Man and the Battle of Life
We have seen that if we are to appreciate the teaching of Gita in its full spectrum, we must intellectually accept its standpoint. We need to understand its courageous vision of the manifest nature and process of the world. The divine charioteer of Kurukshetra reveals himself in two aspects as :
· On the one side, as the Lord of all the worlds and the Friend and omniscient Guide of all creatures.
And on the other side as
· Time the Destroyer “arisen for the destruction of these peoples”
Faith in Supreme Power
Following in the spirit of the broad aspect of Hindu religion, the Gita affirms this also as God. It does not attempt to evade the enigma of the world by escaping from it through a side-door.
The human being has to start from a great, a difficult act of faith
if we do not regard existence merely
· As the mechanical action of a brute and indifferent material Force
Or, on the other hand,
· As an equally mechanical play of ideas and energies arising out of an original Non-Existence,
Or else
· As reflected in the passive Soul
or
· As the evolution of a dream or nightmare in the surface consciousness of an indifferent, immutable Transcendence. The transcendence which is unaffected by the dream and has not real part in it.
Similarly, this difficult act of faith is also required if like the Gita’s acceptance, we accept the existence of God.
· The God who is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.
· At the same time, this God is also always a transcendent Being who
manifests the world
and
manifests Himself in the world.
· Who is not the slave but the lord of His creative Consciousness, Nature or Force (Maya, Prakriti or Shakti)
· Who is not baffled or thwarted in His world-conception or design by His creatures - be it man or devil
· Who does not need to justify Himself by shifting the responsibility for any part of His creation or manifestation on that which is created or manifested
The necessity of Faith
This act of faith in God is necessary because man finds himself in a world which is :
· Apparently a chaos of battling powers
· A clash of vast and obscure forces
· A life which subsists only by constant change and death
· A life which is menaced from every side by pain, suffering, evil and destruction
An in such a world of negations and strife, the man has to see the omnipresent Deity. This is the act of faith as it can not otherwise be resolved by any rationalization or intellectualization of the conflicting principles.
The man has to be conscious that
· beyond this enigma there must be a solution
· In this Ignorance in which he dwells, there is also a Knowledge that reconciles.
The man has to take his stand on this faith. “Though Thou slay me, yet will I trust in Thee”
.
Transcending the conflicts
We have to understand that such an attitude of faith in God is involved in an explicit or implicit manner in all human thought or faith that is active or affirmative. It does not matter as to whether it is a theistic, pantheistic of atheistic thought or faith. All that it matters is that it admits and it believes. It admits the discords of the world and it believes in some highest principle. This principle may be of God, a universal Being or Nature. What is important is that it should enable us to transcend, overcome or harmonise these discords. Perhaps it may achieve all three at once – to harmonise by overcoming and transcending.
Period of transition and crisis
When we consider the human life in its actualities as explained above, we have then to accept its aspect of a struggle and a battle mounting into supreme crisis such as that of Kurukshetra. We have already seen that Gita takes for its frame such a period of transition and crisis. This transition and crisis is periodically experienced by the humanity in its history. In such a crisis the great forces clash against each other for a huge destruction and also reconstruction. This is in the form of intellectual, social, moral, religious and political aspects. In the case of actual psychological and social stage of human evolution, this crisis usually culminate through a violent physical convulsion of strife, war or revolution. The Gita proceeds from the acceptance of the necessity in Nature for such vehement crisis.
It accepts not only the moral aspect as represented by the struggle
· Between righteousness and unrighteousness.
· Between the self-affirming law of Good and the forces that oppose its progression
but also the physical aspect as represented by
· the actual armed war
or
· other vehement physical strife between the human beings who represent the antagonistic powers.
The situation at the time of Gita
We must remember that the Gita was composed at a time when war was a necessary part of human activity. This necessity was more at the time of the Gita than it is felt today. The idea of the total elimination of war from the life of humanity would have been an absolute chimera, an impossible idea. The gospel of universal peace and goodwill among men has never succeeded, even for a moment, in taking the possession of human mind and life during the historic cycle of our progress. Peace and goodwill go hand in hand. Without a universal and entire mutual goodwill there can be no real and abiding peace. The reason why universal peace and goodwill did not got rooted in the race is that the race was not prepared morally, socially and spiritually for this state. The poise of Nature in its evolution would not admit of its being immediately prepared for any such transcendence.
Working accommodation is not a lasting peace
Even now we have not actually progressed beyond the feasibility of a system of temporary working accommodation between conflicting interests. This makeshift arrangement may minimize the recurrence of the worst forms of strife. Ironically, the method and the approach adopted by the humanity towards this goal of peace actually results in a monstrous mutual massacre unparalleled in history. This method has been forced on humanity by its own nature. For achieving the noble objective of establishment of universal peace, the modern man has found a straight way and the triumphant means of a universal war which is full of bitterness and irreconcilable hatred !
Moreover, this noble objective is not founded upon any fundamental change in human nature.
It is founded upon
· intellectual notions,
· economic convenience,
· vital and sentimental shrinkings from the loss of life, discomfort and horror of war,
and it is
· effected by nothing better than political adjustments.
It does not give any sure and confident promise of firm foundation and long duration.
The reality of Life
We can dream of an age when humanity will be spiritually, morally and socially ready for the reign of universal peace. Surely such a stage will eventually come. However, in the meanwhile, any practical philosophy and religion must accept and account for the aspect of battle. It has also to accept the nature and function of man as a fighter. In fact, this aspect of man as a fighter is really an aspect and function of human activity in general. The Gita takes the life as it really is now (by now is meant the time of the war of Kurukshetra. But the condition existing today is no different from that of the ancient time. Therefore the ‘now’ is equally applicable to now as well as to the period of Kurukshetra) and NOT as it may become in some distant future. On this premise, it poses and answers the question of how to harmonise this aspect and function of human activity with the spiritual existence.
The fighter in Gita
Gita is therefore addressed to a fighter, to a man of action. One whose duty in life is that of war and protection.
In the first place, war is taken as a part of government for the protection of those who are :
· Excused from that duty
· Debarred from protecting themselves and therefore at the mercy of the strong and the violent
Secondly, by a moral extension of this idea, war is necessary
· For the protection of the weak and the oppressed, and
· For the maintenance of right and justice in the world.
Indian conception of the class ‘Kshatriya’ has incorporated all these social, practical, moral and chivalrous ideas. Kshatriya is the warrior and ruler by function and a knight and king in his nature. It is true that we are mainly concerned with ideas of the Gita having more general and universal application and not restricted to a particular class of people or nation or culture or even religion. However, for the purpose of better understanding the doctrine of the Gita, we need to consider the context in which the ideas in the Gita arose. The ideas which were influenced by the colouring and trend of peculiar Indian culture and social system prevailing at the time. That system differed from the modern time in its conception. To the modern mind, man is a thinker, worker or producer and a fighter all in one. The tendency of the current social system is to lump all these activities and to demand from each individual his contribution to the intellectual, economical and military life and needs of the community. This is done without paying any heed to the demands of his individual nature and temperament. The ancient Indian civilization laid peculiar stress on the individual nature, tendency and temperament. It sought to determine by it the ethical type, function and place in the society of a man. It did not consider man primarily as a social being. It did not consider the fullness of his social existence as the highest ideal. It primarily considered man as a spiritual being in the process of formation and development. It placed his social life, ethical law, play of temperament and exercise of function as means and stages of spiritual formation.
Segregation of function in Society
The functions of the society were carefully differentiated as follows :
· Thought and Knowledge
· War and Government
· Production and Distribution
· Labour and Service
Each of these functions was assigned to those who were naturally called to it. It provided the right means by which they could individually proceed towards their spiritual development and self-perfection.
Advantages of the modern system
We have, however, to accept that the modern idea of a common obligation in all the main departments of human activity has its own advantages. It helps in fostering greater solidarity, unity and fullness in the life of the community. It results in a more all-round development of the complete human being as opposed to some of the pitfalls of the old Indian system. The old Indian system eventually led to the endless divisions and over-specialisation. It also resulted in the narrowing and artificial shackling of the life of the individual.
Dangers of the modern system
On the other hand, we should not overlook the disadvantages of the modern system. In certain of its developments the too logical application of it has led to grotesque and disastrous absurdities. This is very much evident in the character of modern war. It had its origin in the idea of a common military obligation which is binding on every individual to defend and fight for the community by which he lives and profits. This has resulted in a system by which the whole manhood of the nation is hurled into the bloody trench to slay and be slain. It has not spared thinkers, artists, philosophers, priests, merchants and artisans. They have been torn from their natural functions. The whole life of the community gets disorganized. The reason and conscience is overridden. The system does not spare even the minister of religion who is paid by the State or called by his function to preach the gospel of peace and love. He is forced to deny his creed and become a butcher of his fellowmen ! The irony and tragedy does not stop at violation of the conscience and nature by arbitrary flat of the military State. When the national defence is carried to an insane extreme, it makes its best attempt to become a national suicide.
Benefits of Ancient Indian System
On the other hand, the Indian civilization made it its chief aim to minimize the incidence and disaster of war. For this purpose, it limited the military obligation to the small class who were marked out for this function by reason of their birth, nature and tradition. These people found in this activity their natural means of self-development through the flowering of the soul in the qualities of
· courage,
· disciplined force,
· strong helpfulness and
· chivalrous nobility
When the warriors life is pursued in these activities under the stress of a high ideal, it gives them a field and opportunities. The rest of the community was in every way guarded from slaughter and outrage. Their life and occupations bore minimal impact of the battle. The combative and destructive tendencies of human nature were given a restricted field. It was confined in a sort of lists of duties and codes of conduct so as to do the minimum amount of harm to the general life of the race. While at the same time it resulted in ennobling and elevating the spirit of the warriors instead of brutalizing it. This was achieved by subjecting the warriors to high ethical ideals. They were made to follow every possible rule of humanity and chivalry.
Specific type of War which is meant in Gita
We have to take a special note that it is a war of this kind and under these conditions that the Gita had in view. The war which is considered as an inevitable part of human life. The war which was so restricted and regulated that it served the ethical and spiritual development of humanity. It was put on par with any other human activity having same ends in view. We should remember that the ethical and spiritual development was then regarded as the whole real object of life. In this context, war becomes destructive within certain carefully fixed limits of the external bodily life of individual men while at the same time it becomes constructive of their inner life and of the ethical elevation of the race.
War and an Ideal
It can be easily seen from the actual experience of the race that in the past when the conduct of war was subjected to an ideal, it had helped in this elevation. This is reflected in the development of knighthood and chivalry, the Indian ideal of the Kshatriya and the Japanese ideal of the Samurai. This fact can only be denied by the fanatics of pacifism.
Contribution of War
When the system of War has fulfilled its function, it may well disappear. If it still tries to outlive its utility, it will then appear as an unrelieved brutality of violence stripped of its ideal and constructive aspects. It will be rejected by the progressive mind of humanity. However, the contribution of the system of War to the preservation and development of the human race must be admitted in any reasonable view of our evolution.
War as an aspect of World-Energy
However, the physical fact of war is only a special and outward manifestation of a general principle in life. Kshatriya is just the outward manifestation and type of a general characteristic which is necessary to the completeness of human perfection. War physically typifies and embodies the aspect of battle and struggle in human life. This aspect belongs to all life – both to our inner and outward living. It is applicable in the specific context of the world whose method is a clash and wrestling of forces. The world which progress by mutual destruction towards a continually changing adjustment. This adjustment is expressive of a progressive harmonizing. It is hopeful of a perfect harmony. The harmony which is based upon some yet ungrasped potentiality of oneness. The Kshatriya is the type and embodiment of the fighter in man who accepts this principle in life. He faces it as a warrior striving towards mastery, not shrinking from the destruction of bodies and forms. It aims towards the realisation of some principle of right, justice and law. This principle shall be the basis of harmony towards which the struggle tends. The Gita accepts this aspect of the world-energy and its embodiment in the form of the physical fact of war. It addresses itself to the man of action, the striver and fighter, the Kshatriya.
Contradictions of War
We are faced here with the extreme case of contradictions.
· The soul’s high aspiration to peace within and harmlessness without stands in shark contrast with the destruction caused by war.
· The striver and fighter whose necessary turmoil of struggle and action seems to be the very contradiction of the soul’s high ideal of calm mastery and self-possession.
And precisely this contradiction has been made an issue in the Gita. It is a point at which its terms meet. It is a poise which shall be the first essential basis of harmony and transcendence.
Man meets the battle of life in the manner which is most in tune with essential quality which is most dominant in his nature. There are three essential qualities or modes of the world-energy. Sankhya philosophy also advocates this notion. On the same line, there are also three modes of human nature.
These are
· Sattva, the mode of poise, knowledge and satisfaction
· Rajas, the mode of passion, action and struggling emotion
· Tamas, the mode of ignorance and inertia
When the man is under the influence of tamas, he does not so much meet the rush and shock of the world-energies whirling about him and converging upon him. He succumbs to these energies. He is overborne, afflicted and subjected by them. At the most, when he is helped by the other qualities of Sattva and rajas,
Tamasic Man
the Tamasic man seeks only somehow to survive, to subsist so long as he may. He tries to shelter himself in the fortress of an established routine of thought and action. In this fortress he feels to a certain extent protected from the battle. He is able to reject the demand which his higher nature makes upon him. He feels excused from accepting the necessity of farther struggle and from the ideal of an increasing effort and mastery.
Rajasic Man
Dominated by rajas, man flings himself into the battle and attempts to use the struggle of forces for his own egoistic benefit He wants to slay, conquer, dominate and enjoy. When he is helped by a certain measure of sattwic quality, the rajasic man makes the struggle itself a means of increasing inner mastery, joy, power and possession. The battle of life becomes his delight and passion. It is partly for its own sake, for the pleasure of activity and the sense of power and partly as a means of his increase and natural self-development.
Sattwic Man
When a man is dominated by sattwic quality, he seeks for a principle of law, right, poise, harmony, peace, satisfaction in the midst of the strife. The purely sattwic man tends to seek this within himself. He does this for himself alone or when he has won over the strife, with an impulse to communicate it to other human minds. He does this usually by a sort of inner detachment from or an outer rejection of, the strife and turmoil of the active world-energy. When the sattwic mind is also influenced by the rajasic impulse, he seeks rather to impose this poise and harmony upon the struggle and apparent chaos. He tries to vindicate a victory for peace, love and harmony over the principle of war, discord and struggle.
All the attitudes adopted by the human mind towards the problem of life derive from the domination of one or other of these qualities. They may also derive from an attempt at balance and harmony between these qualities.
There also comes a stage in which the mind recoils from the whole problem and it gets dissatisfied with the solutions given by the threefold mode of Nature, traigunya. In such a state, it seeks for some higher solution outside or above these three qualities. It looks for an escape into something which is outside and void of all qualities and therefore of all activity. Alternatively ,it also looks for an escape into something which is superior to the three qualities and is master of them. In such a state, it is at once capable of action while at the same time remain unaffected, undominated by its own action, in the nirguna or the trigunatita. It aspires to an absolute peace and unconditioned existence. It may also aspire to a dominant calm and superior existence. The natural movement of the former attitude of absolute peace and unconditioned existence is towards the renunciation of the world, sannyasa. The latter attitude of dominant calm and superior existence leads towards the superiority to the claims of the lower nature and its whirl of actions and reactions. Its principle is equality and the inner renunciation of passion and desire. The former is the first impulse of Arjuna when he recoiled from the calamitous culmination of all his heroic activity in the great cataclysm of battle and massacre, Kurukshetra. In the process, he lost his whole past principle of action. For him the only issue of overwhelming importance were the inaction and the rejection of life and its claims. But he is called by the voice of the divine Teacher to an inner superiority to the three qualities and NOT to the physical renunciation of life and action.
Arjuna is the Kshatriya, the rajasic man. He governs his rajasic action by a high sattwic ideal. He advances to this gigantic struggle, to this Kurukshetra with the full acceptance of the joy of battle called as ‘a holiday of fight’. He does this with a proud confidence in the righteousness of his cause. He advances in his rapid chariot tearing the hearts of his enemies with the victorious clamour of his war-conch. He wishes to look upon all these Kings of men who have come here to champion against him the cause of unrighteousness. They want to establish as a rule of life the rule of a selfish and arrogant egoism. However, the uprush of the tamasic quality into the rajasic man who is Arjuna induced a recoil of astonishment, grief, horror, dismay, dejection and bewilderment of the mind. It caused the war of reason against itself. It caused collapse towards the principle of ignorance and inertia. This resulted in the shattering of the confidence within Arjuna. He gets a severe blow on his customary attitude and mental basis of life. As a result, he turns towards renunciation.
Arjuna strongly feels that it is better to live the life of a beggar who lives upon the alms rather than
· This dharma of the Kshatriya, this battle and action culminating in undiscriminating massacre.
· This principle of mastery and glory and power which can only be won by destruction
· This vindication of justice and right by a means which contradicts all righteousness
· this affirmation of the social law by a war which destroys in its process and result all that constitutes society
Sannyasa is the renunciation of life and action and of the threefold modes of Nature. But it has to be approached through one or other of the three qualities. This may take any of the following forms :
· The impulse may be tamasic, a feeling of impotence, fear, aversion, disgust, horror of the world and life. It may also be the rajasic quality tending towards Tamas. This is reflected in an impulse of weariness of the struggle, grief and disappointment. It is refusal to accept any longer this vain turmoil of activity with its pain and its eternal discontent.
· Impulse may also be that of rajas tending towards sattwa. It is reflected in the impulse to arrive at something superior to anything life can give, to conquer a higher strength which seeks to break all bonds and transcend all limits.
· Impulse may also be sattwic. It is reflected in an intellectual perception of the vanity of life and the absence of any real goal or justification for this ever-cycling world-existence. It may also be reflected as a spiritual perception of the Timeless, the Infinite, the Silent, the nameless and formless Peace beyond.
The recoil of Arjuna is the tamasic recoil from action of the Sattwa-rajasic man. The Teacher may confirm it in its direction, using it as a dark entry to the purity and peace of the ascetic attitudes of the sattwic tendency of renunciation. Or he may purify it at once and raise it towards the rare altitudes of the sattwic tendency of renunciation. In fact, he does neither ! He discourages the tamasic recoil and the tendency to renunciation and encourages the continuance of action and even of the same fierce and terrible action. But significantly, he also points the disciple towards another and inner renunciation which is the real issue from his crisis. It is the way towards the soul’s superiority to the world-Nature while at the same time retaining its calm and self-possessed action in the world. Not a physical asceticism, but an inner detachment is the teaching of the Gita.
............... based on Chapter 6, Essays on the Gita by Sri Aurobindo
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