The Sense of The Bhagavad Gītā

Introduction

The sense of the Gita, of which surface mind has no clue, cannot be confined to a set of hymns sung in the midst of a great battle or what human intelligence has derived so far out of them by reading or by close observation of their moral and ethical implications; such a pursuit of its esoteric sense can take us no further than to the precipice of a moral dilemma as to the need of war and violence, when the Sattwic impulse seems to lead us away from them to a sense of peace and harmony, though not yet to a spiritual light and liberation of the individual or humanity. A higher action otherwise indicated by the Godhead at the outset of the battle but not revealed abruptly enough, but shown one by one as part of a progressive revelation of Yoga of perfection in works, while also arriving through the heart by more than mere indication the integral part which devotion plays in the life of an aspirant, is one of the essential and dominant aspects of Gita’s teachings.

Gita also arrives by insisting on knowledge of Brahman by inner reflection and spiritual realisation but without digressing from the rest or by positing a solitary approach to the Divine. It combines all these three approaches in a wider sublimation of truth and ananda of self-experience of the Divine as the universal Spirit.

We propose to discuss the spiritual message of the Gita by borrowing freely from the works of Sri Aurobindo, in whom we found our master-Impulse to Yoga and Spirituality, and to explain his spiritual philosophy to those who are in need of a simplified approach towards their spiritual pursuits.

It is our intention as well as our singular objective that the sense of the Gita reaches the buried Indian Psyche and invokes there the hidden aspiration towards the Divine and His chosen Nation, India.

There is somewhere in all of us a true Hindu, an Aryan of limitless puissance and it is to him that we have to take the message of the Gita, to invite him to come forward and govern the surface personality. This was the natural temper of every Hindu in the past ages, when he had fought against his foes and always won. He was a great King, an extraordinary Swordsman, a formidable Fighter, a Bhakta full of love and aspiration, a generous Spirit who ruled himself by his revealed inner nature, a humble Brahman who knew Infinity and its great body of manifestation and he was the living Spirit of Hinduism.

Arjuna was a great example of the Aryanhood.

Arjuna is not a mythical figure occurring in a great mass of poetry; he was of the same nature as every Hindu in his inner self. If we are real, he was real too. We are a living history of Sri Krishna and Arjuna; they are part of our integral nature.

And no system of Western Education foist on us can change the truth. It might blind us for a moment or for a decade and leave us helpless and incapacitated, but the moment has already arrived for the renaissance of the spiritual age in which both Kali and Krishna will take center stage and govern the core principle of spiritual transformation and lay a stronger foundation of Nation building, based on a pragmatic truth of the Spirit.

The Aryan in us is a catalyst to the great spiritual transformation in which the Hindu society will flourish both spiritually and materially, and no longer bound to imposed slavery and subservience to a lesser ideal.

This is the ideal before us, a most pragmatic message of the Gita. To realise that ideal is our goal and self-fulfilment in Krishna.