© 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) Existentialism in Notes from the Underground through the Lens of Gita’s Philosophical Discourse *Mudita Choudhary Student, M.A. (Eng.) The IIS University, Jaipur **Dr Sucharita Sharma Assistant Professor, Department of English The IIS University , Jaipur Abstract Existentialism is an incredible aspect because of its intrinsic aspect in solving the fundamental human problem. Its applicability has gone beyond the era, time, space and culture. The article explores the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground through the existential discourse of Sartre, dealing with the shaken existence of an individual who is very intricately characterized. The research is an endeavor to trace the long existing tussle amidst human perceptions and actions. The world that is weaved in the text projects a very universal frame of human conscious. The characters are endowed with a wide array of scope to understand the man’s self crafted illusionary trap, and this trap is displayed in the cognitive conflict of man’s internal and external world. This research also attempts to find evidences of existential ideas in Indian classical texts like Bhagvad Gita, exploring the dispute of ‘existence’ and ‘being’ vis-à-vis the Philosophical approach of Gita in projecting a wide spectrum of human psychology with their multiple nature and needs to attain the ultimate ‘freedom to choose’. Keywords: Existential, Self - Deception, Conflict, Action, Freedom People say that we are all seeking is the meaning of life…I think what we are really seeking is the experience of being alive - Rudyard Kipling Existentialism was never a single specific doctrine. Its meaning kept on changing with the time and the list of much diverse existentialists kept on emerging. Therefore “ There was no single voice of authority, its definition has always had blurry edges .It grew up in the public domain, as a drawing of a new way of thinking about life that emerged at a particular moment in history. It could be seen as a historical necessity or inevitability, an effort to adapt to a new confluence of cultural and historical forces” (Cogswell, 1). Existential views helped in expanding man’s vision and his views of the universe. Discoveries, scientific explorations opened new vistas in people’s life and gradually the old biblical view that God JETIR1903169 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 421 © 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) created world in six days shattered as people gradually realized that earth had a long history to munch upon. Therefore a more realistic approach was needed that could accommodate with the expanding universe. But even with the increase in scientific probe, people exercised power over the material world. Man surely became powerful but not as powerful to control the catastrophic destructions of his own over ambitions. “Even science, with its cold objectivity lacked the human dimension, so it failed as an all-encompassing belief system that could guide human judgment and actions.” (Cogswell, 5) Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist, emerged in nineteenth century, much before his contemporaries perceived the calamities the world was about to suffer due to their “naïve belief in a coming technological Utopia.” (Cogswell, 28) Dostoevsky in his works portrayed the classic problems of existentialism. For instance Notes from the Underground deals with an existential point of view, “beginning with the unreliability of reason.” However man is allured with logic and rationality, Dostoevsky claims that originally man is not a logical creature he rather believed that what triggers man’s choice, is not just most “advantageous advantage” but a “freewill” as his choices are not always guided alone from his rational side but also is a manifestation of his impulses and desires. He says “and how these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead” (Cogswell, 30) His novella Notes from the Underground likewise wrangles with the most fundamental existential framework of Sartre i.e. “the world is founded upon the absurd”. Dostoevsky’s novella can be regarded as definitive voice of existential beliefs. In Notes from the Underground the protagonist consistently and repeatedly deals with inner conflicts, self contradictions, self pity which engrosses his mind so rigorously that his life becomes an embodiment of an unknown suffering. The work openly declares the paradox of human mind. Underground man exists without any sort of sanctuary and refuge from the pain and agony of modern consciousness alongside Eliot’s ‘Prufrock’, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and so on. He addresses the world from that crack; he has also spent a lifetime listening at it. Everything that can be said about him, and more particularly against him, he already knows; he has, as he says in a typical paradox, overheard it all, anticipated it all, invented it all. “I am a sick man….I am a wicked man.” In the space of that pause Dostoevsky introduces the unifying idea of his tale: the instability, the perpetual “dialectic” of isolated consciousness. (Dostoevsky, ix) The novella is known for its absurd narrative, unorganized framework and a general sense of disdain which runs through it. It is majorly divided into two major parts. Part one contains no plot and deals with an JETIR1903169 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 422 © 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) unending chaotic philosophical pondering and descriptions of surrounding. Part second however deals with his failure or incapability of forming meaningful relationships. Underground man’s interaction to people gives him joy but at the same time tear him down, which is why he chooses to be underground. The work is an unorganized memoir of an unknown narrator, who throughout the novel has been called as ‘Underground man’ whose logic is twisted and often contradictory. A man who concludes, that the universe is without any reason. Underground man is an aggressive, conflicted and indecisive man living alone in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1860s. He is a Russian civil servant who has recently retired as he has inherited money out of a will. The novella consists of the confused, contradictory statements and confessions of his detachment from the society. It is an epitome of modern tragedy; and efficiently put up to the fore, it is an absurd destruction of human self and life in its totality. His inability to act generates from several important factors working together. First, the Underground Man is suffering from a major existential crisis, he thinks that nothing in the world can provide his life any meaning, and in fact there is no meaning in trying. He believes that traditional social values have no basis and that human existence is essentially useless. As a result the Underground Man detests the society he is living in. He is filled with bitterness and hatred toward all aspects of society, but he is aware that he is powerless to act against the hypocrisy which lies within it. Man’s sadism, the pleasure he takes in his own pain and humiliation explores the further idea in more depth later in the novel. I am a sick man…I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don’t know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been able, though I respect medicine and doctors. What’s more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicines. (I am sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No sir, I refuse to be treated out of wickedness. Now, you will certainly not be so good as to understand this. Well, sir, but I understand it. I will not, of course, be able to explain to you precisely who is going to suffer in this case from my wickedness; I know perfectly that I will in no way “muck things up” for the doctors by not taking their treatment; I know better than anyone that by all this I am harming myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t get treated, it is out of wickedness. My liver hurts; well, then let it hurt even worse ( Dostoevsky, 5) The Underground Man has great contempt for prevailing school of thought that attempted to use practical, rational and logical line of thought to cope up with man’s desires and choices.He complains that man’s primary desire and choice is to practice freedom of thought. This explains the reason of Underground Man taking pleasure in his own toothaches and liver pains and he accepts his situation without even questioning the value of going to the doctor. He predicts that man would be bored in a society based on JETIR1903169 Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR) www.jetir.org 423 © 2019 JETIR March 2019, Volume 6, Issue 3 www.jetir.org (ISSN-2349-5162) scientifically derived principles for moral behavior, rather, in his views man should overturn this logic and should rely on his own and live according to their own irrational free will. According to him, in any circumstance, a man prefers to think he is acting as he desires to act, not as reason dictates. Thus, the most important thing to man is that his freedom of choice should not be constrained by anything— not even reason.