engender the corruption of morals and loss of the purity of race.

This monstrous civil strife will only result in

• Ruin of the race
• The collapse of its high traditions
• Ethical degradation, and
• Hell for the authors of such a crime

Arjuna then cast down the divine bow and inexhaustible quiver given to him by the gods. He cries that “Under such circumstances it is more for my welfare that the armed sons of Dhritarashtra should slay me unarmed and unresisting. I will not fight”.

We have seen that :

The character of this inner crisis is not

• The questioning of the thinker
• It is not a recoil from the appearances of life and
• Turning of the eye inward in search of the truth of things.

The object is not the search of

• The truth of things
• The real meaning of existence and
• A solution or an escape from the dark riddle of the world

The character of this inner crisis is the sensational, emotional and moral revolt of the man who was hitherto satisfied with action and its current standards. He is the man who finds himself cast by them into a hideous chaos where they are in violent conflict with each other and with themselves. In this situation there is no moral standing-ground left, nothing to lay hold of and walk by, no dharma (Dharma means literally that which one lays hold of and which holds things together, the law, the norm, the rule of nature, action and life) . And on top of it, to have happened such crisis to a person who is the soul of action in the mental being is the worst possible crisis, failure and overthrow.

Here, we have to note that the revolt itself is the most elemental and simple possible.

From different aspects, we can view this revolt as :

• Sensationally – the elemental feeling of horror pity and disgust
• Vitally – the loss of attraction and faith in the recognised and familiar objects of action and aims of life
• Emotionally – the recoil of the ordinary feelings of social man, affection, reverence, desires of a common happiness and satisfaction, from a stern duty outraging them all
• Morally – the elementary sense of sin and hell and rejection of “blood-stained enjoyments”
• Practically – the sense that the standards of action have led to a result which destroys the practical aims of action

All this leads to the all-embracing inner bankruptcy. Arjuna expresses this when he says that his whole conscious being, not the thought alone but heart and vital desires and all, are utterly bewildered. He can not find dharma anywhere. Nowhere he sees any valid law of action. He takes refuge as a disciple with Krishna for this sole purpose.

Arjuna practically asks from Krishna –

give me that

• which I have lost,
• a true law,
• a clear rule of action,
• a path by which I can again confidently walk.

We should particularly note here that Arjuna does NOT ask for the secret of life or of the world, the meaning and purpose of it all. He is only interested in knowing dharma. Interestingly, it is precisely this secret which Arjuna does not ask from Krishna which the divine Teacher intends to give him! Krishna wants Arjuna to give up all Dharmas except the one and only Dharma which is the broad and vast rule of living consciously in the Divine and acting from that consciousness. Therefore Krishna first tests Arjuna for the completeness of his revolt from the ordinary standards of conduct. Then he proceeds to tell Arjuna much that has to do with the state of the soul. Krishna does not, however, tell him anything of outward rule of action which he was asking for.

Krishna advises him that

• he must be equal in soul,
• abandon the desire of the fruits of work,
• rise above his intellectual notions of sin and virtue,
• live and act in Yoga with a mind in Samadhi, firmly fixed, that is to say, in the Divine alone.

Arjuna is naturally not impressed.

He wants to know how the change to this state

• will affect the outward action of the man,
• what result it will have on

                        his speech,

                        his movements,

                        his state,

• what difference it will make in this acting, living human being.

Here Krishna persists merely in enlarging upon the ideas he has already brought forward, on the soul-state behind the action He does not elaborate on the action itself. Krishna explains to Arjuna about the fixed anchoring of the intelligence in a state of desireless equality that is the one thing needed. Arjuna sees here no rule of conduct such as he sought. Rather, it seems to him the negation of all action. At this point Arjuna breaks out impatiently. He says to Krishna “ If thou hold that the intelligence is greater than action, why then do you appoint me to an action terrible in its nature ?  You are only confusing me with your mingled words. I request you to speak only one thing decisively by which I can attain to what is the best”.

It is always the pragmatic man like Arjuna who has no value for the metaphysical thought or for the inner life which Krishna was advocating. He takes cognizance of them only when they help him to his one demand, a dharma, a law of life in the world.  Even the event of leaving the world is considered because that too is a decisive action which he can understand. But when Krishna speaks of ‘live and act in the world, while at the same time be above it’, it is utterly confusing to Arjuna and he terms this as ‘mingled’ words because it speaks of two opposite things in the same breath. He has no patience to grasp the meaning of this advice.

The rest of Arjuna’s questions and utterances proceed from the same temperament and character. Arjuna is bewildered when he is told of apparently incongruous things like

• Once the soul-state is assured, there need be no apparent change in the action
• He must act always by the law of his nature - swabhava, even if the act itself may seem to be faulty and deficient from the point of view of law of nature (i.e. swabhava) of another person

Krishna is talking of Nature! He does not enlighten Arjuna about what he needs most at the moment – How to resolve the issue of the sin in action with which he is preoccupied? On the one hand we are told to act as per our own nature and on the other hand we see that this very nature is the main cause which drives men as if by force and apparently against their better will into sin and guilt. Arjuna’s practical intelligence is further baffled when Krishna reveals his secret when he asserts that it was he who in ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga. This knowledge had since then lost to humanity. Now he is again revealing it to Arjuna. His demand for an explanation provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose (Yada yada hi dharmasya, glanir bhavati Bharat…. = Whenever there is decline in the Dharma in this country Bharat…..I take birth….to lift the country out of…). Arjuna is again perplexed by Krishna’s further statement reconciling action and renunciation of action. Arjuna again asks for a decisive statement of that which is the best and highest. – not these ‘mingled’ words. When finally Arjuna fully understands the nature of Yoga which he is invited to embrace, he is appalled by its difficulty. His pragmatic nature is accustomed to act from mental will and preference and desire. This makes it extremely difficult for him to adopt this Yoga. He is now more frustrated than before. In dismay Arjuna asks about what is the end of the soul which attempts and fails.

Does it not then lose both the worlds –

• First, this life of human activity and thought and emotion which it has left behind, and
• Second, the Brahmic consciousness to which it aspires

Having failed from both these worlds, does one perish like a dissolving cloud ?

Having at last passed this stage of difficulty all the doubts and perplexities of Arjuna are now resolved. He now knows that it is the Divine which must be his law. But here again and as always before this stage, Arjuna aims at a clear and decisive knowledge which will guide him practically to this source and this rule of his future action. Arjuna now wants a clear-cut criteria which will help him to distinguish Divine from the various states of being which constitute our ordinary experience. He wants to know about the great manifestations of the Divine’s self-energy in the world in which he can recognise and realize it by meditation. He wonders as to will it be possible for him to see even now the divine cosmic Form of That. It is actually speaking to Arjuna at this very moment through the veil of the human mind and body. Arjuna has now one more last and final question.

He wants to have a clear distinction between

• Renunciations of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer
• Purusha and Prakriti
• The Field and the Knower of the Field

This distinction is very important for Arjuna to know in order to practice the desireless action under the drive of the divine Will.

And finally he wants to have a clear statement of the practical operations and results of the three modes of Prakriti which he is called upon to surmount.

To such a disciple the Teacher of the Gita gives his divine teaching. He seizes him at a moment of his psychological development engulfed by egoistic action. It is a moment of his life when all the mental, moral and emotional values of the ordinary egoistic and social life of man have collapsed in a sudden bankruptcy. Krishna has to lift him up

• Out of this lower life into a higher consciousness,
• Out of ignorant attachment to action into that which transcends, yet originates and orders action,
• Out of ego into Self,
• Out of life in mind, vitality and body into that higher nature beyond mind which is the status of the Divine.

At the same time, Krishna has to give Arjuna that for which he asks and for which he is inspired to seek by the guidance within him. He has to give him a new Law of life and action high above the insufficient rule of the ordinary human existence. The ordinary human existence is having endless conflicts and oppositions, perplexities and illusory certainties. He has to give him a higher Law by which the soul shall be free from this bondage of works. At the same time, this Law should be powerful enough to act and conquer in the vast liberty of its divine being.

It is absolutely necessary that

• The action must be performed
• The world must fulfill its cycles, and
• The soul of the human being must not turn back in ignorance from the work it is here to do.

Towards the fulfilment of these three objects is the whole course of the Gita determined and directed. This aim is constantly kept in view even in its widest wheelings. 

.............. Based on Essays on the Gita by Sri Aurobindo, Chapter 3