Chapter - IV

Nation in Spiritual Quest:

Aurobindo and the Gita.
Introduction: Biographical outline and the Hermeneutics on the
Gita.
Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950),1 was one of the first systematic expounders in

India of the principles of revolutionary nationalism. His nationalist activities have been
regarded under different descriptions-militant, terrorist, extremist, revolutionary and

spiritual. In his early phases of life, till 1902, when he took an oath with the revolutionary
groups in Bengal and Western India, Aurobindo was more concerned with militant

nationalist activities, spreading the cult of the Eternal and Timeless Mother India’. Later

on when he came into contact with the Indian National Congress in 1902 and became

an active participant in its nationalist programmes, Aurobindo increasingly felt that an

armed revolution, not merely militancy and terrorism, was a legitimate weapon to be

used in a country’s fight for independence and for that purpose he maintained his

contacts with revolutionary groups almost to the end of his stay in Bengal, till 1910. It

was in this period that Aurobindo developed more systematically the concept of ‘Mother

Land’, an attempt to bring divine life upon earth, and he wished to use the Indian

National Congress to realise it, and transform the Congress from its belief in peaceful

methods to an instrument of revolutionary action. However, during 1907, after a full

survey of Indian situation as a leader of the Congress, Aurobindo was more convinced
than earlier that in the circumstances, an open agitation, non-co-operation, passive

resistance and broad-based programmes on the basis of securing complete national

freedom, was necessary and he incessantly worked along this line which was proved by

the publication of a series of articles in Bande Mataram’ on ‘Passive Resistance’. It was

in this phase of life, i.e. 1909-1910, Aurobindo realised that political career and

nationalist activities were only parts of the spiritual realisation, especially, the karma

1 Aurobindo Ghosh was a philosopher, mystique, one of the greatest spiritual adventurers of

modem times, and a widely acclaimed mind on Indian philosophy. He wrote extensive
commentaries on Indian scriptures. Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry has published most of the
original writings of Sri Aurobindo. On the life of Sri Aurobindo, See A.B. Purani, The Life of Sri
Aurobindo, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1978, Sri Aurobindo: Some Aspects of his Vision,
Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1977; Haridas Chaudhuri, Sri Aurobindo: the Prophet of life
Divine, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1973; Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo, A Brief Biography,
Delhi: OUP 1989; Sisirkumar Mitra, Sri Aurobindo, New Delhi: 36c, Cannaught place, 1972; John
Price, An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1982.

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yogic dimension of it. Therefore, while he outwardly made himself intensely busy with
nationalist-political activities, he increasingly turned inward to make himself an

instrument (dharma sadhana) of the divine’. In short, Aurobindo, by this time, felt that

the concept of ‘Mother Land’ was not an end in itself, but only a means for the spiritual

sadhana and a way to the development of divine consciousness.

In 1910, Aurobindo left Calcutta to Chandemagore where he concealed himself
for a month and a half, and left Chandemagore and Calcutta permanently to French

occupied Pondicherry, where he lived for forty long years, i.e. till his last days of life.
From 1910 to 1914, Aurobindo kept himself aloof from mainstream politics but made his

appearance in 1914 with the publication of a monthly Journal ‘Arya’ which he continued

to publish till 1921. It was in this Journal ‘Arya’, Aurobindo first published his Essays on

Gita in two series, from August 1916 to July 1918, and from August 1918 to July 1920,
forty-eight essays in forty-eight months. Later on, they were revised and published in a

book form, and in 1950, The Sri Aurobindo Library, New York, published both these
series in a one-volume edition.2

These Essays on the Gita are perhaps a systematic expression of the central

themes of Aurobindo’s philosophy. Like many nationalist writers of his time, Aurobindo

too received an immense support from the text for the formulation of his several

concepts and notions. For the concepts of motherland and nationalism, for instance,

Aurobindo was deeply impressed by the famous couplets of the text regarding the
descent of God on earth to awaken the spiritual consciousness, and the necessity of

conquering everything that comes in the way of the ever-mounting spiral of spiritual
evolution.3 He felt that nationalism was not a mere political programme, but a religion,

2
The first series of Essays on the Gita that appeared in the Arya were published in a book form in

1922, 1926, 1937, 1944 and 1949 and the Second series in 1928, 1942,1945 and 1949. The Sri
Aurobindo Library, New York, published both these series in a one-volume edition in 1950. The
present study is based on Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library,
Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970.
3 7th and 8th slokas of the 4th chapter.

yadayada hi dharmasya
glanir bhavati bharata
abhyutthanam adharmasya
tada tmanam srijamy aham

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an avatar that had come from God. Hence, it could neither be crushed nor be slain but it

was immortal in character. The British rule in India was thoroughly sceptical, atheistic,

materialistic and utilitarian having had no moorings of spiritualism at all. Therefore, the

first course necessary to be followed was not slavish imitation of the ways of the West

by Indians but to free India from the colonial-materialistic yoke of the British and set her

back on the lost Aryan way of life which, would be, he thought, the beginning of spiritual

evolution. The British in India had introduced utilitarian and materialistic ways of life by
abolishing Aryan spiritual way of life. The restoration and resurgence of Aryan way of

life by replacing the terrestrial existence of the English was, for Aurobindo, nationalism,

national identity and motherland. At any rate such a spiritual realisation was the first
necessity, but it could not be completed nor even be started unless and until the British

were made to quit India along with their culture. In other words, the overthrow of the

British from India would lead to the retrieval of the spiritual quest in India. Nationalism is,

therefore, not a socio-economic emancipation but a spiritual one. This spiritual retrieval
that India will initiate shall infuse, Aurobindo thought, the rest of the world.
The concepts of Swaraj and Swadeshi too did not consist in the establishment of

any democratic or other forms of government but establishing Swaraj within oneself, i.e.

understanding one’s true character. And, Swadharma lies in following one’s own

dharma; one’s own inner law of being, rather than the others. Further, the work of
national emancipation, for instance, by following various techniques such as boycott,
Swadeshi, national education etc., was a holy and great sacrifice and every other
activity, great or small, related to it, were only major and minor parts of the Yajna.
Similarly, for his notion of violence, Aurobindo was inspired by the text of the Gita. For

paritranaya sadhunam
vinasaya ca duskrtam
dharmasamstapanartaya
sambhavami yuge yuge.

i.e. - O Bharata! Whenever righteousness declines and Unrighteousness becomes powerful, then
I Myself come to birth. I take birth in different Yugas for protecting the Righteous and destroying
the Unrighteous, and for establishing Righteousness.

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him, the Gita was not against violence. Violence is justified if it is to be used for the

righteous cause, or it is the law of nature, or more correctly, every violence is righteous

because it is an inalienable part of the constitution of the universe.

Thus, Aurobindo’s patriotism and politics were deeply rooted in spirituality. They

did not mean anything unless they were connected and made part of the individual’s

sadhana for the realisation of the Supreme. His language of politics, nationalism,
national identity and independence was suffused with spirituality. From the ordinary

viewpoint, these were not the qualifications, which fitted a man for politics. But India’s

nationalist politics was envisaged very differently by its protagonists as well as its

followers.
Aurobindo saw the text of the Gita as a very peculiar form of teaching. Like Tilak,

Vivekananda and Gandhi, Aurobindo too felt that the Gita was not a theoretical or

academic discourse; mere intellectual things have no use unless they were capable of
transforming life, and of leading to effective action. But unlike the former, Aurobindo did

not see the text as an ‘ordinary narrative’ with ‘ordinary purport’ to meet the demands of
an ‘ordinary person’, but a spiritual text meant for those who had raised themselves

from the ‘ordinary level’ to the ‘ethical state’, and had at least acquired preliminary

knowledge regarding body, manifest cosmos and the supreme cosmic truth.
Aurobindo divided the text into three parts in his Essays on the Gita. On the first

six chapters of the text, he wrote twenty-four essays, and insisted that these six
chapters deal with the notion of karma and its relation with jnana. On the second six

chapters, i.e., from six to twelve, he wrote twelve essays and stated that these six
chapters deal with the theory of bhakti and its relation with karma and jnana. On the

remaining six chapters of the text i.e., from twelve to eighteen, he devoted twelve
essays and mentioned that the Gita in these chapters outlined the metaphysical

statements regarding the cosmos, the manifest world and the supracosmic truth. The
concepts of brahmic consciousness, equality, the qualities of bhakta, Vibhuti etc. are

dealt across these three divisions. Thus, he treats the first six chapters of the text as a
single block of teaching with emphasis on karma and jnana; the remaining twelve are

two closely connected blocks, from seven to twelve and twelve to eighteen which
develop the rest of the doctrines. It, in turn, implies that anyone of these blocks was
susceptible for independent treatment, as they sometimes tended to be.

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 Aurobindo thought that the central teaching of the text of the Gita was based on

two fundamental principles. First, the idea that destiny had its own designs. Whether
man wills it or not, the universe was set in motion and was moving as if it were
‘yantraroodha’, hitched on to a machine. No man with his ethical or other attributes
could change the design of the universe. Second, the creatures in the cosmos were

mere puppets in the hands of the supracosmic Purushottama- the maker, sustainer and

the Lord- and were themselves but a nimittamatra, a mere instrument in the evolution of

the universe. However, it did not mean that human reason had nothing to do with the
design of the universe; its primary and only duty was admitting, conceding and

appreciating this ’nimittamatra' truth and submitting itself to God.

For Aurobindo, since the Gita developed its central teaching on the basis of

these two principles, or more precisely, the Gita built its arguments on this foundation,

the karmayogic-ethicai interpretations of it, which largely admitted the contribution of

man in shaping the nature of the universe, cannot be correct. Hence, the central
teaching of the text does not lie in the appreciation of man’s reason-based social karma

as was conceived by the ethical interpreters nor does it lie in the relinquishment of
worldly life and opting to a life of seclusion. It consists in verse (18.66)-

sarva dharman parityajya

mam ekam saranam vraja,
aham tva sarvapapebhyo
moksayisyami ma sucah

-Give up all kinds of religions (dharma), that is, means of attaining the
Paramesvara, and surrender yourself to Me alone. I shall redeem you from all sins, do
not afraid- rather than in the ordinary karmayogic interpretation of verse (2.47.)-

karmanyevadhikaraste
ma phalesu kadacana,
ma karmaphalahetur bhurma
te sangosvakarmani

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 - Your authority extends only to the performance of Action; the fruit is never

within your authority, do not be one who performs action with the motive that a particular
fruit should be obtained, nor do you also insist on not-performing Action.4

But this surrendering everything by man is to be done not from the state of social

station. He has first to rise himself up above from the ordinary state to the ethical state,
a sattvic, or the state of brahmic consciousness and surrender everything. It is this state
to which the Gita intends to apply its teaching, or more correctly, from where the

teaching of the text begins.

It should be noted here in this introduction that in Aurobindo’s reading of the Gita

there was little focus on the constitutional order and organisation of power in the nation.

Nationalism was for him, a civilisational rejuvenation and spiritual retrieval. National re­
construction was, he thought, spiritual awakening. Although, Aurobinod’s thought does

not lend itself to the establishment of the constitutional order and organisation of power,

the Gita could be a text par-excellence to undertake a search of the above kind.

Critique of the earlier interpretations: Aurobindo’s distinctive

reading of the Gita.

Aurobindo begins his Essays on the Gita5 with the statement that the

overwhelming part of religious scriptures in the world, including the Gita, had become

subject to diverse kinds of readings. Each reading claimed distinct ways and methods to
understand the ‘truth of the text’, and the ‘truth’, which it finally discovered, as the only

possible one. Each reading regarded the ways and methods which others adopted to

4
Aurobindo interprets the same verse not as related to an ordinary person but Sthitaprajna, moral
man and for spiritual meaning. For Tilak, this verse implies that, man, while performing his duty,
would surrender himself to the perceptible God; Aurobindo thought that it never indicates the
perceptible God (Saguna Brahman), but surrender to the imperceptible Brahman (Nirguna
Brahman). And thus, they understand this sloka according to their respective interpretations-
karmayogic and spiritual. In the sloka “your authority extends only to the performance of action,”
'performance of action’ implies for Tilak, all actions in one’s state, for Aurobindo. it implies the
action of surrendering oneself to imperceptible Brahman and hence, it is not ordinary action.
5 Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, op.cit.,

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understand truth, as either ‘impostures’ or ‘at best imperfectly inspired’6 But because

there were diverse readings and interpretations of a scriptural text, one was not

expected to draw from it a conclusion that the truth’ of a scripture was also diverse and

plural in character in tune with such readings. The truth of every sacred scripture was

identical and never equivocal; it was always universal, unified, single, unchanging and

transcendental, which could only be realised through the experience of one’s life. The

plurality lies in the interpretation of the truth and not in truth itself. Therefore, Aurobindo

argues, every scripture consisted of two parts - one was the ‘original and the real truth’
of the scripture which lies in its ‘original text’, which was always permanent, universal

and in pure and original form. The second was the explanation and interpretation of the

original truth’ by various readers. Since the interpretations were moulded by the

intellectual vision of the interpreter and greatly influenced by the traditions of society,
country and time and the conditions of living, the ‘truth of a text which they discovered’

should be regarded as either imperfect, or largely imaginary, ceasing to have the same
force as the ‘original’.

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 can not 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 imperishable 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 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

6 'Our Demand and Need from the Gita’ Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.1.

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 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.7

The commentaries did not explain the truth of the text in its ‘original and real

form’, and they could not, independent of the ideas of time, tradition, country and their

own intellectual mould. Therefore, there were such immense differences between one
commentary and another. Further, there was no hope of rescuing the original meaning

either even though we might employ the best techniques and theories for the purpose.
Every age therefore attempts to discover the relevant truths in the Gita. However, taking

these limitations into account, there are interpretations, which take every relevant fact

into account and those, which do not.

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 inevitable 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,...........And that is after all what Scriptures were written to give; the rest is academical
disputation or theological dogma.8

But still Aurobindo reflected the issue at length: how and why did, the Gita

become susceptible for diverse kinds of readings? He considers two obvious reasons to
this question. First, because there were certain ideas and institutions in the text, which

were, in fact, not fleeting and local, but universal and permanent in character; but could

7 'Our Demand and Need from the Gita,' Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.2-3.
o
'Our Demand and Need from the Gita’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.3.

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be taken for and understood in temporal and local meanings.9 This temporal

characterisation might, on the surface, appear as right descriptions; the fact was that
these were neither derived from the ‘universal truth’ of the text nor in accordance with its

true spirit, but produced under different life conditions, circumstances, and the traditions

of the society. Aurobindo mentions, for instance, the notions of ‘sacrifice’ and the four­

fold Sastric social order1. The Gita used these ideas and institutions in the spirit of
universality and within the limit of its central teaching but the readers took them for

sectional meanings. In fact, they took them in their literal sense without locating them

within the frame of general universal philosophy of the text, and hence, they failed to

extract the ‘real sense’ in which they were being used. “And if they were pressed too

much in their literal sense”, Aurobindo argues, “so much their meanings narrow down,
repudiate them of their universal and spiritual profundity,”10

And this limited and local way of reading into the various ideas and institutions of

the text, led directly to the second great reason for the diverse readings; considering
and regarding by each reading the truth which it invented in the text as divisive and

exclusive; the truth which other readings had missed or only imperfectly grasped so that
others deal with subsidiary and inferior aspects of the truth to which they have arrived.
In short, each interpretation took a particular notion, idea and institution of the Gita in its

exclusive sense and made it as its central philosophy; it considered other readings

either as errors or as subsidiary and hence, altogether unimportant. The Gita,

Aurobindo says, for instance, deals with Samkhya and Yoga,u it also deals with pure

monism, qualified monism, mayavada, Vaisnava theism and other Vedico-Upanisadic

systems such as karma, jnana and bhakti, but it did not do so in any spirit other than

synthesising all these systems and philosophies into its universal truth.

Whatever the system may be, it is not, as the commentators strive to make it, framed or intended
to support any exclusive school of philosophical thought or to put forward predominantly the
claims of any one form of Yoga. The language of the Gita, the structure of thought, the

9 For Aurobindo, the Gita itself admits that these ideas and institutions are, in their literal sense,

local and limited. But it does use in the wider and larger meanings in tune with its universal
philosophy, rather than in the local or limited connotation, op.cit, pp.3-4.
10 ‘Our Demand and Need from the Gita', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.4-5.

11 'Samkhya and Yoga', and ‘Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.62-86.

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 combination and balancing of ideas belong neither to the temper of a sectarian teacher nor to the
spirit of a rigorous analytical dialectics cutting off one angle of the truth to exclude all the others;
but rather there is a wide, undulating, encircling movement of ideas which is the manifestation of

a vast synthetic mind and a rich synthetic experience. This is one of those great syntheses in
which Indian spirituality has been, as rich............It does not cleave as under, but reconciles and
12
unifies.

Neither ‘local’ nor sectarian’ and ‘exclusivist’ readings of the text, Aurobindo

says, is correct. Both are wrong ways of handling the text of the Gita. For Aurobindo,

the real text of the Gita consisted in the universal synthesis of umpteen themes and

motifs; the eulogisation of a particular notion, idea or institution over the other is a mere

literary device.

Like the earlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later synthesis at once spiritual and
intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid determination as would injure its universal
comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the apposite to that of the polemist commentators who
found this Scripture established as one of the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to
turn it into a weapon of offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a
weapon of dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual
truth..................... It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our
• • 13
vision.

But this was how the text of the Gita had been read from the ancient time. The
first such ‘sectarian’ and ‘partial reading’ was by the Samkhya system of renunciation.

Aurobindo did not see this interpretation impartial. It obtrusively brought to the fore
those verses related to renunciation without understanding the peculiar ways in which

they were used in the text, and without relating them to the central assertion of the
text.14 The second was the bhakti reading of dualism.15 And the last, perhaps the most

important, was the ethico-Zcarmayogic reading by the modern commentators.

12 'Our Demand and Need from the Gita', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp 5-6.

13 <
‘Our Demand and Need from the Gita' op.cit., p,6. Aurobindo mentions several attempts in India

to synthesise spiritual knowledge such as the Vedic synthesis, Upanisadic synthesis, Tantric
synthesis and Gita synthesis. 'Among them the Gita takes a most important place’ op.cit., pp.7-8.
14 The Core of the Teaching', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.26-7.

15 The Core of the Teaching’ Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p. 27.

175
 But at the present day, since in fact the modem mind began to recognise and deal at all with the
Gita, the tendency is to subordinate its elements of knowledge and devotion, to take advantage of

its continual insistence on action and to find in it a scripture of the Karma Yoga, a Light leading us
on the path of action, a Gospel of Works. Undoubtedly, the Gita is a Gospel of Works, but of
works which culminate in knowledge................motived by devotion, that is, a conscious surrender
of one’s whole self first into the hands and then into the being of the Supreme, and not at all of
works as they are understood by the modem mind, not at all an action dictated by egoistic and
16
altruistic, by personal, social, humanitarian motives, principles, ideals.

Aurobindo felt that these readings were partial, prejudiced and incomplete

because, it was explicitly clear, that they exclusively emphasised on one philosophical

system over the other, and more importantly, none was able to clasp its complete

element. For Bankim, a modern interpreter, for instance, based on the ethico-social
interpretation of verse-karmanyevadhikaraste ma phalesu kadacana, the central

philosophy of the Gita is simple social action or disinterested performance of one’s duty

in one’s life station. For Aurobindo, this was nothing but a materialistic interpretation of

this treatise and hence, the wrong way to handle this text.

But the modem interpreters, starting from the great writer Bankimchandra Chatterji who first gave
to the Gita this new sense of a Gospel of Duty, have laid an almost exclusive stress on the first
three or four chapters and in those on the idea of equality, on the expression kartavyam karma,
the work that is to be done, which they render by duty, and on the phrase “Thou hast a right to
action, but none to the fruits of action” which is now popularly quoted as the great word,
mahavakya, of the Gita . The rest of the eighteen chapters with their high philosophy are given a
secondary importance, except indeed the great vision in the eleventh. This is natural enough for
the modem mind which is, or has been till yesterday, inclined to be impatient of metaphysical
subtleties and far-off spiritual seekings, eager to get to work and, like Arjuna himself, mainly
concerned for a workable law of works, a dharma. But it is the wrong way to handle this
Scripture.17

16 The Core of the Teaching’ Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.27.

17 The Core of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p .32.

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The Karmayogic and Spiritual readings of the Gita:
Aurobindo follows the same line of reasoning- considering the various readings

as local’ and ‘exelusivist’- to criticise the modem ethico-karmayogic interpretation of the

text. Truly speaking, he argues, the Gita expounded a single universal truth in its

entirety in all its bearings, but it could not do so without dilating on certain philosophical

systems such as Samkhya, Samnyasa, Yoga, etc. The Gita used them within a range

for what was just essential for the synthetic statement of the truth; the commentators
had taken them beyond the limits of the text. Consequently, they took advocacy of this

or that philosophical system as the exclusive truth of the Gita. Such readings were,
therefore, not only incorrect, incomplete and misreading but also partial and prejudiced.

The Gita does not open up any such readings. Quite interestingly, when Tilak and

Gandhi were to criticise Samkara kind of Samkhya reading of the text, they did it by

regarding that reading as ‘pre-determined’, ‘pre-conceived’ and 'prejudiced’. Aurobindo

uses the same words to criticise and reject karmayogic interpretations.18

The central philosophy of the text therefore, did not lie in the socio-ethical
interpretation of ‘karmanyevadhikaraste ma phalesu kadacana’, but in spiritual

understanding along the direction sarvadharman pantyajya mam ekam saranam vraja’.

It is necessary to regard the former sentence only in the spiritual sense as one of the

authentic steps to be eligible to the spiritual pursuit. The Gita did not advocate, as

modern interpreters had emphatically argued, the disinterested performance of duty in

the social or altruistic sense, but in the spiritual sense in order to access brahmic
consciousness. Hence, it was explicit in Aurobindo’s thought, that the interpretations of

the Gita in the ethico-moral sense by Tilak, Vivekananda and Gandhi, were ‘modern
misreading’ of the ancient scripture.

We are told continually by many authoritative voices that the Gita, opposing in this the ordinary
ascetic and quietists tendency of Indian thought and spirituality, proclaims with no uncertain
sound the gospel of human action, the ideal of disinterested performance of social duties, nay,
even, it would seem, the quite modern ideal of social service. To all this I can only reply that very
patently and even on the very surface of it the Gita does nothing of the kind and that this is a
modern misreading.......... That which the Gita teaches is not a human, but a divine action; not the
performance of social duties, but the abandonment of all other standards of duty or conduct for a

18 The Core of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.26.

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 selfless performance of the divine will working through our nature; not social service, but the
action of the Best, the God-possessed, the Master-men done impersonally for the sake of the
world and as a sacrifice to Him who stands behind man and Nature.
19
In other words, the Gita is not a book of practical ethics, but of the spiritual life.

Not only did Aurobindo reject karma yoga as the central teaching of the text, he

would say that they had failed to understand the very concept of karma’ used in the
text. He felt that the Gita did not really privilege karma as the modern commentators

reflected it. This karmayogic interpretation of the Gita would contravene the spiritual

core of the text, because, what it preached was not a life of social action but surrender

to the will of God, and in such a surrendering of one’s will, the Gita sometimes preferred

abandonment of all sorts of social action to the pursuasion of it. This was exactly,

Aurobindo states, what happened to Buddha, Ramakrishna or Vivekananda. The

situations in life and urgent call of the divine not only impelled them to forsake all worldly

duties but prompted them to give up everything held dear by the worldly people.
Therefore, according to Aurobindo, although the Gita preferred action to inaction it did

not rule out the necessity of inaction, or abandonment of all actions as one of the ways
in spiritual life. Hence, he insisted, for the Gita, responding to the imperative call of God

was primary. Whether one does it by pursuing all sorts of action or by abandonment of

action, or whether one’s reply is through samnyasa or through bhakti, are secondary

matters. The call of God and the necessity of surrendering to it cannot be weighed
against any of these considerations.20

Aurobindo claimed that his criticism about the modem interpretations of the text

as ‘pre-conceived’ and ‘prejudiced’ readings, was neither borne out of his own
intellectual preferences nor exterior to their texts, but was justified, displayed and
exhibited in them. The internal design of the Gita, however, did not really warrant any
such exclusive karmayogic reading possible. In fact, Aurobindo considered the
particular situation in which the teaching of the Gita sprang up, the specific questions

and problems which Arjuna raised throughout the text and the ingenious reply which the
Teacher gave, demanded a more than social type of an answer. Because, these

19 ‘The Core of the Teaching', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.28.

20
‘The Core of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.29-30.

178
problems of Arjuna, he thought, could never be solved by directing him, in the ordinary

sense, to perform his social duties dispassionately and disinterestedly. Asking Arjuna to
simply perform his social duties disinterestedly, for Aurobindo, could be a teaching of

social science and not of a scripture like the Gita.

But here there is this further difficulty that the action which Arjuna must do is one from which his
moral sense recoils. It is his duty to fight, you say? But that duty has now become to his mind a
terrible sin. How does it help him or solve his difficulty, to tell him that he must do his duty
disinterestedly, dispassionately?.............. That may be the teaching of a state, of politicians, of
lawyers, of ethical casuists; it can never be the teaching of a great religious and philosophical
Scripture, which sets out to solve the problem of life and action from the very roots. And if that is
what the Gita has to say on a most poignant moral and spiritual problem, we must put it out of the
list of the world’s Scriptures and thrust it, if anywhere, then into our library of political science and
ethical casuistry 21

In its teaching, the Gita, thus, used several notions, ideas and institutions, but it

did it only with the spiritual eye and not in any other manner. It talked about, for

instance, equality and indifference to sin and virtue, good and evil, not as a social
reference but as integral to the brahmic consciousness. Its reference was for the

spiritual man who outgrows social relations and ethical ties, and who was advanced well
enough on the way to fulfil the supreme rule.22

Similarly, the concept of ‘duty’. For Aurobindo, the notion of duty could be
interpreted in two ways - pragmatic or social and spiritual duty. The pragmatic duty

implies one’s relation to others- father’s duty, for instance, to his children, lawyer’s duty
to his client or soldier’s duty to fight for the cause of the country. Here the duty is

regulated and governed by the external social laws, and the ethicality of the action is
determined within the social circumference. The spiritual duty, on the other hand, does

not rest upon social conception. It does not imply social relations; it only implies an
awakened inner perception of man. Here the duty is governed by the inner law and not

the external social law, and, the external social laws do not, in any way, apply to and

‘The Core of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.30.

22
'The Core of the Teaching', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.30-1.

179
affect the spiritual being 23 The Gita used the concept of duty not in the pragmatic

social but larger and higher spiritual sense. In fact, Aurobindo felt, it certainly rejected

the social sense of non-possessive duty for the spiritual non-possession, and preferred

the latter to the earlier in case there arose a conflict between the two planes. In short it

did not use the term duty in the sense of altruistic utilitarian service but inner awakened

service to the divine.

There are in the world, in fact, two different laws of conduct each valid on its own plane, the rule
principally dependent on external status and the rule independent of status and entirely
dependent on the thought and conscience. The Gita does not teach us to subordinate the higher
plane to the lower, it does not ask the awakened moral consciousness to slay itself on the altar of
duty as a sacrifice and victim to the law of the social status. It calls us higher and not lower; from
the conflict of the two planes it bids us ascend to a supreme poise above the mainly practical,
above the purely ethical, to the Brahmic consciousness. It replaces the conception of social duty
by a divine obligation..................... the Brahmic consciousness, the soul’s freedom from works and
the determination of works in the nature by the Lord within and above us,-is the kernel of the
Gita’s teaching with regard to action.24

For Aurobindo, these karmayogic interpretations were greatly influenced by the

19th century European utilitarian philosophy. This utilitarian philosophy represented two

fundamental features. First, the life in modern Europe was steered by practical and

pragmatic concerns. The spiritual concern had vanished more or less, if not reduced to
the secondary matters. Or more correctly, the social life of modem Europe had
subjugated its religion and that was the major reason why spirituality had disappeared

from Europe and practicality reigned supreme in every sphere of life.

The modern mind is just now the European mind, such as it has become after having abandoned
not only the philosophic idealism of the highest Graeco-Roman culture from which it started, but
the Christian devotionalism of the Middle Ages; these it has replaced by or transmuted into a
practical idealism and social, patriotic and philanthropic devotion. It has got rid of God or kept Him
only for Sunday use and erected in His place man as its deity and society as its visible idol. At its
best it is practical, ethical, social, pragmatic, altruistic and humanitarian.25

23
‘The Core of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.31.
24
'The Coe of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.31-2.
25
‘The Core of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.28.

180
 Second, and related to the first, Europeans had overemphasised three elements-

materiaiism, power and progress, and regarded these three elements not only as the

basis for social organisation but also in their search for the highest truth. In short, their

emphasis on these elements while upholding practicality has dwindled concern on

spirituality.

But the point here is that the modem mind has exiled from its practical motive-power the two
essential things, God or the Eternal and spirituality or the God-state, which are the master
conceptions of the Gita. It lives in humanity only, and the Gita would have us live in God,
..................... and the Gita would have us live in the spirit,............................ Or if these higher things
are now beginning to be vaguely envisaged, it is only to make them subservient to man and
26
society.

Dominated by these two things in life, they could not search for anything other
than workable principles of social life in the spiritual text. In another essay, Aurobindo

more clearly argued that those who did not believe in God and the revelation of
Christianity, and hence, thoroughly sceptical and atheist in life, interpreted and

transmuted spiritual notions into social meanings.

While in modem Europe, Christian only in name, humanitarianism is the translation into the
ethical and social sphere and the aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity the translation into
the social and political sphere of the spiritual truths of Christianity, the latter especially being
effected by men who aggressively rejected the Christian religion and spiritual discipline and by an
27
age which in its intellectual effort of emancipation tried to get rid of Christianity as a creed.

Now, for Aurobindo, the main concern of the karmayogic interpretation of the Gita

was, like the European utilitarianism, ‘pragmatism.’ They too explored in the text
workable social laws by undermining its metaphysical and spiritual elements. Hence, it
was either exclusively European or substantially Europeanised reading into the spiritual
treatise.

26
‘The Core of the Teaching', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.29.
27
'The Divine Birth and Divine Works', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.162.

181
 This is a modern misreading, a reading of the modern mind into an ancient book, of the present-

day European or Europeanised intellect into thoroughly antique, a thoroughly oriental and Indian
28
teaching.

It may be noted here that, Aurobindo rejected the social interpretations of the
Gita and the socio-economic institutions outlined by them. He expressed a substantive
belief that a fundamental critique of the moral foundations of the West which have led to

the present politico-economic arrangements are required if a new order has to be

established. This new order should be founded on spiritualism and the socio-political

institutions in it should be the channel for the spiritual pursuit. A profound neglect of
social life and belief in cosmic phenomenon as controlling and guiding the human quest

are explicit in Aurobindo.

The Concept of Avatar in the Gita:

Aurobindo’s project on the Gita did not place any importance on the sociological
conception of dharma and the ethical notion of incarnation. This was, in fact,

Aurobindo’s clear departure from the socio-ethical interpretations advanced by the

karmayoglc readers. The karmayog\c interpreters such as Tilak, Vivekananda, and
Gandhi, for instance, took the concept of dharma in the text in precise sociological
terms and lokasamgraha (holding together), as a conception of general welfare and the

ethical basis of social existence. They also took an avatar in the sense of the ethical
person, who plays, by his conspicuous ethical character, a predominant role in society.

Not only did Aurobindo not agree to the social interpretation of dharma and

lokasamgraha, he also did not admit the dominant role given to the social individual in
these textual readings. He would, on the other hand say, in most clear terms, that
spiritual men should dominate the future India and nationalist regeneration should lie in
the establishment of ‘the kingdom of God’29 This was how Aurobindo interpreted to

mean the concepts of avatar and the institution of dharma in the text. He devoted three
essays on these subjects in his Gita essays, and begins these essays by accepting the
Gita’s admission of the Vedantic argument of the ‘unity of existence’.

28
‘The Core of the Teaching’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.28.
29
‘The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.150.

182
 Aurobindo set up his argument by positing that the supreme Brahman is the

fundamental and universal principle from which all animate and inanimate elements on

the earth, or the whole cosmos come into existence. The divine produces these

elements by the use of two things, divine and prakriti, keeping Himself hidden in the
designs of prakriti. Since the divine, although in veil, dwells in every existence, every
being is partial being of the Lord’.30 There is nothing beyond or above the element of

divinity. Prakriti, with three modes of qualities, (sattva, rajas and tamas) is an element of

ignorance concealing the spirit (the spark of the divine) of existence and giving rise to
gradation in the cosmic universe. Thus, in the first birth of the divine, the inherent

consciousness of the divine dwelling in the being is shrouded partly or fully by ignorance

and in that type the manifest being thinks that it is the manifest body, not the soul,
prakriti, not the purusa (Brahman), is infinite. Hence, ignorance or prakriti dominates
over the truth of the soul and the inherent consciousness of being is overridden by this

ignorance. In the second type of divine birth, the soul develops out of ‘unawareness’, or
ignorance of prakriti and opens out to the ‘inherent consciousness’ or self-knowledge,
thinking that prakriti is illusion and only purusa is infinite being. In this birth, the

awakened soul adopts in its external activities ethico-moral principles (brahmic

consciousness) and internally continues to grow and evolve into spirituality. Between

these two types of divine births, the former is the ordinary social birth; a birth of divine

into ignorance produced by yogamaya, but it is the same yogamaya that manifests self-
knowledge leading to divine birth. But neither of the two, strictly speaking, is an

incarnation of the divine, although, the latter type is grown into the state of descent of
God (brahmic consciousness) but not God himself. In the third type of divine birth, God
descends into human form 31 or the Godhead manifests itself in the human form and

nature.

30
‘The Process of Avatarhood' Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.153.
31
To quote him: “Therefore in the normal birth that which is loosed forth,-created, as we say,- is the

multitude of creatures or becoming, bhutagramam; in the divine birth that which is loosed forth,
self-created, is the self-conscious, self-existent being, atmanam, for the Vedantic distinction
between atma and bhutani is that which is made in European philosophy between the being and
its becoming.” The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.147.

183
 All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be
except as either 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 and there is a gradation between the supreme being
(parabhava) of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in
the finite. The conscious embodied soul (dehi) is the spark of the divine fire and that soul in man
opens out to Self-knowledge as it develops out of ignorance of Self into Self-being. The Divine
also, pouring itself into the forms of the Cosmic existence, is revealed ordinarily in an
efflorescence of its powers, in energies and magnitudes of its knowledge, love, joy, developed
force of being (Vibhuti) in degrees and faces of its divinity. But when the divine consciousness
and power, taking upon itself the human form and the human mode of action, possesses it not
only by powers and magnitudes, by degrees and outward faces of itself but out of its eternal Self-
knowledge, when the Unborn knows itself and acts in the frame of the mental being and the
appearance of birth, that is the height of the conditioned manifestation; it is the full and conscious
32
descent of the Godhead, it is the Avatar.

In another Essay, Aurobindo states this deep mystical and philosophical theory in
direct and clear terms.

In the ordinary human birth the Nature-aspect of the universal Divine assuming humanity prevails;
in the incarnation the God-aspect of the same phenomenon takes its place. In the one he allows
the human nature to take possession of his partial being and to dominate it; in the other he takes
possession of his partial type of being and its nature and divinely dominates it. Not by evolution or
ascent like the ordinary man, the Gita seems to tell us, not by growing into the divine birth, but by
a direct descent into the stuff of humanity and taking up of its moulds 33

Thus, in the first birth, God takes birth into ignorance or prakriti. The second birth
is an ascent, the re-birth of the bom soul into Godhead, “the birth of man into the

Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah’\ it
is the being born anew in a second birth of the Soul." 34 To assist the second birth of

ascent by descent, God takes birth into humanity and manifests himself in the human
form and nature. “But it is to assist that ascent or evolution the descent is made or

32
‘The Divine Teacher*, Essaysonthe Gita, op.cit., pp.10-11.
33
'The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.150.
34 The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.140.

184
accepted; that the Gita makes very clear”.35 Generally speaking, all the three are the

avatars of the divine; but for the Gita, the first birth and the new birth in the second birth

cannot be regarded as eternal avatar because it is the most general condition of the

universal construct, and according to Aurobindo, only descent in the third type of birth

which, avatarhood of the Gita is intended to serve.

Once the intimacy and oneness between the divinity and cosmic phenomenon is
thus firmly established and the latter as a part of the Godhead, mamaivamsah 36 and

the occurrence of the divine incarnation in the very structure of the cosmic existence

not as an isolated and miraculous phenomenon, but in its proper place in the whole
scheme of the world manifestation’ is posited 37 Aurobindo felt that the theory of divine

avatar would no longer remain a dogma’, a popular superstition, or ‘an imaginative

theory’, or ‘mystic deification of historical or legendary supermen’,38 but deeply founded

and embedded in the Vedantic view of existence, of divinity and the universe. In fact, it

was from this standpoint of Vedantic unity in the Gita that Aurobindo criticises several

conceptions on the avatarhood both in the West and in the East. And these criticisms

35 ‘The Process of Avatarhood', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 140,150 etc.

36
To quote Aurobindo: “The eternal and universal self of every human being is God; even his

personal self is a part of the Godhead, mamaivamsah,-not a fraction or fragment, surely, since we
cannot think of God as broken up into little pieces, but a partial consciousness of the one
consciousness, a partial power of the one power...................... in Nature a limited and finite being
of the one infinite and illimitable Being”. The Process of Avatarhood’ Essays on the Gita, op.cit.,
p.149. The Gita by arguing in this way, the oneness between the divinity and cosmic
phenomenon, provided a rational basis and deep theoretical and philosophical foundation to the
system of mukti or realisation and the Advaitic statement of ‘see oneself in ail and all in oneself. It
also questioned the Dvaitic conception of separateness between the divinity and cosmic
elements. Hence, the mukti or realisation or conceiving ‘oneself in all and all in oneself are no
longer dogmas nor dry intellectual conceptions but founded in the deep metaphysical and
religious truth. Aurobindo is, now theoretically justified in his assertion that for the Gita all cosmic
elements are mere ‘instruments in the hands of God', hence its objective is sarvadharman
parityajya mam ekam saranam vcaja'- a concept of realisation, op.cit., pp. 140-167.
37
‘The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.141.
38
'The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’ Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.140.

185
were largely based on their falling short to establish such intimacy between divinity and
humanity39

For the rationalists, Aurobindo argues, the oneness between divinity and

humanity was based on irrationality, and the material world was not an instrument in the

hands of God but being governed and swayed by a set of mechanical laws. God was

too mysterious to be put as a part in the human body because human body was only a
finite organ, which could not have an infinite element. For dualists God’s nature was
different and separate from human nature.40 Similarly, Christianity too has not come to

grapple with this principle of divine root in humanity and presented the theory of avatar

as a mere dogma without having proper base.

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
41
and general consciousness and attitude towards life.

Aurobindo feels that the text of the Gita alone provided lucid and clear guidelines
in this regard42 and proved the possibility of divine incarnation in the very root of

Vedantic unity between God and human being- “all here is God, the disguised
Narayana”, and God exists in every manifest and unmanifest elements-brahman
ekamevadvitiyam 43 Hence, the Gita had not created and accepted the system of avatar

as mere dogma without having any philosophical and religious base but developed and
expanded it as a natural, perfectly rational and logical conception of this unity.44 In fact,

39 ‘The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.141-42.

40
‘The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.142.
41 ‘The Divine Teacher', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.10.

42 ‘The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.143.

43 When Krishna says in the Gita “although the divine is unborn, imperishable in his self-existence,

the Lord of all beings, yet he assumes birth by a supreme resort to the action of his Nature and by
force of his Self-maya; that he whom the deluded despise because lodged in a human body, is
verily in his supreme being the Lord of all..................... ", The Possibility and Purpose of
Avatarhood' Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.142.
44 ‘The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.143.

186
Aurobindo read this philosophical theory of avatar in the text as providing a strong

spiritual basis for its central teaching, and for the of transmutatjon of human limitations.
Having argued the Gita’s conception of three kinds of birth, Aurobindo quite

explicitly states that the Gita did not regard the second type of birth i.e., birth from

ignorance as an avatar. It is here that Aurobindo’s reading of the Gita's system of avatar

deviates fundamentally from its reading by the ethico-karmayogic interpreters. For the

ethical conceptions such as that of Tilak, for instance, when an individual develops out

of ignorance in the second birth and opens out into self-knowledge and thus, develops
‘divine qualities’-the Gita regards him as an avatar of God. Therefore, avatar was not a

separate phenomenon but was integral to the spiritual progress and state of
Sthitaprajna. In short, becoming Sthitaprajna through ascent and adopting divine

qualities (ethical) both in one’s internal nature and external activity was the highest

realisation, the final goal of the endeavour. For Aurobindo, this represents only a partial
truth and the Gita’s system of avatar was quite different from such ethical

understanding. In this context Aurobindo advances two arguments, and both of them

fundamentally refute the ethical reading of it.

First, avatar is a person who manifests extraordinary divine qualities, moral and

intellectual, surpassing human powers. Both Aurobindo and ethical readers admit that

the acquisition of unusual divine qualities is an essential part of the avatar. While
Aurobindo calls this acquisition of divine qualities as becoming Vibhuti and brahmic
consciousness, ethical readers call such a seeker as Sthitaprajana. Since an avatar

should have an external and manifest body and should have divine qualities manifest in
his external activities both acknowledged that avatar was at the same time the Vibhuti.**

But for ethical readers, the avatar was not merely a Sthitaprajna but every

Sthitaprajna was also an avatar because both were not separate entities. Man’s ascent

into self-knowledge was affirmed by the descent of the divine. Avatar was the receptive
quality of the human being. This was, for Aurobindo, only a partial truth and the Gita did

not support it. He thought, the soul’s growth into self-knowledge and becoming
Sthitaprajna or Vibhuti purusa was, though an essential part of the spiritual endeavour,

it was not an avatar according to the Gita, because acquiring divine qualities was still a

45 ,
The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p. 151.

187
part of man’s ascent into the divine process and not a descent of God. Avatar was a

separate entity, apart from Vibhuti or Sthitaprajna; it was descent of God from above.

But still the Vibhuti is not the avatar; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well
as Krishna, even if in a less degree of the power of Avatarhood. The divine quality is not enough;
there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing the human nature by his
divine presence. The heightening of the power of the qualities is part of the becoming,
bhutagrama, an ascent in the ordinary manifestation; in the Avatar there is the special
manifestation, the divine birth from above, the eternal and universal Godhead descended into a
form of individual humanity, atmanam srjami, and conscious not only behind the veil but in the
4c
outward nature.

Second, when man grows into self-knowledge through the ascending process

and in the height merges himself and ceases to be his separate self-identity, he calls

46 'The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.152. Aurobindo also underscores the

distinction that the Gita points out between ‘ Vibhutf and ‘Avatar* on its fundamental metaphysical
and psychological statement. The argument was that, the qualities and energies at work in the
manifest world, operating variously with helpless differentiatives in men, plant, animal, inanimate
object, always representing the will of the divine. Each and every action in the manifest world,
whether evil or good, perfect or imperfect, himsa or ahimsa was an attempt at increasing its
potency of affirmation under the trammel of ego and passion of the complex of the three gunas-

sattva, rajas and tamas and each action results in the higher spiritual quality. When man dwelling
in the higher spiritual nature comes out from the mist of apparent ego and mortal weft-growing
towards God, synchronised with God manifesting in the human soul-descent of God, thus
ascending process supported by descending-the Gita completes its theory of ‘Vibhutf, Avatar*,
and ‘Liberation*.

Man’s attempt at acquiring original Godhead through his representative God (swabhava
or jiva or Vibhuti) by surpassing lower nature is the Gita's theory of Vibhuti. This transparency
supported by Godhead is called avatar. When both coalesce together was the Gita's theory of
Liberation. This was how Aurobindo read Krishna’s saying, “I am Vishnu among the Adithyas,
Shiva among the Rudras, Indra among the Gods, Prahlada among the Titans.............the Lord of
Wealth among the Yakshas and Rakshas, the Serpent Ananta among the Nagas........Arjuna
among the Pandavas".
Arjuna was not an avatar but Vibhuti. Therefore, the questions he raised in the beginning
of the war never expressed his ignorance but the awakening of the spirit in the second birth, from

188
down the descent of God into himself, and is either possessed by the divine

consciousness or becomes his effective reflection or channel. This is what Sthitaprajna

is, according to Tilak and Gandhi. This argument was based on the idea that in the first

birth God (spirit) descends into matter (ignorance) and in the second birth matter

ascends into spirit and hence, possesses divine consciousness, and man becomes no

less than God himself. Or to put it in another way, the possession of divine

consciousness through spiritual ascendance accompanied by a reflex action of the

divine entering into the human parts of his being, infusing his mind and corporeality.

Hence, his action would no longer be his but of God himself, he is being a mere channel
of him.47 Aurobindo argues that this was only a ‘partial avatarhood’ or ‘a partial truth’.

While referring to the life of Saint Chaitanya, Aurobindo points out that what had

happened to him was still a part of the process of spiritual ascendance and the
acquisition of divine qualities and consciousness was the result of such process. The

Gita’s concept of avatar did not refer to this process of ascendance and the inculcation
of divine qualities, but the ‘descent of the divine from above into humanity’46 by using

yogamaya or prakriti49

It will be noticed from the above that regarding the Gita’s conception of the

process of avatarhood too, Aurobindo’s reading differed from its reading by the ethical
interpreters. In fact, Aurobindo’s interpretation of it was much more mystical and

spiritual than the ethical proponents as the latter attempted to locate the theory within

ethical bounds.

But more importantly, it was in Aurobindo’s reading that the relation between

divinity and humanity, ‘oneness and separateness’, and the transitions into the
relations’, prakriti purusa Purushottama, were clearly spelled out than in the ethical

readings. The ethical readers conceived the highest state of the human as ceasing to

the veil of ignorance to the supreme in the hour of spiritual crisis. Essays on the Gita, op.cit.,
pp.349-362.
47 The Process of Avatarhood,’ Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.153.

48 The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.154.

49
The divine himself by the use of prakriti prepares the human body for the divine birth and he

takes on it from the very beginning of his birth. The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita,
op.cit., pp. 154-55,157.

189
be a separate identity between divine and man. For Aurobindo, even at the highest

state man could not become Purushottama; at the most he could acquire certain divine

qualities; the state beyond prakriti and purusa would always maintain its separate

identity and existence.

Nationalism as the Avatar:

Aurobindo regarded nationalism as the avatar, which comes from God. This is

indicated in his understanding of the objectives of the divine incarnation. He recognises

two objectives 50 for the avatar, and considers both the objectives in a wider national-

spiritual meaning. The two objectives were-

First, the life of an avatar, both in his external activity and internal consciousness,

was to serve as a complete ideal for all men. Externally, he was to show the veiled
gross manifestation (dehi) how he could pursue divine qualities by following certain

external activities, feelings, principles and thought that constituted the ethieo-moral
virtues. This is expressed in the meaning and importance of the human Krishna in the

text and his claim of giving himself as the divine exemplar to others.

The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse
of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by moulding its
principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood,
Buddhahood transfigure itself into the Divine. The law, the Dharma, which the Avatar
establishes, is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as
the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow. That is why each Incarnation holds
before men his own example and declares of himself that he is the way and the gate;.............. that
Krishna in the human body, manusim tanum asritam, and the Supreme Lord and Friend of all

It may be noted here that not only does Aurobindo differ from the ethical understanding of the

Gita’s conception on the process of the avatarhood, but he also differed from them in
understanding its objections. Like the ethical readings, he recognises two objectives for the divine
incarnation, but unlike the former who limit it to the ethical objectives, he goes far beyond and
locate them within the contour of spirituality. Both were right on their own grounds as it is neither
possible to negate the importance of the ethical element and ethical objectives to the avatar in the
text, nor Aurobindo’s position is unjustifiable, because the supreme and ultimate aim of ethical life
was always the attainment of divinity.

190
 creatures are but two revelations of the same divine Purushottama, revealed there in his own
51
being, revealed here in the type of humanity.

Thus, externally, he was to set himself as exemplar for the worldly ethical life and

internally, he was to make man aware of his real divine nature and destiny, and help

him to lift himself from the lower veiled life into the higher unshrouded manifestation-the
resuscitation of dharma.

It is, we might say, to exemplify the possibility of the Divine manifest in the human being, so that
man may see what that is and take courage to grow into it. It is also to leave the influence of that
manifestation vibrating in the earth-nature and the soul of that manifestation presiding over its
upward endeavour. It is to give a spiritual mould of divine manhood into which the seeking soul of
the human being can cast itself. It is to give a Dharma, a religion,-not a mere creed, but a method
of inner and outer living,-a way, a rule and law of self-moulding by which he can grow towards
divinity. It is too, since this growth, this ascent is not mere isolated and individual phenomenon,
but like all in the divine world-activities, a collective business, a work and the work for the race, to
assist the human march, to hold it together in its great crises, to break the forces of the downward
gravitation when they grow too insistent.............. to prepare even, however far off, the kingdom of
God................It is only the spiritual who see that this external Avatarhood is a sign in the symbol
of a human life..................... The divine manifestation of a Christ, Krishna, Buddha in external
humanity has for its inner truth the same manifestation of the eternal Avatar within in our own
inner humanity. That which has been done in the outer human life of earth, may be repeated in
52
the inner life of all human beings.

Since avatar is a complete paragon and a model of excellence for the ordinary

men for their inner and outer activities, Aurobindo argues, it was no longer abstract

surprising phenomenon, but something normal exemplar of a divine humanity.

If the Avatar were to act in an entirely supernormal fashion, this object would not be fulfilled. A
merely supernormal or miraculous Avatar would be a meaningless absurdity;.............The avatar
does not come as a thaumaturgic magician, but as the divine leader of humanity and the
53
exemplar of a divine humanity.

51 The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 140-41

52 ‘The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 150-51.

53 The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.156.

191
 To be a living example to an ordinary life, he would have to under go all the

experiences, encounter all the riddles and hardships that the ordinary human beings

endure; he should not merely be the enjoyer of life but sufferer too, so that it would be

easier for them to accept suffering as a means for redemption and to subdue human

nature for divine nature as the avatar does. Aurobindo viewed, the sufferings, which

Christ and Buddha had to undergo, for instance, in this light. And on this basis he
criticised the rationalist argument that the avatar could not be a sufferer but only an

enjoyer of life, as based on false conception and irrational analysis because, avatar
does not live for himself to enjoy the world and to show supernormal powers, but his life

is to set an example for others and to show how, not merely enjoyment but also
suffering, could be a technique for divine realisation.54

This object of avatar was the one, which was also, more or less, admitted by
Tilak and Gandhi. But for the latter, he was to set an example for the desireless

performance of social action. For Aurobindo, he was to show how one could perform

actions for the sake of God as an instrument of him. But this distinction was not, in any

sense, fundamental because, what Aurobindo asserted was from the point of view of

the divine, and Tilak and Gandhi from the standpoint of the divine seeker; both the
arguments being related to the Gita’s concern for the ethical state. And more

importantly, Aurobindo did not reject the desireless performance of social action as
contrary to spirituality, and explicitly stated that the Sthitaprajna would set an example in
all activities including social action as per the best ideal of the age or yugadharma. In

short, regarding the Gita’s ethical concerns Aurobindo’s arguments go with the ethical
readers.

Second, the avatar’s descent was for the resuscitation of dharma from age to

age, when dharma decays and languishes, and a dharma flourishes, the avatar restores
it to its original strength and vitality.
Aurobindo’s understanding of nationalism as the avatar is implicit here. The
object of avatar was to stand witness to the truth of the vision, to give a call to humanity
to prepare itself and to help all souls to respond to the spiritual call. It was more in the

nature of a promise or hope of the future perfection of mankind. It was in this sense,
Aurobindo regarded nationalism as an avatar that had come from God as it would

54 The Process of Avatarhood', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.156.

192
promise and afford an opportunity to rouse the spiritual consciousness of the Indians.

Life under the British represented gross inconscience, ignorance, enduring of ego and

adharma, thus languishing dharma. It was helplessly terrestrial. In this form avatar

could not be incarnated. The imitation of this pattern of life by the Indians would not
yield spiritual benefit. Hence, it was the age, yuga for the birth of the nation in the form

of avatar to rescue the decaying dharma and restore it to its original form. Aurobindo
understood nationalism as dharma. As the first step in the spiritual awakening it would

promise the revival of the Aryan way of spiritual life against the British way of life. It

implied ensuring the dignity of Indians expressed in Aryan ethical conditions, which

would allow freedom to evolve along the lines of one’s own temperament; it would

bridge the gulf between individual efforts and social relations, not in any makeshift way,

but within the framework of the moral order; it would also beget the creative art of life,

by the alchemy of which human limitations are progressively transmuted and

superseded, so that one could become a better “instrument of God”, and would be able
to “see him in ail and all in him”. It would perform two functions. First, it would destroy

the British rule (adharma) in India. Second, it would restore the relentless spiritual

pursuit of its past. Thus, it would establish the kingdom on earth that would provide an

opportunity for the awakening of veiled spirituality (dharma).

The conception of Dharma:

Aurobindo attempts to understand the concept of dharma in the Gita in a specific

way as explained above. It is a major deviation from ethical readings. Generally, the
notion of dharma could be taken for a variety of connotations, sometimes depriving the

real depth of its meaning. It could be construed in social or pragmatic meanings. It could

also be taken in the purely ethical or religious connotations. Further, it could be

understood in any of these senses exclusive of the others, in merely social or ethical or
religious connotations. Socially, dharma implies the observation of social laws in
external life, and politically it denotes simply political justice. Ethically dharma involves
the law of righteousness, the following of ethico-moral virtues in external activities, and

religiously it suggests the law of religious life. Collectively, dharma denotes worldly
existence making people duty-bounded to observe religious and ethical principles in

outward, external activities and follow these principles and virtues in relation to others

193
by controlling one’s own senses and dispositions. Aurobindo thought that the avatar did

not herald changes in the life of the individual in the material or utilitarian sense, or the
restoration of dharma in any of these senses; for the change in the material life and the

restoration of dharma in these senses, avatar was not required. It could be, he thought,

accomplished by the divine through the ordinary, distinguished, personalities.

But we have to remark carefully that the upholding of Dharma in the world is not the only object of
the descent of the Avatar, that great mystery of the Divine manifest in humanity; for the upholding
of the Dharma is not an all-sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for the
manifestation of a Christ, a Krishna a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim
and a more supreme and divine utility.............. Avatarhood for the sake of the Dharma would be
an otiose phenomenon, since mere Right, mere Justice or standards of virtue can always be
upheld by the divine omnipotence through its ordinary means, by great men or great movements,
55
by the life and work of sages and kings and religious teachers, without any actual incarnation.

Aurobindo compares, for instance, the differences between the transformation

that the reformation in Europe and the French revolution brought about and the changes
that the avatar would commence. The reformation and French revolution were primarily

attempts at transforming impoverished society into a thriving one, and a chaotic one into
a well-ordered society; but such a transformation was fulfilled, not by the avatar, but by
the eminent Vibhuti purusas. Hence, for similar revolutionary changes in material

prosperity, avatar was not needed. The change which avatar, initiates is neither social
nor material nor utilitarian. Further, it is not merely ethical but spiritual. Only in a spiritual

crisis would an avatar arise to show how people could, by following his example,
transfigure themselves into the divine.

The crisis in which the Avatar appears, though apparent to the outward eye only as a crisis of
events and great material changes, is always in its source and real meaning a crisis in the
consciousness of humanity when it has to undergo some grand modification and effect some new
development. For this action of change a divine force is needed................. Where, indeed, the
change is mainly intellectual and practical, the intervention of the Avatar is not
needed;.............. Vibhutis, whose action leading the general action is sufficient for the change
intended. The Reformation in Europe and the French Revolution were crises of this character;

55 The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 139-40.

194
 they were not great spiritual events, but intellectual and practical changes, one in religious, the
other in social and political ideas, forms and motives, and the modification of the general

consciousness brought about was mental and dynamic, but not a spiritual modification. But when
the crisis has a spiritual seed or intention, then a complete or a partial manifestation of the God-
56
consciousness in a human mind and soul comes as its originator or leader. This is the Avatar.

That is to say, for any changes in the nation, in the material or political sense,
nationalism in the form of avatar is not required; it could be brought about by the Vibhuti

purusas. However, when the crisis that the nation faces is not social or political but

spiritual it is essential to set the country on spiritual pursuit. Nationalism is a

representation of the growing spiritual consciousness among the Indians.

For Aurobindo the outward and ethical accounts of avatar, as ‘ascent of humanity
into divinity’, and in terms of dharma as ‘the restoration of the declined ethical balance

of mankind’ were incorrect and insufficient. They excluded the most central part of it, the
spiritual account.57

Aurobindo felt that the notion of Dharma used in the text had a deeper and larger

spiritual significance than its mere ethical or social connotation. It stood for the

regulation and governance of all the relations of man with other beings, with nature or
prakriti and with the Supreme Being. So it was both an inner and outer law. As an inner
law, it was the law of the inner activities by which the divine nature in man develops,58

and as an outer law it was the law governing his outgoing thought and action as well as

his relations with one another, which further his own growth and that of the human race

towards the divine ideal. In short, dharma invests all human relations with the divine
purpose.

56 'The Divine Birth and Divine Works', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.159-60.

57
Aurobindo states that the crisis in which avatars occulted in different stages of history such as

Krishna to kill ‘unjust Kauravas’ Rama to kill ‘unrighteous Ravana', Parasurama to destroy
‘princely caste, the Kshatriyas',Vamana to destoy ‘Titan Balf etc.were of spiritual nature. 'The
Divine Birth and Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 160-61.
58
To quote him, “Dharma in the spiritual sense is not morality or ethics. Dharma is action governed

by the Swabhava, the essential law of one’s nature”. ‘The Two Natures’, Essays on the Gita,
op.cit., p.263.

195
 We must then..................... take the idea of the Dharma......................as the inner and the outer law
by which the divine Will and Wisdom work out the spiritual evolution of mankind and its
circumstances and results in the life of the race. Dharma in the Indian conception is not merely
the good, the right, morality, and justice, ethics; it is the whole government of all the relations of
man with other beings, with Nature, with God, considered from the point of view of a divine
principle working itself out in forms and laws of action, forms of the inner and the outer life,
orderings of relations of every kind in the world. Dharma is both that which we hold to and that
which holds together our inner and outer activities. In its primary sense it means a fundamental
law of our nature which secretly conditions all our activities, and in this sense each being, type,
species, individual, group has its own Dharma. Secondly, there is the divine nature, which has to
develop and manifest in us, and in this sense Dharma is the law of the inner workings by which
that grows in our being. Thirdly, there is the law by which we govern our outgoing thought and
action and our relations with each other so as to help best both our own growth and that of the
59
human race towards the divine ideal.

Dharma taken in this sense implies a set of principles, which were eternal,
unchanging, enduring and permanent. But as the force of divine manifestation varies in

each being in his spiritual quest, dharma not only varies but continually moulds its
principles according to the extent of the progress towards spirituality. Hence, dharma

implies man’s attempt to move towards spirituality and acquire divine qualities; adharma

indicates those elements that resist such strivings and pull one away from such

attempts. There was a continuous and perpetual battle between the principles, which

lure one towards divinity, and those, which rebuff divinity.

Dharma is generally spoken of as something eternal and unchanging...................but in its forms it

is continually changing and evolving, because man does not already possess the ideal or live in
it, but aspires.......... And in this growth Dharma is all that helps us to grow into the divine purity,
largeness, light, freedom, power, strength, joy, love, good, unity, beauty, and against it stands its
shadow and denial, all that resists its growth and has not undergone its law............ all that man
has to leave behind in his progress. This is the adharma, not Dharma, which strives with and
seeks to overcome the Dharma.......... Between the two there is perpetual battle and struggle,
oscillation between victory and defeat in which sometimes the upward and sometimes the
downward forces prevail.60

59
‘The Divine Birth and Divine Works’ Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 162-63.
60
‘The Divine Birth and Divine Works', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.163.

196
 And this battle between dharma and adharma conditions and determines the

work of the avatar and meaning and significance of dharma. The avatar’s descent in this

spiritual struggle is to make man aware of his divine nature and elevate him from his

egoism to his divine self. Dharma is the expression of this truth.

The Dharma is therefore the taking up of all human relations into a higher divine meaning;
starting from the established ethical, social and religious rule which binds together the whole
community in which the God-seeker lives, it lifts it up by informing it with the Brahmic
consciousness.......... drawing it towards divine being and divine consciousness, and of God-love
as the supreme power and crown of the knowledge and the action.............. The whole world is
moving towards this Dharma, each man according to his capacity,- “it is My path that men follow
in every way”,- and the God-seeker, making himself one with all, making their joy and sorrow and
all their life his own, the liberated made already one self with all beings, lives in the life of
humanity.............acts for lokasamgraha, for the maintaining of all in their Dharma and the
Dharma, for the maintenance of their growth in all its stages and in all its paths towards the
Divine.61

It will be noticed here that, for Aurobindo, the battle between dharma and

adharma, humanity and divinity and the principles which entice and the elements, which

liberate were part and parcel of the entire universal striving. This striving exists in

oppositions. There was no dharma without a dharma, no humanity without divinity, no

avatar without the circumstances that call for its embodiment. It was only in this struggle

that dharma evolves. It is this struggle that constitutes the theatre for the divinity to

descent on earth-for lokasamgraha. The game of struggle and conflict is an inexorable

aspect of the universe.

Historicity of the Gita:

Having argued the spiritual significance of the institution of incarnation, and
regarded the haunting questions of Arjuna as spiritual, Aurobindo did not feel it
important to concentrate on the historicity of the war or that of Krishna. Such

61 'The Divine Birth and Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.164-65. The word

lokasamgraha’, hence, used in the text, not in the utilitarian or karmayogic or ethical sense, but in
the spiritual sense, to make man aware of the divine truth and not serving material prosperity and
comfort.

197
downplaying of the historicity of the text can also be seen in ethical readers such as

Tilak and Gandhi. Not only did Aurobindo not attempt a historical examination of the text

and the personage of Krishna, he quite explicitly stated that such questions were

irrelevant to understand and pursue the truth. His firm belief was that in the last analysis
it was the truth, not the historicity, that was going to abide, and that truth could not be

found in and through intellectual-historical debates, but only in the experience of one’s

life through spiritual pursuits.

The life of Rama and Krishna belongs to the prehistoric past which has come down only in poetry
and legend and may even be regarded as myths; but it is quite immaterial whether we regard
them as myths or historical facts, because their permanent truth and value lie in their persistence
as a spiritual form, presence, influence in the inner consciousness of the race and the life of the
human soul.62

In fact, Aurobindo felt that there were three things in the Gita, which establish the

spiritual nature of the text and which make the historical examination trivial, - the

teacher, disciple and the occasion of teaching. The teacher was “God himself

descended into humanity,” Krishna was only an external form; he was, in his inner

consciousness, the divine himself, the avatar. The disciple was “the first, as we might
say in modern language, the representative man of his age, closest friend and chosen
instrument of the avatar”, Arjuna raises these questions not as an ordinary being but
spiritual pursuer. The occasion was “the violent crisis.”63 Once the spiritual significance

of these three things was accepted, Aurobindo argued there was no need to bother

about historical questions. Historicity was the European fashion, which was not the right
method for acquiring the truth of the Gita and Krishna.

62
'The Divine Birth and Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.162.
63
‘The Divine Teacher1, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.10. Aurobindo devoted three consecutive

essays on ‘The Divine Teacher*, The Human Disciple’ and “The Core of the Teaching’, and
asserted that these were only the divine examples given by God to man in the very type and form
and perfected model, and to be perfected model of the human existence. Essays on the Gita,
op.cit., pp.9-35.

198
 When we thus understand the conception of Avatarhood, we see that whether for the
fundamental teaching of the Gita, our present subject, or for spiritual life generally, the external
aspect has only a secondary importance. Such controversies as the one that has raged in Europe

over the historicity of Christ, would seem to a spiritually-minded Indian largely a waste of time; he
would concede to it a considerable historical, but hardly any religious importance; for what does it
matter in the end whether a Jesus son of the carpenter Joseph was actually born in Nazareth or
Bethlehem, lived and taught and was done to death on a real or trumped-up charge of sedition,
so long as we can know by spiritual experience the inner Christ, live uplifted in the light of his
teaching and escape from the yoke of the natural Law by that atonement of man with God of
which the crucifixion is the symbol? If the Christ, God made man, lives within our spiritual being, it

would seem to matter little whether or not a son of Mary physically lived and suffered and died in
Judea. So too the Krishna who matters to us is the eternal incarnation of the Divine and not the
64
historical teacher and leader of men.

Hence all historical questions and exercises, including the one such as the Gita

was a later composition inserted into the web of the Mahabharata in order to sanctify its

teaching were merely a dross of time.

It matters little whether or not, as modem criticism supposes, the Gita is a later composition
inserted into the mass of the Mahabharata by its author in order to invest its teaching with the
authority and popularity of the great national epic. There seem to me to be strong grounds
against this supposition for which, besides, the evidence, extrinsic or internal, is in the last degree
scanty and insufficient.................. we must accept the insistence of the author and give its full
65
importance to this recurrent pre-occupation of the teacher and the disciple.

Although, Aurobindo, in his interpretation, did not bother at all about the history of

the text or about the historicity of Krishna, it does not mean that he was unaware of the

debates surrounding these questions. He mentions, for instance, several historical

Krishnas that appeared in the Chhandogya Upanishad, in Puranas, Harivamsha and in
quite a number of pre-Christian literatures.66 It was only to say that these may have

64 'The Divine Teacher*, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.12.

65
'The Divine Teacher1, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.9.
66
For Aurobindo, although, there are plenty of references on Krishna in different literatures, the

human Krishna in the Gita has only a symbolic significance. His real significance lies in his
spiritual role. 'The Divine Teacher*, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.12-3.

199
considerable historical importance,67 as far as the teaching of the text was concerned,

however, the questions of historicity or ahistoricity were trifling; the crucial aspect was
its ethico-spiritual message.68

It may be noted here, that regarding the history of the text and the historicity of its

characters, Aurobindo’s arguments seem to rhyme with ethical readers. But there was

this distinction between them. For the ethical readers like Gandhi, the Gita was an

allegory of the inner life having no concern with the external life and action, as it deals

with the struggle of the soul to reach the higher state against the downward forces that
strive to take possession of it. For Aurobindo, although, physical action and social

conflict were not the central themes of the Gita, its core being awakening the inner soul,

still they did occupy a definite place in the chain of its teaching, “as the outer life is of

immense importance for the inner development and the consummation in the mental
and physical symbol assists the growth of the inner reality.1'69 The Gita was written to

solve the inner struggle of Arjuna, but it did so without ignoring his outer life. It provided
adequate emphasis on it too. Hence, it had a bearing upon the crisis at hand and the

application of spirituality to the human outer life. The ethical argument that the text was
concerned with the inner struggle only was not tenable.

There is a method of explaining the Gita in which not only this episode but the whole
Mahabharata is turned into an allegory of the inner life and has nothing to do with our outward
human life and action, but only with the battles of the soul and the powers that strive within us for
possession. That is a view which, the general character and the actual language of the epic do
not justify and, if pressed, would turn the straightforward philosophical language of the Gita into a
constant, laborious and somewhat puerile mystification. The language of the Veda and part at
least of the Puranas is plainly symbolic, full of figures and concrete representations of things that
lie behind the veil, but the Gita is written in plain terms and professes to solve the great ethical
and spiritual difficulties which the life of man raises, and it will not do to go behind this plain
language and thought and wrest them to the service of our fancy.70

The Divine Teacher’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.14.

68
'The Divine Teacher’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.14-5.
69
‘The Process of Avatarhood’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 157-58.
70 The Human Disciple’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.17-8.

200
 To Aurobindo, then, the historical approach was not the right method for

determining the truth of the Gita. Its truth is spiritual not historical. It is also not an object
of critical or historical or theoretical inquiry. Its truth is to be found only in the

experience of one’s life, by the perpetual practice of ethico-spiritual living. The Gita was

mainly written to expound spiritual guidance.

Aurobindo does not accentuate so much on history as on ethics, morality and

spirituality as the bases of nations. He shares the framework of the nation outlined by

the nationalists of his day and rejects the inferential and critical sciences as the

foundation for India as well as other nations. He believed that nations should be

founded on spiritual objectives and not socio-economic concerns. Aurobindo also

shares the conclusion that India is going to be the spiritual teacher of the world.

Himsa and Ahimsa:

For Aurobindo, the Gita called upon the seeker after truth to take refuge and

surrender himself completely to the Divine. In its project of the universe, it viewed him

as a mere instrument in the hands of God. It conceived the divine will as prevailing

ultimately, and man’s reason is very much confined to the avowal of this truth and to the

preliminary evolution of divine consciousness or the knowledge that the self was God

himself.
In such a spiritual trajectory, Aurobindo came to terms with the Gita's justification

of the much-decried concept in the ethical theory, the concept of violence. In his
Essays on the Gita he devoted four essays for the discussion of the Gita’s conception of
violence. His argument in this regard and the entire mode of reasoning was in no way
corroborated by the ethical arguments of Tilak and Gandhi. For Gandhi, the Gita was

basically a text on non- violence. For Tilak, although, the Gita justified non-violence and

not violence, in the final analyses, he substantially supported violence on ethical

grounds. Aurobindo goes far beyond them and argued that the Gita was basically a text
on violence and not non-violence, as he believed violence as a natural and innate
aspect of the universal project of emancipation.71

71 According to Aurobindo, the Gita viewed the cosmic order as consisting of the elements of

violence and non-violence. But as far as the Gita was concerned it was a text on violence and not
non-violence as Arjuna was asked to follow violent and not non-violent activities. It was implied in

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 Aurobindo begins these essays with the argument that for the Gita material life of

human beings was a clash of vast and obscure forces, such as good and evil, spirit and

flesh, light and darkness and individual ego and cosmic spirit as symbolised by the

Pandavas and Kauravas, the good and the far more numerous evil tendencies in man,
leading into great crises such as that of Kurukshetra. He, however, thought that such

clashes of contending forces were absolutely essential; otherwise the cosmic cycle

could not persist. Everything in the universe finds its meaning and place only in its

relation with the opposite force. There was no good without evil, no higher spirituality
without the lower egocentric action, no light without darkness or there was no

construction in the universe without destruction. All of them were the natural parts of the
human cycle.72 In short, construction was facilitated naturally by destruction.

War, said Heraclitus, is the father of all things, War is the king of all; and the saying, like most of
the apophthegms of the Greek thinker, suggests a profound truth. From a clash of material or
other forces everything in this world, if not the world itself, seems to be born; by a struggle of
forces, tendencies, principles, beings it seems to proceed, ever creating new things, ever
destroying the old, marching one knows not very well whither................. However that may be,
this is certain that there is not only no construction here without destruction, no harmony except
by a poise of contending forces won out of many actual and potential discords, but also no
continued existence of life except by a constant self-feeding and devouring of other life. Our very
bodily life is a constant dying dhd being reborn, the body itself a beleaguered city attacked by
assailing, protected by defending forces whose business is to devour each other; and this is only
a type of all our existence. The command seems to have gone out from the beginning, “Thou
shalt not conquer except by battle with thy fellows and thy surroundings; thou shalt not even live
except by battle and struggle and by absorbing into thyself, other life. The first law of this world
that I have made is creation and preservation by destruction.” 73

Aurobindo mentions this truth as central to modern science. Modern science, for
instance, is founded on the truth that the visible world consists of contending forces, due

such words as ‘inevitable circumstances’ (apariharyerthe), ‘body being killed’ (hanyamane satire),
‘sorrow for those who are dead’ (shoka) etc. Therefore, Gandhi’s argument that the Gita only
signifies a spiritual war or battle was, for Aurobindo, incorrect and an untenable position.
72
It was on these relative characters of the universe that he justifies violence, as there is no non­

violence without violence.

73 ‘Kurukshetra’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.37.

202
to which it proceeds and grows. However science might advance it could not alter nor

deviate itself from this ancient truth. Darwinian scientific theory of evolution too, he felt,

was simply a rephrase of this truth of construction and destruction.

The old Upanishads saw it very clearly and phrased it with an uncompromising thoroughness
which will have nothing to do with any honeyed glosses or optimistic scuttling of the truth. Hunger
that is Death, they said, is the creator and master of this world, and they figured vital existence in
the image of the Horse of the sacrifice. Matter they described by a name which means ordinarily
food and they said, we call it food because it is devoured and devours creatures. The eater eating
is eaten, this is the formula of the material world, as the Darwinians rediscovered when they laid it
down that the struggle for life is the law of evolutionary existence. Modern science has only
rephrased the old truths that had already been expressed in much more forcible, wide and
accurate formulas by the apophthegm of Heraclitus and the figures employed by the
Upanishads74

Aurobindo thought, for the Gita, attempts at spiritual advancement should lie first

in the submission to this truth. Any attempt at belittling or underrating it would arrive at a
false and ignorant conclusion. For Aurobindo, Nietzsche’s theory of the essentiality of

war and conflict as an aspect of life was too based on the acknowledgement of this

truth. Even though his conclusions were different from the ancients, he viewed this

theory of Nietzsche as a modern attempt to rejuvenate the ancient truth and recall it to
humanity, saving modern man from utter moral flabbiness.75

Aurobindo thought that not only material life and physical body were conditioned

by and subject to construction and destruction, there could not be progress in the

intellectual, mental and moral aspects of life too unless and until it underwent similar
kind of test in battle. In this struggle they mould themselves into shape.

War and destruction are not only a universal principle of our life here in its purely material
aspects, but also of our mental and moral existence. It is self-evident that in the actual life of man
intellectual, social, political, moral we can make no real step forward without a struggle, a battle
between what exists and lives and what seeks to exist and live and between all that stands
76
behind either.

74 ‘Kurukshetra’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.38.

75 ‘Kurukshetra’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.38.

76 ‘Kurukshetra’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.39.

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 In other words, cosmic progress in physical aspect was stipulated on the

dynamics of the conflicting and discording elements. As a result of the battle of these

contending forces, the old came to be renewed and relieved as the case may be, and

the perennial truth got constantly reshaped and developed. Controlling these

contending forces could not be achieved, however hard man may try, by material or

physical means, but he could do so by accepting and becoming part of them and

striving for higher and final spiritual harmony.

Aurobindo’s felt that as construction was conditioned by destruction, a complete

repudiation of violence for non-violence was impossible because non-violence was

conditioned naturally by violence. The technique of non-violence could be employed in a

perfect world or till the world itself became non-violent in the highest spiritual harmony,

but the conflicting forces could not be repelled by any method born out of human

reason- non-violence, soul-force or self-sacrifice, etc. To repel violence by the

employment of soul-force or self-sacrifice was absurd because one’s abstinence from

violence would not necessarily beget abstinence from it by others.77 Aurobindo read in

the Gita an acknowledgement that violence and non-violence were part of divine

creation as good and evil were integral to the divine cycle. Complete non-violence in the

physical or material sense was impossible as long as evil persists, (evil does not merely
imply external objects; it also includes internal ego, love, hate, pity, compassion etc.).

Evil was a part of creation and hence could not possibly be eliminated. As it would

continue as a natural part, violence too would continue as a natural part of the divine
7ft
creation.

It is impossible, at least as men and things are, to advance, to grow, to fulfil and still to observe
really and utterly that principle of harmlessness, which is yet placed before us as the highest and
best law of conduct. We will use only soul-force and never destroy by war or any even defensive
emDlovment of Dhvsical violence? Good, though until soul-force is effective, the Asuric force in
men and nations tramples down, breaks, slaughters, burns, pollutes, as we see it doing today, but
then at its ease and unhindered, and you have perhaps caused as much destruction of life by

77 It is implicit here that Aurobindo rejected Gandhi’s philosophy that “if one hits you on one cheek

show the other”, and defeat evil by soul force.

78
For Aurobindo, this is what Krishna meant when he declared to Arjuna that “even if you (Arjuna)

do not kill these people who stand before you, they would not last for long and the creation would
devour them when time comes- Lord the Universal Destroyer".

204
 your abstinence as others by resort to violence; still you have set up an ideal which may some
day and at any rate ought to lead up to better things. But even soul-force, when it is effective,
destroys. Only those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more terrible and
destructive it is than the sword and the cannon; and only those who do not limit their view to the
act and its immediate results, can see how tremendous are its after-effects, how much is
eventually destroyed and with that much all the life that depended on it and fed upon it. Evil
cannot perish without the destruction of much that lives by the evil, and it is no less destruction
79
even if we personally are saved the pain of a sensational act of vilolence.

It does not, however, mean that Aurobindo did not admit the principles of self-

sacrifice, soul-force or non-violence as good. They were good elements as they play

useful role in moulding the ethical character of man at the lower levels, but he at the
same argued that we need to take cognisance of their opposites. The former do not
lend themselves to outcomes that man intends. Often, the opposite is the result.80

Further, self-sacrifice or non-violence would not eliminate violence because in their

highest expression they were the acknowledgement of the existence of violent, self-

assertive and self-centred forces.

Association has been worked not only for mutual help, but at the same time for defence and
aggression, to strengthen us against all that attacks or resists in the struggle for life. Association
itself has been a servant of war, egoism and the self-assertion of life against life. Love itself has
been constantly a power of death. Especially the love of good and the love of God, as embraced
by the human ego, have been responsible for much strife, slaughter and destruction. Self-
sacrifice is great and noble, but at its highest it is an acknowledgement of the law of Life by death
and becomes an offering on the altar of some Power that demands a victim in order that the work
81
desired may be done.

Aurobindo mentions, for instance, the patriot’s impulse to sacrifice himself for the
protection of the country, or religious martyr’s for the religious ideal. However, sooner
or later it becomes obvious that the course that events take do not correspond to these
ideals.82 Therefore, Aurobindo thought, the Gita considered it an obligation on the part

79 'Kurukshetra', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.39.

80
‘Kurukshetra’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.40.
81
'Kurukshetra', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.40.
82
‘Kurukshetra’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.40-41.

205
of spiritual man in the fulfilment of spiritual life to act for the elimination of evil forces and

to elevate humanity to the final harmony and not to use soul-force or self-sacrifice to

vanquish violence, evil, strife and destruction. Since evil (violence) was part of the

universal construct, it was impossible to attain spiritual perfection so long as it lingers;

the spiritual man would not only not abstain from the act of eliminating evil but would

eagerly and earnestly participate in it. The Gita accepted the destruction of evil as part

of one’s spiritual life. It involves lesser violence than the violence let loose by evil.

Abstinence from using violence would leave the evil slayers of creatures scot-free and

this was no less than an act of violence.

It is not enough that our own hands should remain clean and our souls unstained for the law of
strife and destruction to die out of the world; that which is its root must first disappear out of
humanity. Much less will mere immobility and inertia unwilling to use or incapable of using any
kind of resistance to evil, abrogate the law; inertia, Tamas, indeed, injures much more than can
the Rajasic principle of strife which at least creates more than it destroys. Therefore, so far as the
problem of the individual’s action goes, his abstention from strife and its inevitable concomitant
destruction in their more gross and physical form may help his own moral being, but it leaves the
83
Slayer of creatures unabolished.

To Aurobindo, then, for the Gita, universal dynamics and social existence are

caught up in the diametric of opposites. War and peace, strife and union, hatred and
love, egoism and universality, death and immortality were opposite sides of the same

existence. The terrible Kali was not only the protector but also the destroyer; Krishna
was not only the creator of creatures but also the devourer- Time the Creator’ (Shiva),
Time the Destroyer’ (Rudra)84 Therefore, neither replacement of physical force by soul-

force, nor soul-force by physical force would change the course of existence. The

solution did not lie in ethical replacement of physical force by soul-force, war by peace
or strife by union. It lies in the acceptance, appreciation and submission to the discords

83
'Kurukshetra’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.40.
84
Shiva is the symbol of peace, union, love, universality, immortality etc., Rudra is the sign of war,

strife, hatred, death etc. Shiva creates, and the same Shiva becomes Rudra (destroyer) destroys
the creatures when time comes and thus keeps the cycle of universe intact. Aurobindo devoted

206
of existence and believing in the universal being and surrendering to his will 85 -‘Give up

all kinds of religion and surrender yourself to Me alone’. This reading of Aurobindo was

completely inconsistent with the reading of it by Tilak, as the latter argued that ‘the free

will of man’ would endure even after becoming a complete ethical person.

But the solution offered by the Gita, Aurobindo says, has never gripped the life of

human beings across history because either the race was not prepared for such a

solution or the evolution of nature did not admit and allow any such transcendence for

pursuit. The forms of life in modern society were much more deceitful and worse than
the stages of historical cycle of human progress and transformation.86 Optimistically,

Aurobindo states, that day, in which men submit to this truth, was not far off and would
recur soon.

A day may come, must surely come, we will say, when humanity will be ready spiritually, morally,
socially for the reign of universal peace; meanwhile the aspect of battle and the nature and
function of man as a fighter have to be accepted and accounted for by any practical philosophy
and religion. The Gita, taking life as it is and not only as it may be in some distant future, puts the
question how this aspect and function of life, which is really an aspect and function of human
87
activity in general, can be harmonised with the spiritual existence.

Himsa and the Institution of Varna:

Having argued this way, the Gita’s acceptance of the presence of evil forces in

nature and its acknowledgement of the necessity of struggle between righteousness

and unrighteousness, the self-affirming law of good and the elements that oppose its
progression, Aurobindo felt that the merit of the Gita rested in its attempt to lessen the

catastrophe of combat by assigning violent functions only to a small body of warriors,

the Kshatriyas, whose temperament, nature and character were admirably suited for

two essays to explain the two faces of the creator, Time the Protector1 (Shiva) and Time the
Destroyer’ (Rudra).
85
This is how Aurobindo reads the eleventh verse of the second chapter-gatasunagatosumca

manusocanti panditaha knowers do not lament for the dead or the not dead, and sixty-sixth
verse of the eighteenth chapter-sarvadharman parityajya mam ekam saramam vraja.
QC

'Man and the Battle of Life’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.44-45.
87 'Man and the Battle of Life’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.45.

207
that function. And in this violent activity, the Gita drew up an ethical type, as in any other

actions, worship, market or production, to enable the Kshatriyas to fulfil their objectives

in life, their spiritual evolution.

Indian civilisation made it its chief aim to minimise the incidence and disaster of war. For this
purpose it limited the military obligation to the small class who by their birth, nature and traditions
were marked out for this function and found in it their natural means of self-development through
the flowering of the soul in the qualities of courage, disciplined force, strong helpfulness and
chivalrous nobility for which the warrior’s life pursued under the stress of a high ideal gives a field
and opportunities. The rest of the community was in every way guarded from slaughter and
outrage; their life and occupations were as little interfered with as possible and the combative and
destructive tendencies of human nature were given a restricted field................the functions of war
was obliged to help in ennobling and elevating instead of brutalising those who performed
it.......... war considered as an inevitable part of human life, but so restricted and regulated as to

serve like other activities the ethical and spiritual development which was then regarded as the
whole real object of life, war destructive within certain carefully fixed limits of the bodily life of
88
individual men but constructive of their inner life and of the ethical elevation of the race.

Aurobindo did not regard the Gita’s four-fold divisions of society either as a social

or economic institution. He did not regard it as an ethical institution either. He

conceived it as a spiritual institution that, taking into account the different forces that are

at play in the universe, sought the spiritual enlightenment of all people. For him, they
were specialization and functional divisions of society in terms of differences in nature,

which aimed to lessen the burden of engaging with all activities of social life by
distributing each specialised function to a specialised body of community whose

temperament and nature suited that function. But still the physical fact of four-fold
divisions was only an outward manifestation of a general principle in life and types of

general characteristics necessary to the completeness of human perfection. Hence, the

accent was not so much on its external social or economic or ethical aspects but on the
inner spiritual significance.
Unlike ethical writers, for Aurobindo, these were divisions based on differences in
souls and not three gunas (qualities) of the lower prakriti. Nature itself consists of four

88
'Man and the Battle of Life’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.47.

208
different kinds of souls (jiva or swabhava), each soul underlying special characters.

These special characters of the souls determine the functions that each soul should

pursues in the external world. The special character of one soul is thought and

knowledge; second soul is valour and courage, third is production and marketing and
fourth is labour and service. Man by pursuing the function suited for his soul could attain
spiritual enlightenment.89 For Aurobindo, the Gita supported the Aryan social order by

viewing man primarily as a spiritual being and not as a social or economic being, and

Aurobindo’s argument with regard to the Gita’s conception of Chaturvamya strikingly diverges

from those of the ethical proponents. All agree that, although, the concept in itself and in its
external appearance has very little value still it is a necessary means and proper channel for
attaining the higher position. Besides, there is nothing in this theory that approves the
contemporary caste system. Nevertheless, there is this difference between them: For ethical
interpretations Swabhava’ implies the qualities determined by the three gunas and 'Swadharma'
corresponds to this differences in the qualities. For Aurobindo, Swabhava never implies this lower
praknti of three qualities but the atman, a partial truth of Purushottama, and Swadharma’ means
work determined by the 'real atmic nature'. Hence, the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra
are not determined by the differences in the qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas, which are in
hierarchical order, but the jiva’ itself takes four forms and divisions. ‘There are four distinct orders
of the active nature, or four fundamental types of the soul in nature, Swabhava, and the work and
proper function of each human being corresponds to his type of nature”. Essays on the Gita,
op.cit., p.492. Hence, in the Gita's statement, ‘‘It was created by Me according to the divisions of
the Gunas and Works’- the gunas (qualities) implies, for the ethical readers, the qualities of
sattva, rajas and tamas, for Aurobindo, it implies divine law, the Swabhava, that is, the atman or a
part of the Purushottama. And Arjuna was asked to do ail works, Swadharma’, by standing on
the ‘Swabhava’ of the atman and not the gunas of prakriti. Here, Aurobindo may probably be right
in his criticism of the ethical writers. On the one hand, they say that these divisions are based on
the divisions in qualities,Brahmana-sattva, Kshatriya-sattva+rajas, Vaisya-rajas+tamas and
Shudra-tamas, on the other hand, these do not imply superior- inferior relations. But sattva,rajas
and tamas are not indiscriminate orders, ethically, religiously and spiritually; they imply higher-
lower qualities. How a system, which is based on these inferior-superior relations, can become
equal for the socio-ethical purpose? For Aurobindo that problem does not arise. For him the
differences in the jivas are the creations of the divine, not based on gunas of prakriti. Swabhava
and Swadharma’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.490-507.

209
social order as a device for spiritual pursuit for each division (for each nature) and not
for social or economic fulfilment.90

The ancient Indian civilisation laid peculiar stress on the individual nature, tendency, and

temperament and sought to determine by it the ethical type, function and place in the society. Nor
did it consider man primarily as a social being or the fullness of his social existence as the highest
ideal, but rather as a spiritual being in process of formation and development and his social life,
ethical law, play of temperament and exercise of function as means and stages of spiritual
formation. Thought and knowledge, war and government, production and distribution, labour and
service were carefully differentiated functions of society, each assigned to those who were
naturally called to it and providing the right means by which they could individually proceed
91
towards their spiritual development and self-perfection.

It was on the basis of the Gita's this attempt to reduce the burden of undertaking

every activity by a single community, particularly actions such as war and strife, that

Aurobindo criticises the modern social order based on mere socio-economic

considerations as much more deceitful and universal in its distress than the one outlined
by the Gita. He viewed the modern social system as good for the all round development

of human personality as it conceives man, “a thinker, worker, artist, philosopher, priest,

merchant, producer, defender, fighter all in one”, but it was too social and economic in
nature giving overemphasis on external aspects rather than inner spiritual evolution. It

was also too universal in its consequences. Aurobindo mentions, for instance, the

nature of modern war. It is not only not limited to a particular community but never

differentiates between different natures or qualities and becomes indiscriminate in its

destruction.92

In fact, there were two important reasons adduced by the Gita, Aurobindo

thought, in defence of physical violence, and justification of Arjuna’s partaking in the

90
Aurobindo thinks a relentless spiritual pursuit was characteristic of India’s past. It laid greater

emphasis on spiritual seekings and attainments. For Aurobindo, it was this spirituality that the
Gita talks about in Chaturvarnya. He entitles one essay as The creed of the Aryan Fighter’ to
explain what Arjuna represents. Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.52-61.
91
'Man and the Battle of Life’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.46.
92
‘Man and the Battle of Life’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.46.

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battle of Kurukshetra. The first was based on the enduring character of the soul and the
fleeting nature of the physical body. The soul was permanent and could not be killed.
The death of being was a death of the body and not of the soul. Death was only a
moment in the march of the soul’s self-manifestation. The fact of the physical death of
body was a necessary step in man’s progress towards immortality. Hence, whether
Arjuna willed it or not, whether he slaughtered his enemies or not, all those kings
(including Arjuna) who participated in the war would not remain for long because “ death
was already given to every creature born with a mind” and “it was an inevitable
circumstance of the soul’s self-manifestation”. And even if they were eluded from the
arrows of Arjuna, they could not escape from the natural slain. For Aurobindo, in the
Gita, Arjuna's participation in the war and killing of the Kauravas was justified on four
major grounds. First, the Dhritarastrians were basically representing the unrighteous
and dark forces in the battle of Kurukshetra, and for the killing of unrighteous dark
forces the true knowledge of spirituality (the Gita) lends sanction. From the point of view
of the Kauravas, it would help them to evolve from unrighteousness to righteousness
and from righteousness to spirituality since destruction was a necessary step in the
spiritual journey. Second, from Arjuna’s point of view, killing of the unrighteous asuric
elements would be a matter of merit to him and take him from the lower nature to the
higher state of spirituality because spiritual progress necessarily involves destruction of
those forces which hinder such progress. Third, from general standpoint, killing of the
unrighteous forces would protect the innocents, and “those who were excused from that
duty, debarred from protecting themselves, and therefore, at the mercy of the strong
and the violent (Kshathyas)”. And fourth, from the point of view of nature, it was
necessary part in its evolution. Therefore,

Has to see only the work that must be done, kartavyam karma, to hear only the divine command
breathed through his warrior nature, to feel only for the world and the destiny of mankind calling
to him as its God-sent man to assist its march and clear its path of the dark armies that beset it.93

93
The Creed of the Aryan Fighter', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.55. In this essay, Aurobindo goes

on insisting the insignificance of the physical or material body, and the spiritual significance of the
soul. Few instances can be cited; “All this kings of men for whose approaching death he mourns,
have lived before, they will live again in the human body; for as the Soul passes...... human life
and death repeated through the aeons in the great cycles of the world are only a long progress by

211
 The second was based on the sociai idea of duty and honour. The Swabhava of

the Kshatriya was “courage, bravery, nobility, force etc.” Their Swadharma lies in the

protection of the right and weak from the unrighteous forces and “an unflinching

acceptance of the gage of battle is their virtue and duty.” Slaying unrighteous elements

is a circumstance and occasion for their inner development, their spiritual progress.

Arjuna, being a Kshatriya, was thus justified in engaging in the killing of Kauravas. In
other words, Krishna’s exhortation to Arjuna to fight the righteous battle of Kurukshetra,

coming unsought, was also due to the fact that it was the dharma of Kshatriya.

His virtue and his duty (Swadharma required by the Swabhava of the Kshatriyas) iie in battle and
94
not in abstention from battle; it is not slaughter, but non-slaying which would here be the sin.

Himsa and the notion of Vishvarupa:

Aurobindo further clarified this argument in other two essays;95 here he

considered the meaning and importance of Vishvarupa (the transcendental majesty of '
the divine) showed to Arjuna in the middle of the text.96 He felt that, it was to show that

not merely ahimsa but himsa too, not only construction but destruction, not merely

Ishwara but Rudra and not merely the pleasing and delightful but also the repulsive and
dreadful appearances were the two faces of truth, the Gita had brought to the fore the
anecdote of universal spirit, Vishvarupa, all comprehending vision of God, with half part

representing Ishwara with divine qualities of grace, love and beauty, and the other half

representing Rudra with the abhorring qualities of the terrible. The existence of this

other negative and opposite aspect to truth along with the positive and pleasant aspect
implies that violence and non-violence were necessary movements in the life of people

which the human being prepares and makes himself fit for immortality.............. For by immortality
is meant not the survival of death.........but the transcendence of life and death................ There is
no such thing as death, for it is the body that dies and the body is not the man.............. the
eternal manifesting itself as the soul of man in the great cycle of its pilgrimage with birth and
death for milestones......... ". Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.45,52-61.
94 The Creed of the Aryan Fighter1, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.59.

95 The Vision of the World-Spirit-Time the Destroyer’, and The Vision of the World-Spirit-The

Double Aspect’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.363-381.

96
The chapter XI is entitled as Vishvarupa, The Lord’s Transfiguration.

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towards the establishment of the kingdom of right and truth, Dharmarajya. Hence, for

the Gita, this other negative and frightful aspect was also a natural quality of God as
much as the qualities of love, beauty, assurance and resplendence. For Aurobindo, any

human attempt to conceal this dimension, or refuse to admit it because it was horrid,

unpleasant and hard to bear, would be nothing more than closing one’s eyes to truth.

It is an aspect from which the mind in men willingly turns away and ostrich-like hides its head so
that perchance, not seeing, it may not be seen by the Terrible. The weakness of the human heart
wants only fair and comforting truths or in their absence pleasant fables; it will not have the truth
in its entirety because there there is much that is not clear and pleasant and comfortable, but
hard to understand and harder to bear. The raw religionist, the superficial optimistic thinker, the
sentimental idealist, the man at the mercy of his sensations and emotions agree in twisting away
from the sterner conclusions, the harsher and fiercer aspects of universal existence. Indian
religion has been ignorantly reproached for not sharing in this general game of hiding, because,
on the contrary, it has built and placed before it the terrible as well as the sweet and beautiful
symbols of the Godhead. But it is the depth and largeness of its long thought and spiritual
97
experience that prevent it from feeling or from giving countenance to these feeble shrinkings.

And understanding God only as Time the Protector’ and by turning down to see
him as Time the Destroyer’ was to see existence only partially and piecemeal which
was nothing but illusion. The truth should be understood in its entirety, truth as Ishwara

and truth as Rudra. The attempt on the part of human being to marginalise or to twist or

even to minimise the destructive dimension, thinking that he could halt it, would not in
any way prevent the universal existence from its furious destruction. The only thing that

would be advantageous to man was to accept and admire the reality in the soul and
carry out every action whether pleasant or dreadful, sweet or terrific, peaceful or violent

as sacrifice to God.

We have to see that nature devouring her children, Time eating up the lives of creatures, Death
universal and ineluctable and the violence of the Rudra forces in man and Nature are also the
supreme Godhead in one of his cosmic figures. We have to see that God the bountiful and
prodigal creator, God the helpful, strong and benignant preserver is also God the devourer and
destroyer. The torment of the couch of pain and evil on which we are racked is his touch as much

‘The Vision of the World-Spirit -Time the Destroyer', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.367.

213
 as happiness and sweetness............................. The discords of the worlds are God's discords and
it is only by accepting and proceeding through them that we can arrive at the greater concords of
98
his supreme harmony.........................

tn fact, Aurobindo was the first nationalist writer to interpret the account of Lord’s

transfiguration-World Spirit in this meaning. Tilak, for instance, considered it as the

culmination of the highest knowledge; for Gandhi, it is the absolute truth. Vivekananda

did not set on its hermeneutic. But, for Aurobindo, this was the meaning of Vishvarupa:

man, his reason, his action, its results and hence everything in the world moves as per
divine will, and nature is an instrument and executive force of this will."

But it did not mean that destruction was the only underlying quality and essential

will of the universal existence; it only means that creation was chequered by an
equilibrium of preservation and destruction as was shown in the Vishvarupa. Each

destruction was followed by construction and each construction in turn conditioned by

destruction. When man destroys his ego-character, for instance, he constructs himself

in the supreme character. Every nation, community and race would be destroyed as the

time comes which would result in the creation of a new nation, community and race “as

these things are no accident, but an inevitable seed that has been sown and a harvest
that must be reaped.”100 The present will of the divine in Kurukshetra was destruction,

and abstention by Arjuna “will not help, will not prevent the fulfilment of the destroying
will.”101

This kind of interpretation by Aurobindo has specific implications for his

conception of national rejuvenation. He considered the destruction that the British in

India had introduced as a divine will providing an opportunity for the Indians to fight a
spiritual war and spiritual evolution as Kauravas had given an opportunity to wage such

a spiritual war for Arjuna and the rest of the Pandavas. Every destruction would result in
the creation of a new perfection.102 The destruction of the British element by Indians in

98
The Vision of the World-Spirit-Time the Destroyer' Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.368.
99
‘The Vision of the World-Spirit-Time the Destroyer, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.369-
100
The Vision of the World-Spirit-Time the Destroyer’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.371.
101 ‘The Vision of the World-Spirit-Time the Destroyer’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.370-71,

102
‘The Vision of the World-Spirit-The Double Aspect', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.376.

214
the spiritual evolution was also divine will as the destruction of Kauravas by Pandavas

was a movement towards the establishment of dharmarajya, and the will of Krishna.

That destruction must, Aurobindo insisted, take place; it could not be avoided by any

other alternative, soul-force, self-sacrifice, non-violence or abstention from karma.

Then to give another turn, to use some kind of soul force, spiritual method and power, not
physical weapons? But that is only another form of the same action; the destruction will still take
place, and the turn given too will be not what the individual ego, but what the World-Spirit
wills......... No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot
prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid................. Christ and Buddha have come and gone, but it is
103
Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand.

It will be noticed here that, Aurobindo’s spiritual interpretation of the text did not

place any importance on the elements of human reason and will in relation to ‘human

thought’ and ‘knowledge’ or the progress of existence. He undermines human freedom

and privileges God’s will. He has no much place in his thought for human reason,
dignity and capacities. His acceptance of violence and his understanding in this regard

shows callousness regarding human person and his powers. Further, he did not place
any emphasis even on the element of human body. He regarded human body, as a

mere event and moment in the universal plan having no value in itself except when
related to the divinity.104 Human reason and will are not ‘free will’, as conceived by Tilak

or Gandhi, but are called upon to make uncritical submission to the will of the divinity.
Nature becomes the executive mechanism of the divine will and men and all other

manifest forces were at the behest of that will. Human being had to act as an instrument
of the divine will, pierced through and through with divine greatness by deserting his

personal ego. He has to act equably on pain and pleasure, heat and cold and peace

103
'The Vision of the World-Spirit -Time the Destroyer1, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.372.
104
Aurobindo explicitly mentions the instrumental character of human being in many pages of his

Essays on the Gita. One example may suffice: “All these heroes and men of might who have
joined in battle on the plain of Kurukshetra are vessels of the divine will and through each he
works according to his nature.............He is the instrument of a great work, a work terrible in
appearance but necessary for a long step forward in the march of the race, a decisive movement
in its struggle towards the kingdom of the Right and the Truth, dharmarajya.” The Theory of the
Vibhutf, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.361-62,375 etc.

215
and violence. This was the solution Aurobindo proffers to the riddle and confusion of

beings.
It is implicit in Aurobindo’s thought that he was greatly influenced by the late 19th

century Christian theology, particularly as came to be formulated by several influential

thinkers going back to Calvin. Like this theology, Aurobindo exalted the absolute

transcendence of God and proportionately limited the scope of human powers and

man’s dependence on His grace. Further, he laid stress on the mechanical nature of the

universe.

Nishkama Karma, Sacrifice and Lokasamgraha:

The most striking, indeed, central position which Aurobindo took in his
interpretation of the Gita, the position which kept him in fairly a good deal of distance

from not only the general orthodox readings of the text but also other interpreters of his

time-Tilak Vivekananda, Gandhi for instance- was his criticism and rejection of social
interpretations of nishkama karma, sacrifice and lokasamgraha. In five consecutive

essays in his Essays on the Gita, Aurobindo attempted to establish that the Gita never

expounded nishkama karma, sacrifice and lokasamgraha in the sociological, ordinary or

ethico-moral sense, as the karmayogic readers had established, but its concern was

outrightly spiritual. The whole argument was that as long as man bases his action on

ego sense and its finite concerns so long he would never be able to alleviate his trauma

of life, and as long as he remains engrossed in social action so long his action would

not become desireless. Therefore, real desirelessness would be possible when man

surpasses ego-based social action and stands above and beyond social life. The Gita’s
philosophy of karma yoga, Aurobindo thought, begins from this state of brahmic

consciousness, which underlies the necessity of preliminary understanding of the reality

of universe and not from the ordinary social state where man is born.

In the first of the five essays The Yoga of the intelligent will’,105 Aurobindo argues

that the Gita’s philosophy of work and desirelessness begins with the significance of the
acquisition of ‘brahmic consciousness’, and the recourse to intelligent will is the

105 'The Yoga of the Intelligent Will’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.87-97.

216
foundation to set on this exploration. This intelligent will requires the pursuer to withdraw

himself from ego based actions to understand the oneness of the manifest world.

But it is not with this deep and moving word of God to man (take refuge in divine), but rather with
the first necessary rays of light on the path, directed not like that to the soul, but to the intellect,
that the exposition begins. Not the Friend and Lover of man speaks first, but the Guide and
Teacher who has to remove from him his ignorance of his true self and of the nature of the world
and of the springs of his own action. For it is because he acts ignorantly, with a wrong
intelligence and therefore a wrong will in these matters, that man is or seems to be bound by his
works; otherwise works are no bondage to the free soul. It is because of this wrong intelligence
that he has hope and fear, wrath and grief and transient joy; otherwise works are possible with a
perfect serenity and freedom. Therefore, it is the Yoga of the Buddhi, the intelligence that is first
enjoined on Arjuna. To act with right intelligence and, therefore, a right will, fixed in the One,
aware of the one self in all and acting out of its equal serenity, not running about in different
directions under the thousand impulses of our superficial mental self, is the Yoga of the intelligent
106
will (brahmic consciousness).

Aurobindo thought that the Gita, following the Samkhya classification of prakriti
(nature force) and purusa (soul force),107 classified two forms of intelligence
(consciousness), “there are, says the Gita, two types of intelligence in human being,”108

One was the social intelligence derived from the nature-force and the other was brahmic

intelligence derived from the ‘original, conscious soul’. In social intelligence man’s
consciousness is dissipated and dispersed in “outward life and works and their fruits”.109

He remains under the domination and control of the nature force whose foundation is
desire, passion or emotions. “That life is the life of desire”.110 In brahmic intelligence, on
the other hand, his consciousness is fixed and stilled in one truth.111 He remains under

the control and influence of the soul force whose very characteristic is desirelessness,

'The Yoga of the Intelligent Will', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.88.
107 Aurobindo devoted two essays to discuss the relations and differences between Samkhya,

Yoga and Veanta. Essays on the Gita, op.cit.. pp.62-86.

108
'The Yoga of the Intelligent Will’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.88.
109
‘The Yoga of the Intelligent Will’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.89.
110 'The Yoga of the Intelligent Will', Essays on the Gita, p.cit., pp.91-2.

111 The Yoga of the Intelligent Will’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.88-9.

217
renouncement and freedom from passions and emotions. The two forms of intelligence

correspondingly perform two different functions: Social consciousness takes and keeps
man in the confusing state of prakriti with its three gunas, but the brahmic

consciousness leads to liberation. In other words, standing above and beyond the social

consciousness, prakriti, and hence, in the brahmic consciousness was, for Aurobindo,

the first ray of liberation according to the Gita.

For evidently there are two possibilities of the action of the intelligent will. It may take its
downward and outward orientation towards a discursive action of the perceptions and the will in
the triple play of prakriti, or it may take its upward and inward orientation towards a settled peace
and equality in the calm and immutable purity of the conscious silent soul no longer subject to the

distractions of Nature.............. It is the upward and inward orientation of the intelligent will that we
must resolutely choose with a settled concentration and perseverance, vyavasaya: we must fix it
112
firmly in the calm self-knowledge of the Purusa.

But, Aurobindo insisted, when the text talked about the renouncement of prakriti,

it did not speak about the Samkhya type of physical renunciation of work and activity.

Such a subjective and physical relinquishment was impossible; its possibility lies only in

the physical death of body; but it was retirement, nivritti, from the objects of senses and
not sense organs itself. And this nivritti is possible “by the vision of the Supreme.”113

Thus, Aurobindo rejects the Samkhya kind of reading of the text.114

It is not an external asceticism, the physical renunciation of the objects of sense that I am
teaching, suggests Krishna immediately to avoid a misunderstanding, which is likely at once to
arise. Not the renunciation of the Samkyas or the austerities of the rigid ascetic with his fasts, his
maceration of the body, his attempt to abstain even from food; that is not the self-discipline or the
abstinence which I mean, for I speak of an inner withdrawal, a renunciation of desire.............there
is nivrttr, cessation of the object, visaya vinivartante, but no subjective cessation, no nivrtti of the

112
‘The Yoga of the Intelligent Will', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.91-2.
113
'The Yoga of the Intelligent Will’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.93.
114
In several essays Aurobindo argues that the Samkhya way of reading the text is wrong. He

states several verses from the text to establish that their position is untenable. One example: “For
none stands even for a moment not doing work; every one is made to do action helplessly by the
modes born of prakriti.” 'Works and Sacrifice’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.100.

218
 mind; but the senses are of the mind, subjective, and subjective cessation of the rasa is the only
115
real sign of mastery.

The Gita, hence, Aurobindo thought, did not use karma merely in the physical

work or movement; in fact, it was least bothered about the physical activity. Its main

concern was mental activity; since the mental existence was the instrumental cause for

all physical activities, its purification was the first requirement; the physical purification

would naturally and automatically follow from it. Any work done through this purified
mind does not bring bondage to the soul as “the soul has naiskarmya."ns

Therefore, what was important, if not possible thing was, the intelligent
withdrawal of the will from the activity of prakriti into the desireless calm, unity and

passionless serenity of brahmic poise (pure soul); the action of prakriti through physical
body would continue but not as a desire but as a natural process.117 This was how,

Aurobindo thought, spiritually as part of the brahmic intelligence, as part of the original
and pure soul by overriding prakriti, that the Gita advanced the concept of nishkama

karma. Only in this state that the disireless could really be desireless as he had
exceeded prakriti, and hence, the ordinary motive of human activities, desires, from

man’s normal temperament of the sense-seeking thought and will with its passion and
ignorance. In this state knowledge and works were not antithetical, the former finds its

fulfilment in the latter, otherwise in social intelligence not only knowledge and karma

were antithetical but also bondage and hence, it could not become desireless.

What is the essence of this self-control, what is meant by action done as Yoga, Karma yoga? It is
non-attachment, it is to do works without clinging with the mind to the objects of sense and the
fruit of the works. Not complete inaction, which is an error, a confusion, a self-delusion, an
impossibility, but action full and free done without subjection to sense and passion, desireless
and unattached works, are the first secret of perfection.............. For knowledge does not mean
renunciation of works, it means equality and non-attachment to desire............high-uplifted above
the lower instrumentation of prakriti.............. self-knowledge and the pure objectless self-delight
of spiritual realisation, niyatam karma. Buddhiyoga is fulfilled by karmayoga; the Yoga of self-

115 The Yoga of the Intelligent Will’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.92-3.

116
'Works and Sacrifice’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 100-01.
117 ‘Works and Sacrifice', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.101-02.

219
 liberating intelligent will find its full meaning by the Yoga of desireless works. Thus the Gita

founds its teaching of the necessity of desireless works, nishkama karma, and unites the
subjective practice of the Samkhyas-rejecting their merely physical rule - with the practice of
Yoga.118

Aurobindo criticises the sociological and ethical interpretation of nishkama karma

as narrow and irrational. He also criticises the Samkhya reading of it as untenable. For

ethical interpretation nishkama karma means the disinterested performance of one’s

social duty,119 while for the Samkhya it denoted the disinterested performance of Vedic

sacrifice. But both were based on the acknowledgement of the inescapable character of

karma. For, the karmayogi performs these social duties not because they were enjoined
by the Sastras but because they were compelled by prakhti, for the Samkhya performs

sacrifice not because it was compelled by prakriti but because it was enjoined by the

Sastras. Both regarded nishkama as derived from the pure reason and will (sattva), as
part of prakriti.™ But neither of these, Aurobindo thought, was the real meaning of the

nishkama karma of the text. For him, desirelessness was used in the text to imply the
action done impersonally (original, pure soul distinct from prakriti) without any trace of

influence of prakriti (ego). This impersonality could neither be achieved by simple

following of the Sasthc rule nor could doing one’s social duty directed and determined

by prakriti attain it, it could be attained by over passing both in the pure soul. Hence the

social interpretation of nishkama karma had only the semblance of desirelessness and

impersonality.

This is how the Gita’s doctrine of desireless work is often interpreted. But it seems to me that the
Gita's teaching is not so crude and simple, not so local and temporal and narrow as all that. It is
large, free, subtle and profound; it is for all time and for all men, not for a particular age and

118
‘Works and Sacrifice', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.101-02.
119
Nityakarma’, kartavyakarma’ and niyatakarma’ were the terms on which, karmayogic,

Samkhya and Aurobindo, advanced different meanings, according to their customary readings of
the text. For the ethical readers it implied the formal social works fixed by an external rule; for the
Samkhya it denoted fixed Vedic sacrifice; for Auroindo it implies desireless spiritual works of the
soul controlled not by external rules but by the liberated soul and purified buddhi, Works and
Sacrifice’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 102-03
120 The Divine Worker', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p. 171.

220
 country. Especially, it is always breaking free from external forms, details, dogmatic notions and

going back to principles and the great facts of our nature and our being. It is a work of large
philosophic truth and spiritual practicality, not of constrained religious and philosophical formulas
and stereotyped dogmas.......... For what we call ordinarily disinterested action is not really
desireless; it is simply a replacement of certain smaller personal interests by other larger desires,
which have only the appearance of being impersonal, virtue, country, mankind. All action,

moreover, as Krishna insists, is done by the Gunas of Prakriti, by our nature; in acting according
to the Sastra we are still acting according to our nature............we cannot become impersonal by
obeying something outside ourselves; for we cannot so get outside ourselves; we can only do it
by rising to the highest in ourselves, into our free soul and self........ has therefore no personal
interest,.............That is what the Gita teaches and desirelessness is only a means to this end, not
an aim in itself.........It is evident that ail works and not merely sacrifice and social duties can be
done in this spirit; any action may be done either from the ego-sense, narrow or enlarged, or for
121
the sake of the Divine.

In another essay too, Aurobindo argues that personal egoism (prakriti) was the

foundation for desires and in the impersonal (pure soul) performance of action, desire
could find no place.

Where there is not the personal egoism of the doer, desire becomes impossible; it is starved out,
122
sinks for want of a support, dies of inanition.

Having thus criticised the modern ka/mayogic interpretation of nishkama karma,

Aurobindo follows, the same method of reasoning to interpret the notion of sacrifice.
That the offering or sacrifice or yajna done by and derived from human reason followed
by will could not be taken as sacrifice, because for the Gita, pure sacrifice could not be

derived from ordinary human reason but only from the soul. Hence, when the Gita
spoke about sacrifice, Aurobindo argues, it did not do it in the Vedic sense because in

Vedic sacrifice the intelligent will does not transcend itself from the differentiating power

of nature, from ego, mind, senses and from the subjective and objective elements, and

121 ,
Works and Sacrifice’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 103-04.
122 , The Divine Worker1, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.170.

221
motivated by and for the acquisition of transient pleasure.123 Nor did it speak in the

sense of social sacrifice for the same reason. The Gita regarded all those works as

sacrifice, offering to the divine which are derived from the pure soul (not dominated or
influenced by prakriti) in which the intelligent will would return from the differentiating
powers of nature into the undifferentiating and immutable.124

But it did not mean that the Gita denounced altogether the Vedic sacrifice as

useless, as it did not denounce altogether prakriti; its insistence was to stand above

prakriti and Vedic sacrifice in the pure purusa. Vedic sacrifice and its material results

were good, and better than the social sacrifice, as it would in the long run, put the doer

in the right track of spirituality, but one would have to transcend it for the true spiritual

realisation and to determine sacrifice from the soul. It was in this sense, Aurobino

argues, the Gita regarded Vedic sacrifice as inferior to the brahmic sacrifice.

He may be known in an inferior action through the Devas, the gods, the powers of the divine soul
in Nature and in the eternal interaction of these powers and the soul of man, mutually giving and
receiving, mutually helping, increasing, raising each other's workings and satisfaction, a

commerce in which man rises towards a growing fitness for the supreme good............But the
highest only comes when the sacrifice is no longer to the gods, but to the one all-pervading
Divine established in the sacrifice............. In that self and not in any personal enjoyment he finds
his sole satisfaction, complete content, pure delight; he has nothing to gain by action or inaction,
depends neither on gods nor men for anything, seeks no profit from any, for the self-delight is all-
sufficient to him, but does works for the sake of the Divine only, as a pure sacrifice, without
125
attachment or desire.................. Thus is sacrifice his way of attaining to the Highest.

123
Aurobindo explicitly states that the notion of sacrifice in the text could not be taken in the sense

of Veaf/c-ritualistic sacrifice. After explaining and establishing the meaning of Vedic sacrifice as
derived from prakriti and not purusa, Aurobindo states, “obviously, this cannot be the meaning of
the Gita, for it would be in contradiction with all the rest of the book” The Significance of
Sacrifice', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 107-109.
124
'The Significance of Sacrifice', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.110.
125
'The Significance of Sacrifice’,Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.110-11

222
 For Aurobino, the concept of lokasamgraha too was not used in the text in the
socio-utilitarian sense; but its concern was out rightly spiritual.126

It was for the same reason and on the same ground, as the nishkama karma and

sacrifice that Aurobindo criticises and rejects the modern ethico-social interpretation of

lokasamgraha.

Let us clearly understand that they must not be interpreted, as the modern pragmatic tendency
concerned much more with the present affairs of the world than with any high and far off spiritual

possibility seeks to interpret them, as no more than a philosophical and religious justification of
social service, patriotic, cosmopolitan and humanitarian effort and attachment to the hundred
eager social schemes and dreams which attract the modem intellect. It is not the rule of a large
moral and intellectual altruism, which is here announced, but that of a spiritual unity with God and
with this world of beings who dwell in him and in whom he dwells. It is not an injunction to
subordinate the individual to society and humanity or immolate egoism on the altar of the human
collectivity, but to fulfil the individual in God and to sacrifice the ego on the one true altar of the
all-embracing Divinity. The Gita moves on a plane of ideas and experiences higher than those of
the modern mind which is at the stage indeed of a struggle to shake off the coils of egoism, but is
127
still mundane in its outlook and intellectual and moral rather than spiritual in its temperament.

Aurobindo criticised the use of the term lokasamgraha to mean pragmatic social

action, to bring about universal social welfare. He thought, it would be subordinating

spiritual life to the claims of the society. The Gita was not a text on ethico-social

126
It is interesting to note here that most of the interpretations of the Gita took its notion of

lokasamgraha exclusively in the utilitarian sense of external social welfare of the people, and
sacrifice as one’s sacrifice with this object. Even Tilak, Vivekananda, Gandhi etc., in spite of their
other differences in the whole interpretation of the text, argued that the doer (after realisation), by
doing social works dispassionately as a sacrifice for the welfare of the people (lokasamgraha)
obtains merit and by that merit gradually attains liberation. Aurobindo, on the other hand,
criticises the interpretation of lokasamgraha, sacrifice and nishkama karma in the text in these
social meanings, in severe terms and argued that this was because of the influence of the
European utilitarian philosophy. For him the concepts were used in the text only and utterly in the
spiritual and not in the social sense. It may also be noted here that etymologically the term
lokasamgraha implies “holding together'. For Aurobindo, “holding together” implies bringing the
soul in the prakriti to the oneness of the immutable, all-pervading, ancient Brahman. Essays on
the Gita, op.cit., pp. 110-116,127-131,136-167 etc.
127
‘The Principle of Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.128.

223
principles; it was a spiritual text and hence, it preferred man’s response to the spiritual

call as more important than the social life. Hence, it expected the individual to surpass

his personal egoistic aim not in another egoistic aim of collective society but in spiritual

life.

The Indian social tendency has been to subordinate the individual to the claims of society, but
Indian religious thought and spiritual seeking have been always loftily individualistic in their aims.
An Indian system of thought like the Gita’s cannot possibly fail to put first the development of the
individual, the highest need of the individual, his claim to discover and exercise his largest
spiritual freedom, greatness, splendour, royalty,- his aim to develop into the illumined seer and
king in the spiritual sense of seerdom and kingship, which was the first great charter of the ideal
humanity promulgated by the ancient Vedic sages, To exceed himself was their goal for the
individual, not by losing all his personal aims in the aims of an organised human society, but by
enlarging, heightening, aggrandising himself into the consciousness of the Godhead. The rule
given here by the Gita is the rule for the master man, the superman, the divinised human being,
the Best, not in the sense of any Nietzschean, any one-sided and lopsided, any Olympian,
Apollonian or Dionysian, any angelic or demoniac supermanhood, but in that of the man whose
whole personality has been offered up into the being.......... by loss of the smaller self has found
128
its greater self, has been divinised.

In fact, Aurobindo took the term lokasamgraha in the text for two meanings in two

different occasions, but both were in the spiritual senses. First, when he was
interpreting the Gita’s institution of avatar- “the avatar would perform all the functions,

although he has nothing to do in this world or not do in this world as he achieved union
with the divine, madbhavam agatah, for the lokasamgraha as sacrifice”.129 Aurobindo

read the term lokasamgraha here to imply the attempt on the part of avatar to

spiritualise people, to hold them together, to lift them from the magnetic objectives of the

external world, and to set their egoistic lower personality on the track of higher
unegoistic spirituality. This was the desire, which the person in brahmic consciousness
would have to keep in his action, a desire not of the mind but of the pure soul.130 The

motive behind works of lokasamgraha, cikirsur, was not personal or social or moral, for

128
'The Principle of Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 129,137-178.
129
'The Principle of Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.129.
130
‘The Principle of Divine Works', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.129-30.

224
that had been abandoned, “since the liberated man had passed beyond the lower

distinction of sin and virtue, good and evil.” Further, it was not self-development by

means of disinterested works, “for the call had been answered, the development was
perfect and fulfilled”.131 The motives behind them were the compulsive nature of

physical works through body and spiritual call to enlighten others to “prevent the world
from falling into the bewilderment and confusion.132

Secondly, in the essay on The principle of Divine Works’, “the sadhaka

(perfected pursuer) would perform all functions as sacrifice for lokasamgraha”,

Aurobindo took the term lokasamgraha to mean ‘for the sake of God’. Hence, he would

perform all functions for the spiritualization of the people and this function was for the
sake of God. He not only makes his function derived from the Brahman but also

attempts, by providing his own example, and inspiration, to make other’s functions too
derived from the same root.133 This was the meaning, Aurobindo thought, of the Gita's

notions of nishkama karma, sacrifice and lokasamgraha.

But neither nishkama karma nor sacrifice nor lokasamgraha, Aurobindo thought,

was the supreme aim of the text. The supreme word was not the ‘brahmic

consciousness’; it was only a gateway, and foundation or the starting point in the gospel

of spiritual work. These were not ends but only means, ways for responding to spiritual

call. The final aim was to transcend all of them and to unite with the all-pervading
Puruhottamn4

By interpreting nishkama karma, sacrifice and lokasamgraha as integral to the

brahmic consciousness, and calling the subordination of society and social interests to

individual spiritual interest, Aurobindo strongly subscribed to a form of spiritual elitism. It

also implies that he was quite disregardful about the masses, constituting the nation. He
did not place importance to different pursuits that individuals carry out in social life

according to their ability and competence. He did not place any emphasis even to socio-

'The Principle of Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, p.cit., pp. 129-30.
132
‘The Principle of Divine Works’, Essaysonthe Gita, op.cit., pp.129-131,137-178.
133
‘The Principle of Divine Works’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p. 131.
134
‘The Lord of the Sacrifice’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp. 118,125 etc. It’s meaning is that after

realisation he lives on the earth to act as a channel of the divine. In the death he would merge
with the all-pervading Purushottma because, for such a soul has no re-birth.

225
ethical virtues that build, guide and control social life and social order. In fact, Aurobindo

did not reckon with the existence of large masses in India who by disposition or

necessity cannot undertake the kind of journey that he had in store for India. More

importantly, he ignored the tremendous impact that the Gita has had in shaping the

ethico-social life of the people, on which thinkers like Gandhi and others attempted to

rejuvenate Indian nation.

Karma,Jnana,Bhakti and Self-realisation:

It was explicit in Aurobindo’s interpretation that the concepts of karma, jnana and
bhakti were treated not as compartmentalised or competing elements but

complementary paths, and ‘three interdependent' movements merging in ‘integral

life’.135 Neither karma nor jnana nor bhakti alone in itself as exclusivist ways, would take

man to the highest state of Parameshvara, nor would they make him effective channel

and instrument of the divine. For such a pursuit, mere jnana or karma or bhakti was not

enough; karma would have to be united with jnana and both would have to be

coalesced in bhakti. This integrated life, not mere desirelessness, was the highest

teaching of the text, a life where there was a unity of desireless karma, desireless jnana

and bhakti into one ‘integrated truth’. Jnana has its roots in karma and uses bhakti for its

fulfilment.

And this is done at one and the same time by three simultaneous movements,- an integral self­
finding through works founded in his and our spiritual nature, an integral self- becoming through
knowledge of the Divine Being in whom all exist and who is all, and-most sovereign and decisive
movement of all-an integral self-giving through love and devotion of our whole being to this All
and this Supreme attracted to the Master of our works, to the Inhabitant of our hearts, to the
continent of all our conscious existence. To him who is the source of all that we are, we give all
that we are. Our persistent consecration turns into knowledge of him all our knowing and into light
of his power all our action. The passion of love in our self-giving carries us up to him and opens
the mystery of his deepest heart of being. Love completes the triple cord of the sacrifice, perfects
136
the triune key of the highest secret, uttamam rahasyam.

135
‘The Synthesis of Devotion and Knowledge', Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.269.
136
'The Supreme Divine’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., p.276.

226
 First, there is the movement of knowledge, by which man realises the unity of self
137
and Paramatman and all existence and sees the body as representing lower nature.

This knowledge did not imply intellectual snobbery nor did it reflect spiritual bankruptcy,

nor even mere theoretical or bookish learning. It was spiritual vision or illumination, the

light by which one grows into one’s true being; it was that consciousness by which ego

was emptied and one sees all existence without exception in the self. True knowledge

would, therefore, by its very nature break barriers and reflect itself in all-embracing love

expressed in dedicated and detached service; far from being in conflict jnana and karma
were inevitably interdependent.138

Second, that which had been gained by knowledge would continue in the step of
karma in the form of submission of the entire will, thought and action to the
Parameshvaran9 But this submission of the will, thought and action was not passionate
but supported by knowledge and bhakti140

Last, knowledge gained in the first movement and the submissive spirit obtained
in the second step would find their fulfilment in bhakti.141 Bhakti supported by
knowledge and action would take the form of sacrifice.142 This was how Aurobindo

understood the Gita’s synthesis of karma, jnana and bhakti in the integrated life.

So comes a synthesis of mind and heart and will in the one self and spirit and with it the synthesis
of knowledge, love and works in this integral union, this embracing God-realisation, this divine
yoga.143

And when man develops into integrated life, he becomes one with God and an
effective channel of Him, the highest teaching of the text.144

137
'Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, Essays on the Gita, op.cit., pp.309-10.
138
'Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, op.cit., pp.310-11.
139
'Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, op.cit., p.311.
140
'Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, op.cit., p.314.
141 Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, op.cit., p.313.

142
‘Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, op.cit., p.311.
143
‘Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, op.cit., p. 311.
144
'Works, Devotion and Knowledge’, op.cit., pp. 315-16.

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 To Aurobindo, then, the Gita does not see karma, jnana and bhakti as

independent courses. It synthesises them in the ‘integral life’. Its core teaching lies in

the acquisition of integral knowledge, the knowledge of Purushottama by using

these paths. He insisted that the ultimate aim of the text does not lie in nishkama karma,

or in the acquisition of knowledge by intellect and renouncing life and the world, or in the

passionate adoration of the divine, but in transcending all of them and becoming one

with the supreme being.

Aurobindo versus Tilak, Vivekanada and Gandhi:

It is instructive to compare Aurobindo’s interpretation of the Gita with those of

other nationalist writers of the time, particularly Tilak, Vivekanda and Gandhi.
Aurobindo’s position was markedly different from the latter although they all were

agreed on certain issues such as the notion of the absolute, qualities of the seeker, the
paths of karma, jnana and bhakti, India’s moral mission in the world etc.

First, Tilak, Vivekananda and Gandhi were broadly in agreement that the
message of the Gita was a message to the ordinary man on his own grounds, and was

applicable to his state in society; the prior acquisition of ethical qualifications was not
necessary for the purpose. In short the object of the text was to make men ‘ethical
persons’; its teaching culminating in the acquisition of sattva guna, which was the

quality of the Sthitaprajna. Ascending to the state of sattva and becoming Sthitaprajna

was self-realisation. It made man an ethical man by erasing personal ego, conceit and

passion and disposed him to altruistic, social and ethical pursuits. Aurobindo located

this reading within the framework of general utilitarian philosophy of the West and
argued that their object was to secure maximum service from the people to society but

the Gita’s teaching was not limited to social concern. Although, Tilak in his Gita-
Rahasya, severely attacked the utilitarian philosophy of Mill, Bentham and others and
presented his theory of action in opposition to it, Aurobindo felt that the means and end
relationship expressed therein was utilitarian in nature. Hence, he called these ethical

readings as ‘European’ or ‘Europeanised Indian’ readings. In fact, Aurobindo argued

that the application of their deductions to ordinary life would have the most pernicious

consequences as they wield not liberate man from the entanglement of this world. For
him, before applying the Gita’s message to one’s life, one should have to acquire

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certain moral qualifications, and the most important among them was, reaching the

state of sattvic quality, the corresponding ethical life and the brahmic state. Where the

teachings of the Gita ends for Tilak, Vivekananda and Gandhi, it begins for Aurobindo.

Moreover, to Tilak, Vivekananda and Gandhi, the Gita was an ethical text situating its

teaching to ordinary conditions of life and taking its adherents to the height of ethics.

Hence, it was a text of life, ethics and philosophy of action. To Aurobindo, it was a

spiritual text, beginning its teaching from ethical grounds and proceeding to the height of

spirituality. Hence it was a metaphysical treatise advocating surrender to the will of God

rather than an ethically desirable life of action.

Second, Aurobindo did not treat the Gita as an historical text, and like ethical

readers, regarded it as an ahistoric narrative. Still there were significant differences

between them. Gandhi regarded it as an allegorism of internal struggle and felt that its

stress was not on external activities. Its objective was self-purification and purification of

the sense-motives and reason and not of manifest activities. He believed that if the
motive is altruistic and pure then action would also be pure, which made the Gita an

allegory of internal struggle. Aurobindo, however, insisted that it was not merely

concerned with internal struggle or at any rate not with it alone. It considered external

action as important as internal struggle because it was external action that led to the
mobility and evolution of the universe.

Third, Aurobindo explicitly stated that the Gita was not a text on non- violence as
non-violence was not its theme. Gandhi, on the other hand, thought that since the Gita

was an allegorical design for the internal character, its objective was to purify reason,

mind, motives and senses, and this purification could not be achieved through violent

motives. Through violent activities in external world one could not become internally
pure. Hence he saw the Gita as a text on non- violence. Unlike Gandhi, Aurobindo

thought that external activities were as important as internal activities and hence the text
saw violence (destruction) and non-violence (construction) as necessary and indivisible
elements of the universe. For him, the Gita did not glorify violence but saw innate

propensity for violence in the universal construct. Violence is justified when it was
pursued for righteous cause of spiritual progress, or conversely, since the manifest

world is a mere tool in the hands of God, only for righteous purpose violence would take
place. Every violent activity is a divine movement, the will of the divine and the seeds of
violence in the embryonic form are sown in the universe and hence it is righteous. This

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meaning, Aurobindo thought, is explicitly clear in the central verse of the text that God is

responsible for every happening in the world. Regarding the Gita’s views on violence

Tilak and Aurobindo seem to have a lot in common. Both justified it, however, for

different purposes.
Fourth, they adopted the notions of karma, jnana and bhakti in accordance to

their social and spiritual perspectives and pressed them into action. For Tilak and

Gandhi, man should perform his allotted social duties in the social organisation through

jnana and bhakti. Hence, karma, jnana and bhakti in the text, are pragmatic notions,
uniting not competing, making man moral and raising his action from the mundane to

the ethical plane, leaving the bondage of the lower consciousness for the liberty of a
higher ethical law. For Aurobindo, this is not the case. He rised these notions to the

pedestal of spirituality. He too fully agreed with them that karma understood by the text

was integrated with knowledge and devotion, but not in the socio-pragmatic sense of
transforming social being into ethical being, but in the spiritual sense of transforming

ethical being into spiritual being. Hence, these three paths together lead man to spiritual

realisation and conscious surrender of his whole self to the supreme will. Aurobindo
rejected centrality of the principle ‘karmanyevadhikaraste ma phalesu kadacana', in the

second chapter of the text and opted for the principle of ‘sarvadharman parityajya mam

ekam saranam vraja’, found in the last chapter (eighteenth) of the text.
Fifth, regarding the conception of realisation’ and ‘mukthf, Aurobindo’s

viewpoint differs fundamentally from Tilak and Gandhi. Gandhi understood ‘realisation’

as becoming an ethical person by transcending ego and passions and reaching the
Sattvic state. Hence, realisation was a moral uplifting of oneself. Aurobindo understood
attainment of the sattvic state by retreating from ego and passions as only the beginning
in the ascending process of evolution. Hence, realisation was not simply moral

upliftment of one's being but spiritual upliftment. Aurobindo proceeds on the same line
of reasoning to understand the notions of equality, Swadharma and Svabhava,
lokasamgraha etc. Equality, i.e. seeing oneself in all and all in oneself, for instance, is
not possible for an ordinary social being but only for him who cuts himself from all such
social relations.
Sixth, for Aurobindo, the Gita expounded two types of wills, desires and motives
in actions. One was the will and the desire derived from the lower prakriti (a product of
social relations). Any will or desire or motive derived from this was contrary to dharma

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and therefore, it was to be transcended. The other will was derived from the Svabhava,

jiva or one’s real nature; it was not a mere ethical will. For ethical readers, the Gita

never propounded two ‘wills’. For them, when man reaches to the sattvic will he has

reached to his highest state. The sattvic will was, therefore, the goal to be reached. For
Aurobindo, ‘desireless action’ performed in this state, as depicted by the karmayogic

proponents, can never be really ‘desireless’. It can never become dharma of the Gita.

True desirelessness and dharma lie above and beyond this state. In short, ‘desire’ will

continue even in the highest state but it is not to be regarded as desire, as it was

purposeful will’ and hence, not contrary to the integral life.

Thus, for Aurobindo, the central teaching of the text, the supreme secret,
guhyataram’, lies in ‘surrendering one’s will to the will of God.’ He sees everything as

representing the will of the divine, the material forces, whether animate or inanimate,

manifest or obscure, are the vessels of the divine will. He sees not merely divine

workers as instruments of the divine will, but each and every part of action, good or ego

based as the desire of God. Each action is an attempt to unfold and unveil the

concealed truth (Svabhava), the outward actions through bodily instruments and their

consequences being of relatively less important for spirituality of the Gita. For him,

every concept used in the text has a spiritual core; not ethical or social, as understood
by other readers of the text. The notions of karma, jnana, and bhakti are the ways and
‘Integral Brahman’ is the goal in the ethico-religious pursuits. The ethical interpretations

of them and their other associated concepts, is for Aurobindo, a misreading of the text.

Aurobindo thought that even the concept of ‘personal God’, which is the centre of focus

in ethical readings, and interpreting it in tune with the varied capacities and intellectual

levels of men, and the notion of ‘impersonal God’, never implied any such meanings.
For him, it is a point of distinction between the Vedantic way of spiritual pursuit and the

one which it is pointing towards. For the Vedanta the seeker in his highest state would
concentrate his mind only on the immutable and unmanifest Brahman who is above all
the universe of relations. For the Gita the immutable and the unmanifest are not utterly
immutable and unmanifest but mutable and manifest in the world in the form of jiva

(personal God), which is in its highest state supracosmic but in nature it is below para
prakriti and veiled representation. Therefore, personal God does not imply idol worship

of Brahman but worship through personal God (atman). The unmanifest is adorable
through bhakti, understandable through jnana and realisable through karma, integrally.

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Therefore, personal God is jiva, (atman) impersonal implies supracosmic; worship of the

immutable through the mutable jiva. Liberation, too, does not imply by passing the

personal God or abolition of it, but realisation of the one supreme spirit through personal

God. It is in this spirit that Aurobindo depicts it’s various notions and institutions-
chaturvamya, Svabhava, Swadharma, punarjanma (re-birth) etc. Therefore, Aurobindo
does not look to the Gita for a philosophy of action, as his firm belief was that any action
derived from reason, whether in its pure or maligned form (sattva or tamas), represents

egoism. It becomes unegoistic and pure when it is derived from the true nature of the
universe, Svabhava or atman. This kind of reading goes completely against the general

orthodox and ethico-karmayogic interpretations of the Bhagavadgita.

It is worth noting in this concluding part that the kind of interpretation of the text

by Aurobindo in the midst of the articulation of his meaning of nationalism and national
independence would imply that he did not regard nationalism a mere anti-colonial

consciousness. He not only raised the limitations of political nationalism but the

inadequacy of the anti-colonial nationalism to fully constitute the nation. By setting his

sight beyond the ‘negative’ and ‘oppositional’ politics of the anti-colonial movement of

his time, he drew attention to the different dimensions of nationalism- cultural,

civilisational, ethical and spiritual. In his interpretation of the Gita, it is quite clear that the

significance of national movement was not merely attaining national independence. Of

course, it was important in so far as it sets the people of India back on the lost track of
the Aryan culture’. But its real significance consisted in the attainment of ethical, and

through it spiritual, and hence, mental liberation and not merely physical freedom. The
political and national emancipation was needed but it could not be the goal of the

national struggle; it was only a means for a higher spirituality. National unity and identity
required a deeper foundation, and this could not be borrowed from the British culture

because they represented, in his opinion, tamasic guna, which was a ‘falsifying agent’ in
the spiritual evolution. It could be provided only by the great ideal of Aryan culture.
Further, freedom from the British subjection did not necessarily mean for him, the
attainment of Swaraj. Swaraj was not a political concept but ethical and spiritual, which

implied not being swayed by passions and blind ego-based vital urges, but
establishment of ‘Swaraf, within one self, in spiritual becoming. This could bring about
Swaraf in the real sense. In short, all material forces were the representations of the
divine will, mere vessels; the British rule in India representing ego, lower prakriti

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provided an opportunity for the illumination of Indians and made them seek the Aryan

culture. When he was arrested in 1908 by the British government for anti-government

activities, where, it is said, he read the ancient Indian scriptures extensively, he stated;

“The British imprisonment has given me an opportunity to see Purushottama. They are

the enemies who aspired my destruction but far from destruction, it constructed and

unfolded my truth”.

In conclusion;
Aurobindo brackets all the contemporary interpretations of the Gita that had

immediately preceded him as karmayogic interpretations, which are still caught up in the

insinuations of the world. This is based upon his conception of the two-fold journey, the
ascent and the descent. While the atman tends to attain the divine, that search could

be complete only by the divine descending into the self. He thinks that this alone can be
a feasible interpretation of the theory of avatar. The karmayogic interpretations mistake

the ascent of the soul for the descent of the divine. Therefore, they are primarily stuck in

the dynamics of this world and in offering blue prints for its improvement.

For Aurobindo the surrender of the self before the divine is the essential pre­

requisite for the ultimate release from this world. This is exactly what the Gita upholds.

Arjuna is asked to give up all his concerns and surrender himself to the divine will, to the
descent of the divine. Accordingly Aurobindo privileges certain parts of the Gita over

others.

But the self, which surrenders itself to the divine is not the ordinary self but the
self which has succeeded in breaking all its attachments to the world. The Gita is

addressed to such an ascendant self and not to the common people. The elitism that

Aurobindo subscribes to marks him out from all other major interpretations of the Gita of

the contemporary times. It is the spiritually ascendant elites who are the bearers of the

age-old spiritual quest, the representative quest of India. For Aurobindo in this quest the
true nationalism of India rests. It is this exemplar that India should hold forth before the
world.
Aurobindo sees Indian nationalism as an avatar and consequently as the descent

of God on earth. This sets the task before the Indian nation; it should pursue a
relentless spiritual quest, which was its characteristic in the past. For him, the masses

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have no much role to play in this quest, except being the silent spectators at the most.

By disposition or necessity they cannot undertake the kind of journey that India has in

store for itself.

Aurobindo thinks that the overthrow of the British from India would lead to the

flourishing of such a spiritual quest which is not going to be confined merely to India. It

is on the basis of this criterion that a fundamental critique of the moral foundations of

the West has to be carried out instead of bowing down to their ideologies and

institutions. He shares the widespread belief that India is destined to be the spiritual

leader of the world.

In Aurobindo’s formulation the historicity of the nation is fully undermined. The

nation is the site of ethic, morality and spirituality. Further, there is little focus in

Aurobindo on the constitutional order and the organisation of political power of the

nation. Aurobindo marginalizes human freedom in a central way and exalts the divine

will. Consequently there is not much place in his interpretation for the reason, dignity

and capacity of the average people. In a way Aurobindo’s ideal is the transcendent and

supremely free divine akin to the God of Calvin.

Human freedom, individually and collectively, has little role to play in shaping

events and processes. They are ultimately governed by the divine will. The course of
violence or non-violence is not open to human options. The divine plan is in operation

through either of them or even without them. This position of Aurobindo severely
undercuts a moral regime founded on human reason. In a way human reason is

reduced to being a spectator before the divine splendour. The attribution of agency to
human person itself becomes an illusion.

Although, it is assumed that Aurobindo seems to disregard any consideration

towards concrete social relations, he definitely upholds the vama distinctions in the

society on grounds of specialisation and functional divisions of the society by giving

spiritual aura to it. Such specialisation is attributed to temperament and the nature of the
concerned social agent, Aurobindo attributes this to different kinds of souls that social
agency embodies. In a way he fashioned an overt spiritual racism through the gradation
of souls.

Aurobindo seems to reproduce the orientalist image of India as primarily a

spiritual realm and is little concerned with the socio-political and ethical challenges
before the Indian nations.

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