CWTVKS Volume 3

SRI AUROBINDO ON THE GITA

The Message of the Gita (as interpreted by Sri Aurobindo) is the title of the work that has been prepared and recently brought out by Sjt. Anilbaran Roy of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The specialty that attaches itself to Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation of the Gita lies chiefly in the spirit of his approach as well as in the object and method of his treatment of the subject. It will do well to refer to it at the outset in a few sentences taken from the introduction before considering what precisely Sjt. Roy has achieved in presenting the book under notice.

“We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future. A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influence of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning of Buddhism, but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modern knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil.” That Sri Aurobindo has made a very large and best use of the Gita by a liberal seeking in it for the basis of a divine life on earth to which his yoga leads could be seen from the following passage. “But just as the past syntheses have taken those which preceded them for their starting point, so also must that of the future, to be on firm ground, proceed from what the great bodies of realised spiritual thought and experience in the past have given. Among them the Gita takes a most important place.”

Therefore his object in writing the Essays on the Gita is not a scholastic or academical scrutiny of thought, nor to place its philosophy in the history of metaphysical speculation,” nor does he deal with it in the manner of the analytical dialectician. We approach it for help and light,” he says, “and our aim must be to distinguish its essential and living message, that in it which humanity has to seize for its perfection and highest spiritual welfare.”

Sri Aurobindo’s Essays on the Gita constitutes a standing monument of his luminous contribution to the literature extant on the subject. It enters into an elaborate discussion of the many lines of philosophic thought with their practical bearing on life that are dealt with in the Gita and vividly brings to light the great synthesis arrived at therein of the three major paths of yoga, viz., jnana, bhakti and karma — the lines of knowledge, devotion and action. The plan of the work is such that it has not admitted of the Sanskrit text with English translation of the verses finding a place in the body of the work.

Now let me mention the main features of Sjt. Anilbaran’s book, in order that the reader can judge its value to the student of the Gita in general, especially to the student who is interested in appreciating the Sanskrit text closely in the same spirit as underlies the Essays.

Here the Sanskrit text is printed in Devanagari script verse by verse with English translation, and the commentary follows in the manner of the ancient bhashyas. While the translation of the Slokas is rightly a free rendering quite in consonance with the spirit of the text in the light of the commentary, the latter is the result of a remarkable skill and diligence involved in the selection of relevant passages from the Essays on the Gita. The titles of the 24 articles which form the Essays are distributed in their proper order and arranged under each chapter and mentioned in the “ Contents” and this is followed by an illuminating synopsis of each of the 18 chapters of the Gita. There are three appendices following the body of the work — one on the story of the Gita, another on the historicity of Sri Krishna and a third on some psychological presuppositions. A glossary of important Sanskrit terms of the text and an index for ready reference are given in the end.

A word about the English rendering of the text is necessary. It is patent and pleasing to note that Sjt. Roy in preparing the translations of the Sanskrit Slokas into English has taken scrupulous care to employ the expressions of Sri Aurobindo used in his Essays on the Gita, not only to bring out the spirit of it. I may, in illustration of this fact, cite a striking instance. The word mithyacara in ch. 3. v 6 has gained currency in its mistranslation into English as ’hypocrite’. Sri Aurobindo, discussing the verse in question in his Essays, remarks in a foot-note, “ I cannot think that mithyacara means a hypocrite. How is a man hypocrite who inflicts on himself so severe and complete a privation? He is mistaken and deluded, vimudhatma, and his acara, his formally regulated method of self-discipline, is a false and vain method, ”

And this is Roy’s translation of the verse: “Who controls the organ of action, but continues in his mind to remember and dwell upon the objects of sense, such a man has bewildered himself with false notions of self-discipline.”

In the closing portion of the commentary, a few crowning sentences are given summing up the message of the Gita as interpreted by Sri Aurobindo: “Know then yourself; know your true self to be God and one with the self of all others; know yourself to be a portion of God.

“Live in what you know; live in self, live in your supreme spiritual nature, be united with God and Godlike.

“Offer first all your actions as a sacrifice to the Highest and the One in you and to the Highest and the One in the world; deliver all you are and do into his hands for the supreme and universal Spirit to do through you his own will and works in the world.”