Bhagavadgita -Radhakrishnan 29

The Bhagavadgita -S. Radhakrishnan

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 7. The Individual Self The security which he derives from the instinctive adherence to the group is lost and has to be regained at a higher level without the elimination of his individuality. By the integration of his self, his unity with the world has to be achieved in a spontaneity of love and unselfish work. Arjuna, in the opening scene, faces the world of nature and society and feels utterly alone. He does not wish to buy inward security by submission to the social standard. So long as he looks upon himself as a ksatriya required to fight, so long as he is chained to his station and its duties, he is unaware of the full possibilities of his individual action. Most of us, by finding our specific place in the social world, give a meaning to our life and gain a feeling of security, a sense of belonging. Normally, within limits, we find scope for the expression of our life and the social routine is not felt as a bondage. The individual has not yet emerged. He does not conceive of himself except through the social medium. Arjuna could have overcome his feeling of helplessness and anxiety by submitting completely to the social authority. But that would be to arrest his growth. Any sense of satisfaction and security derived by submission to external authority is bought at the price of the integrity of the' self. Modern views like the totalitarian declare that the individual can be saved by his absorption into society. They forget that the group exists only to secure the complete unfolding of human personality. Arjuna disentangles himself from the social context, stands alone and faces the perilous and overpowering aspects of the world. Submission is not the human way of over-coming loneliness and anxiety. By developing our inner spiritual nature, we gain a new kind of relatedness to the world and grow into the freedom, where the integrity of theself is not compromised. We then become aware of ourselves as active creative individuals, living, not by the discipline of external authority but by the inward rule of free devotion to truth The individual self is a portion of the Lord, a real, not an imaginary form of the Supreme, a limited manifestation of God. The soul which derives from the Supreme Isvara is not so much an emanation as a member of the Supreme. It draws its ideal from this superior principle which is like a father who has given it existence.