★What then is the message of the Gita and what its
working value, its spiritual utility to the human mind
of the present day after the long ages that have elapsed
since it was written and the great subsequent transformations of thought and experience?
The human mind moves always forward, alters its viewpoint and enlarges its thought substance, and the effect of these changes is to render past systems of thinking obsolete or, when they are preserved, to extend, to modify and subtly or visibly to alter their value. The vitality of an ancient doctrine consists in the extent to which it naturally lends itself to such a treatment; for that means that whatever may have been the limitations or the obsolescences of the form of its thought, the truth of substance, the truth of living vision and experience on which its system was built is still sound and retains a permanent validity and significance. The Gita is a book that has worn extraordinarily well and it is almost as fresh and still in its real substance quite as new, because always renewable in experience, as when it first appeared in or was written into the frame of the Mahabharata. It is still received in India as one of the great bodies of doctrine that most authoritatively govern religious thinking and its teaching acknowledged as of the highest value if not wholly accepted by almost all shades of religious belief and opinion. Its influence is not merely philosophic or academic but immediate and living, an influence both for thought and action, and its ideas are actually at work as a
powerful shaping factor in the revival and renewal of a nation
and a culture. It has even been said recently by a great voice that all we need of spiritual truth for the spiritual life is to be found in the Gita. It would be to encourage the superstition of the book to take too literally that utterance. The truth of the spirit is infinite and cannot be circumscribed in that manner. Still it may be said that most of the main clues are there and that after all the later developments of spiritual experience and discovery
we can still return to it for a large inspiration and guidance.
Outside India too it is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s great scriptures, although in Europe its thought is better
understood than its secret of spiritual practice.
★What is it then that gives this vitality to the thought and the truth of the Gita?
The central interest of the Gita’s philosophy and Yoga is its
attempt, the idea with which it sets out, continues and closes,
to reconcile and even effect a kind of unity between the inner
spiritual truth in its most absolute and integral realisation and the outer actualities of man’s life and action. A compromise
between the two is common enough, but that can never be a final and satisfactory solution. An ethical rendering of spirituality is also common and has its value as a law of conduct; but that is a mental solution which does not amount to a complete practical
reconciliation of the whole truth of spirit with the whole truth
of life and it raises as many problems a indeed the starting point of the Gi