HUMAN NATURE AND THE BHAGAVAD GITA

P. Nagaraja Rao, M.A, D.Litt.

THE Gita conception of human nature is very sympathetic and scientific. Man is described as the combination of Spirit and Prakriti. Prakriti constitutes his physical body and psychological dispositions. The Lord says “that Nature and Spirit are both eternal and without beginning. All evolution and dispositions proceed from Prakriti. It gives rise to the body and the senses. The delusive identification of the self with it is the cause of the experience of pleasure and pain.” ^l It is these Gunas that determine the nature of one’s belief and faith. “The faith of each individual corresponds to his temperament and character. A man consists of the faith that is in him. Whatever his faith is he is.² The Upanishad declares that the spirit of man consists simply of his desires. As is his desire so is his resolve. So is the deed that he does, as is the deed that he does, so is that which he attains unto.”³ Nature is the physical and the biological capital of man. The author of the Gita does not shun it. He never idealises the actual. He knows that human nature in the raw is wild and ruinous. He too well knows that the ordinary pleasures of the unregenerate souls are those of the pig and their thoughts imbecile. He also further knows that the general behaviour of men is silly, at times insane and criminal too. ⁴ So the author of the Gita does not believe in the unrestrained free expression of the biological and the psychological in man. He lays down rules of conduct and training. Spiritual life does not grow like grass; nor does it grow in a vacuum. The Gita knows that we are not born with the discipline nor can it spring from anywhere. The Gita analysis of human beings and the classification of the modes of spiritual realisation appropriate to different temperaments is unique. In the words of Aldous Huxley the Gita analysis outlines a more complete and adequate classification of the modes of God-union than many others.⁵ We have in the history of human thought different types and modes of classification. For example we have the ancient Hindu method of classifying according to caste based on birth and talents. There is the time-honoured medical classification of the four humours: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile, and the four qualities: hot, cold, moist, and dry. We have the famous analysis of men, according to the psychologist, into two classes: the introvert and the extrovert. In Christian and Upanishadic thought we have the analysis of the spiritual aspirants into two: the man of contemplation and the man of works, i.e. the way of Mary and the way of Martha. This analysis, Huxley argues, is all too simple and inadequate. He asserts “in Hindu thought the outlines of a completer and more adequate classification are clearly indicated.” The ways leading to God-union are not two but three–the way of works, the way of knowledge, and the way of devotion, In the Bhagavad Gita Sri Krishna instructs Arjuna in all the three paths–liberation through action without attachment; liberation through knowledge of the self and the Absoute ground of all being with which it is identical; liberation through intense devotion to the Personal God or the divine incarnation.”⁶ The author of the Gita believes in self-effort and also grace. At times the emphasis is on grace, but never does he belittle human effort for the transformation of the nature of man. The Gita holds the hope of salvation on terms which are not out of the reach of the mass of mankind. ⁷ Its message is not a counsel of perfection. It admits of no rupture with normal life. It is against our flying into Ashramas or erect ivory towers. It conceives the possibility of attaining the best in this very life. It teaches us in the words of Sri Aurobindo “to know to possess and be the divine being in an animal and egotistic consciousness, to convert our twilight or obscure physical mentality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and a self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory satisfaction besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and realise the immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation.”⁸

The attainment of the spiritual realisation is not automatic nor inevitable process. Evolution at the human level becomes conscious and is not blind or mechanical. Man has to take his life on to a higher stage with his intelligence and reason. Evolution is self-consciousness at the human level. In the words of Pascal when man and cosmos are crushed, the cosmos does not know it but man knows it. The automatic and mechanical nature of evolution stops with man. Julian Huxley observes that man has reached his bio-mechanical limit. Hereafter development can only take place on the side of values, not physical power. “The quest for truth and knowledge, virtue and beauty and aesthetic expression and its satisfaction through the channels of science and philosophy, mysticism and morality, literature and arts, becomes one of the modes or avenues of evolutionary progress. On the whole biological progress in its later stages had been more concerned with independence of the environment than with control over it...we may anticipate in the future that the human control over environment will become increasingly devoted to securing greater independence–in other words greater freedom from material exigencies–and both of them together for securing greater degree of self-realisation and of the satisfaction of the human values.” ⁹

The verdict of science agrees with religion in the assertion that evolution at the level of man is free and not bound. Man has to choose the direction. It is no longer automatic and unconscious. In seeking to evolve, the Gita says man cannot fly away from the modes of thought and dispositions natural to his self. The devils that infest him are no red little imps but his own passions and prejudices. There is no hell except the conflict in his own person and the consequent disintegration. He has to pull himself up and integrate his personality. In this supreme spiritual art the Gita asks men not to deny modes of thought and ways of life natural to one’s station in life. The doctrine is described as Swadharma. The Lord declares: “Men attain to perfection by devotion to duties respective to their station in life. Perfection is attained by men when they follow their Swadharma. A man’s own natural duty even if it seems imperfectly done is better than work not naturally his own, even if this is well performed. When a man acts according to the Law of his nature he cannot be sinning. Therefore no one should give up his natural work even though he does it imperfectly.^l0 In another place the Lord declares: “It is better to do one’s own duty, however imperfectly, than to assume the duties of another person, however successful. Prefer to die doing one’s own duty, the duty of another imperils us.^l1

The Swadharma of an individual is determined by his Swabhava. The Gita itself interprets the term Swadharma as Swabhava. Psychologically speaking the doctrine of Swadharma implies “ease, spontaneity, efficiency; grace, and beauty.”^l2 While we see the Gita advocating the doctrine of “my station and my duty” it does not ask men to get stuck up at a particular level. It inveighs against spiritual stagnation and upbraids the men who are ignorant, slothful and doubting all the time. They never come to any good.^l3 The author of the Gita asks men to lift themselves up from the unregenerate state to that of perfection by wisdom, self-effort, and the grace of the Lord. Self-effort is raised to a very great state. The Lord says: “Let a man raise himself by his own self, let him not debase himself. For he himself is his friend and he himself is his foe.^l4 Mr. Huxley describes that by the disciplined self the Gita gives us a method of transforming our unregenerate selves into perfection. The average extrovert externalises all his emotions and lives a life of impulses. He is soft and pliable in his ways of life, indiscriminately amiable to all. He loves good food and enjoys eating in company. He always lives in society. If these impulses are not diverted the individual tends to be merely an entertaining person the prototype of Dicken’s Pickwick. Such an extrovert is asked by the author of the Gita to turn his animal gregariousness and soft human kindness into charity, devotion to a personal God, universal goodwill and compassion towards all sentient beings.^l5

There is a second type of extrovert whom Huxley describes. He is always agitated, his emotions furious, his muscles forever excited and he itches for action. He wants to work his lust for power on things. He is the soldier hero, the successful gangster or unthinking conqueror. If the man of action is allowed to go as he likes he becomes the prototype of Hitler or Hotspur of Shakespeare’s King Henry IV. If this man of action is to be vivified by religion the Gita asks him to give up those fatal accompaniments to the love of action, namely, lust for power, self-assertion and regard for the fruit of the action. The man of action with the above discipline becomes a Karma Yogin, not the mere busy-body.

There is another intellectual introvert. He is by nature interested in complexities of thought and constructions of systems. He loves solitude. He erects an ivory tower for his retreat. He hates the “boarding house and the barrack.” He believes that thinking is living and never gets over his self. He forgets that a strong psychological technique is necessary for transforming all his thought and religious experience. He is a victim of his own thought, constructs fantasies and visions. He forgets that art, literature, and poetry are not ends in themselves. Such intellectuals are the protoypes of Hamlet and Ivan Karmazov of Dostoevsky. They are satisfied with a shallow humanism and a sensuous pleasure arising from their intellect. The author of the Gita does not mistake it for Jnana. He differentiates between Jnana and Vijnana. He exhorts the intellectual introvert to overcome the delusion of identifying analytical thought and discursive reason as ends in themselves. He must transcend all these fantasies in the timeless act of intellect-intuition. He must be able to distinguish between the activities of the phenomenal ego and the principles of the transcendental self. Thus by a process of self-discipline and God’s grace the raw material of human nature can grow into spiritual fruition. The Gita does not force all men into one Procrustean bed or way. It has a toleration, which is not compromise, nor indifference nor a stroke of policy but a deep article of its own faith based on the psychological disposition of man. While allowing each to grow to his best it does not rest satisfied with non-activity. It wants each of us not to sit satisfied with our arms folded. It wants each to reach the best and not sleep short of it.

The ethics of the Gita and its mortality is not ascetic and difficult for man. Lord Krishna knows well that it is not goods, but men who have to be enlisted on the side of right living. So he makes allowance for human pleasure. He is no enemy of human happiness. He advocates a wise plan for life and does not sanction the doctrine Go-as-you-please. Men are not to erect their appetites and impulses into little guides of life. They must submit it to social standards (Varna Dharma) and spiritual aims (Shastras). The Lord says: “He who flouts the commandments of the scriptures and sound tradition and acts on the impulse of his desires cannot reach perfection or happiness of the highest goal. ^l6 It is here that the Lord asserts that the average sensuous hedonist is mistaken when he identifies it with excitement resulting from round of pleasures, health and long life, worldly wealth and irresponsible power. Happiness is not mere propitious circumstance. The author of the Gita believes that the things of the world are not in themselves very satisfactory. He describes the world as “the abode of sorrow and impermanence”. ^l7 and in another context asks us to pray to the Lord to escape from the transient and the unhappy world. Thus the author of the Gita believes in religion as the transforming agency. Further Krishna advocates that we must put the goods of the soul above the goods of the body and fortune. He believes that a life of virtue is true happiness. He knows full well that the physique of a Hercules or the wealth of Croesus or Kubera will not by themselves give us pleasure. The one brings with it gross lusts and intellectual dullness and the other pride and wantonness. Krishna argues that even by the rules of the calculus of pleasure and pain (if you formulate the rules correctly and work the sum right) the man who puts the things of the soul first over others will prove to be the most truly agreeable as well as the most noble. The ethics of the Gita has some merits and special aspects not common to European thought. The Gita has a great wholeness of outlook and it keeps consistently together points of view which have always been separated but with disastrous effects. Human activity seeks happiness, but happiness is not “maximum agreeable feeling” or excitement. It is integral and not decimal in its structure. The great philosopher Kant held that the truly virtuous act is that which is done against our grain. He suspected pleasure. The Gita is free from the perverted psychology which led Kant to think it wrong to do the most harmless act for the sake of human pleasure, and almost to hold that the virtuous act is only truly virtuous when it is done against one’s grain. The ethics of the Gita is not formal. It is not “duty for duty’s sake”. It is duty for the spiritual through the social service. It is not empty of content. It is not a mere stoical virtue or austerity for its own-sake. Like Spinoza and Aristotle, the mortality of the Gita is not purely intellectualistic and based on reason. Mere knowledge is not virtue. We want a powerful psychological technique to translate our knowledge into action and will. The problem of will is central to morality. Sin is not mere ignorance, it is weak will also. We need the grace of the Lord and a disciplined will besides knowledge to become virtuous. This element is absent in rationalistic ethics. The theism of the Gita does not absolve men from duty and the need for self-effort. It does not run down self-effort to glorify the grace as Pascal does. Like all the true mystics the author of the Gita is alive to the distinction between temporal good and eternal good, but he never forgets that its detachment is necessary to noble living: the true detachment is that of the man who uses temporal goods without losing his heart to it. The Gita idea of morality is a synthesis of all. “It is the richest synthesis of India culture.” George Russell (popularly known as AE) the great Irish poet speaking about the vital compassion for humanity observes: “Goethe, Wordsworth, Emerson, Thoreau among moderns have something of this vitality and wisdom, but we can find all they have said and much more in the grand sacred books of the East. The Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads contain such God-like fullness of wisdom on all things, that I feel the authors must have looked with calm remembrance back through a thousand passionate lives full of feverish strife ere they could have written with such certainty of things which the soul feels to be sure.^l8

^l Gita XIII–19 to 22.

² Ibid XVII–3.

³ Brhadaranyaka IV–4–5.

⁴ Gita IX–12.

⁵ The Perennial Philosophy, Chap. VIII.

⁶ The Perennial Philosophy, pp. 170-171.

⁷ Edgerton: The Bhagavad Gita, the Song of the Blessed One, p. 58.

⁸ Sri Aurobindo: Life Divine, Vol. I. p. 30.

⁹ Julian Huxley: “On Living in a Revolution”, pp. 50-51.

^l0 Gita: XVIII–45, 47, 48.

^l1 Gita III–35.

^l2 D. S. Sarma: Lectures and Essays on the Gita, pp. 54–66.

^l3 Gita: IV–40.

^l4 Gita VI–5.

^l5 The Perennial Philosophy, Ch. XVIII.

^l6 Gita XVI–22.

^l7 Gita VIII-15.

^l8 John Egliton: “A Memoir of AE”: p. 20.

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