The Gita's Limitations

Sri Aurobindo: There is no transformation there. The supramental transformation is not at all hinted at in the Gita. The Gita lays stress on certain broad lines of the integral supramental yoga: For instance: 1. Acceptance of life and action.

2. Clarification of the nature of the Transcendent Divine.

3. The Divine Personality and its Transcendence.

4. Existence of two Natures — para and apara. Disciple: It speaks of the Para Prakriti and says that advanced souls attain to the Para Prakriti.

A. wrote an article in the Calcutta Review about ''The Advaita in the Gita".

Sri Aurobindo: He finds the idea of transformation of nature in the Gita and also other things contained in The Life Divine. I don't see all that in the Gita myself.

Disciple: A's contention is that there are hints and suggestions in the Gita that can mean transformation. For instance, it says that one must become the instrument in the hands of the Divine. Then it says: put a madbhavamagata — "those who strive become pure and attain to my nature of becoming". Also: nistraigunyo bhava — "becomes free from the three modes."

Sri Aurobindo: There is no transformation there. The supramental transformation is not at all hinted at in the Gita. The Gita lays stress on certain broad lines of the integral supramental yoga: For instance: 1. Acceptance of life and action.

2. Clarification of the nature of the Transcendent Divine.

3. The Divine Personality and its Transcendence.

4. Existence of two Natures — para and apara. Disciple: It speaks of the Para Prakriti and says that advanced souls attain to the Para Prakriti.

Sri Aurobindo: The Para Prakriti there is used in general terms.

Disciple: Yes. I don't find the transformation in the Gita. The exposition of the levels of consciousness beyond mind, their functions, a clear, rational statement of intuitive consciousness, inspiration, revelation, and the ascent of the consciousness through the Overmind to the supermind — these things are quite new and not found even in the Upanishads.

Sri Aurobindo: I think so; the Gita only opens out the way to our yoga and philosophy. Among the Upanishads only the Taittiriya has some general idea of the higher terms. The Veda treats symbolically the same subject.

Disciple: Suppose there is transformation in the Gita, one can ask what kind of transformation it is, — spiritual, psychic or Supramental?

Sri Aurobindo: It does not speak of transformation; it speaks of the necessity of action from a spiritual consciousness-according to it all action must proceed from a certain spiritual consciousness.

As the result of that action some change may come about in the nature which might amount to what may be called transformation. But in the Gita the instruments of action remain human throughout (the Buddhi etc.). In does not speak of the intuitive consciousness.

In our ancient works there is no conception about the evolutionary nature of the world, or rather, they do not have the vision of humanity as an evolutionary expression of the Divine in which new levels of consciousness gradually open up, or are bound to open up. There is no clear idea of the new type of being that would evolve out of man.

If all that is contained in The Life Divine is found entirely in the old systems then it contradicts the claim that this yoga is new, or at any rate, different from the traditional methods. Perhaps A. was trying to synthesise the Gita and The Life Divine, (laughter).

source: http://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/purani/evening_talks/1-0050.htm