-010_Arjuna or The Ideal Disciple

WHAT makes a true disciple? For it is not everyone that can claim or be worthy of or meet the demands of the title. Disciplehood, like all great qualities, that is to say, qualities taken at their source and origin, is a function of the soul. Indeed, it is the soul itself coming up and asking for it'! native divine status; it is the call of the immortal in the mortal, the voice of the inmost being rising above the clamours and lures of the world, above the hungers and ties of one's own nature. When that rings out clear and unmistakable, the Divine reveals Himself as the Guru, the Path is shown and the initiation given. Even such a cry was Arjuna's when he said: sisyaste ham sadhi mam twam prapannam – it is a most poignant utterance in which the whole being bursts forth as it were, and delivers itself of all that it needs and of all that it gives. It needs the Illumination: it can no longer bear the darkness and confusion of Ignorance in which it is entangled; and it gives itself whole and entire, absolutely and without reserve, throws itself simply at the mercy of the Divine. Arjuna fulfils, as very few can so completely, the fundamental conditions – the sine qua non – of discipleship.

A certain modern critic, however, demurs. He asks why Arjuna was chosen in preference to Yudhisthira and doubts the wisdom and justice of the choice (made by Sri Krishna or the author of the Gita). Is not the eldest of the Pandavas also the best? He possesses in every way a superior adhara. He has knowledge and wisdom; he is free from passions, calm and self-controlled; he always acts according to the dictates of what is right and true. He is not swayed by the impulses of the moment or by considerations relating to his personal self; serene and unruffled he seeks to fashion his conduct by the 

highest possible standard available to him. That is why he is called dharmaraja. If such a one is not to be considered as an ideal disciple, who else can be?

To say this is to miss the whole nature of discipleship, at least as it is conceived in the Gita. A disciple is not a bundle of qualifications and attainments, however high or considerable they may be. A disciple is first and foremost an aspiring soul. He may not have high qualities to his credit; on the contrary, he may have what one calls serious defects, but even that would not matter if he possessed the one thing needful, the unescapable urge of the soul, the undying fire in the secret heart. Yudhishthira may have attained a high status of sattvic nature; but the highest spiritual status, the Gita says, lies beyond the three Gunas. He is the fittest person for this spiritual life who has abandoned all dharmas – principles of conduct, modes of living – and taken refuge in the Lord alone, made the Lord's will the sole and sufficient law of life. Even though to outward regard such a person be full of sins, the Lord promises to deliver him from all that. It is the soul's love for the Divine given unconditionally and without reserve that can best purify the dross of the inferior nature and render one worthy of the Divine Grace.

Such was Arjuna's capacity; herein lay his strength, his spiritual superiority. It was because he could be so intimate with the Divine as to call him his friend and companion and playmate and speak to him in familiar and homely terms – even though he felt contrition for having in this way perhaps slighted the Lord and not paid sufficient regard towards him. Yet this turn of his soul and nature points to the straightness and simplicity and candidness that were there and it was this that helped to call in the Divine and the Divine choice to fall upon him.

Yudhishthira may have been and is great-greater perhaps than Arjuna-in many ways. But the Divine is no respecter of greatness: he looks only for the little thing no larger than the thumb secreted within the heart,– what is the quality, how it rings. We might recall in this connection that the first anthropoid ape who evolved into man or showed the definite turn towards humanity could not have been a mighty ape, great in the qualities of its species; rather the probability

is that it was a very commonplace, unpretentious, inglorious ape in whom the first ray of human reason dawned, and perhaps with his frail and delicate physical frame he was at a great disadvantage in the struggle for existence with his big and burly and "great" comrades. And yet it was such a one who surmounted apehood. Similarly, a great man, great in the human qualities need not necessarily be the most eligible for the spiritual realisation. Na medhaya na bahuna srutena¹.

All this, however, is not to say that Arjuna was in his external human nature, built of an inferior stuff; indeed, even from the human and profane standpoint Arjuna's was a heroic nature, if ever there was one. Still what one remarks in him is his representative character, that is to say, he is an average man, only the strengths and weaknesses are perhaps stressed and intensified in him. He is a hero, to be sure – we must remember also the other condition that a spiritual aspirant is to fulfil, nayamatma balahinena labhyaha ²– but that did not immune him to the normal reactions of a normal man; on the contrary, the reactions were especially strong and violent, necessary indeed to bring out the whole implication of a spiritual crisis. Arjuna's doubts and depression, misgivings and questionings (Vishada Yoga) are what more or less every aspirant has to pass through when he arrives at the crucial point of his soul's journey and has either to choose the higher curve or follow the vicious circle. And at this threshold of the spiritual journey what is required of the true aspirant, the ideal disciple, is the resolution to face the situation, to go through to the end at the command and under the loving guidance of the Master. On this line Arjuna stands for us all and shows, by his example how we can take courage and march out of the inferior nature into the peace and light and power of the higher divine nature.

   ¹ "Nor by brain-power, nor by much learning of Scripture." – Katha Upanishad, 1. 2. 23       .

   ² "This Self cannot be won by any who is without strength.”–Ibid.