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Essays on the Gita -Sri Aurobindo
First Series : Chapter 6
Man and the Battle of Life
The impulse may be tamasic, a feeling of impotence, fear, aversion, disgust, horror of the world
and life; or it may be the rajasic quality tending towards tamas,
an impulse of weariness of the struggle, grief, disappointment,
refusal to accept any longer this vain turmoil of activity with its
pains and its eternal discontent. Or the impulse may be that of
rajas tending towards sattwa, the impulse to arrive at something
superior to anything life can give, to conquer a higher state, to
trample down life itself under the feet of an inner strength which
seeks to break all bonds and transcend all limits. Or it may be
sattwic, an intellectual perception of the vanity of life and the
absence of any real goal or justification for this ever-cycling
world-existence or else a spiritual perception of the Timeless,
the Infinite, the Silent, the nameless and formless Peace beyond.
The recoil of Arjuna is the tamasic recoil from action of the sattwa-rajasic man.
The Teacher may confirm it in its direction, using it as a dark entry to the purity and peace of the ascetic
life; or he may purify it at once and raise it towards the rare
altitudes of the sattwic tendency of renunciation. In fact, he
does neither. He discourages the tamasic recoil and the tendency
to renunciation and enjoins the continuance of action and even
of the same fierce and terrible action, but he points the disciple
towards another and inner renunciation which is the real issue from his crisis and the way towards the soul’s superiority to
the world-Nature and yet its calm and self-possessed action in
the world. Not a physical asceticism, but an inner askesis is the
teaching of the Gita.
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