Roused by the escalating anti-theist
refrain of ‘No Religion’ in Auroville (see “The ‘No Religion’ Refrain” posted on
this site on 9th August) rationalised Ashramites belittle our
offering of incense and prayer at the Samadhi and the photographs of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother, our meditations in the Ashram, Playground, etc, as
rituals and conventions devoid of spirituality. But meditations at the
Matrimandir can also become ritualistic conventions, for while there are no external
ceremonies, the symbols of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are built into the very
design of Matrimandir and with time meditations there too can become mechanical
rituals. The fact is that the unspiritualised mind can never know when any form
of external worship is without a living truth behind it, and is not a living spiritual expression of worshipper’s
soul. “If worship is done,” says Sri Aurobindo, “as a part of meditation or
with a true aspiration to the spiritual reality and the spiritual consciousness
and with the yearning for contact and union with the Divine, then it can be
spiritually effective.”[1] In
reality, therefore, the rationalist’s “No Religion” refrain masks the lower
nature’s dread of serious spiritual practice and its clamour for an
unrestrained life of animal instincts, nurturing it will ultimately leave no
place for devotion and reverence, no place for spirituality, no place for the
aspiration of the soul, and finally no place for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves.
*
A disciple in 1930s: “Those who have visited other
Ashrams, say there is no Ashram like this one, no Guru like the Mother or Sri
Aurobindo — it is beyond imagination. The freedom given here to every sadhak is
really too much. And yet many here do not seem to know even what is meant by a
spiritual Guru and how to respect him properly!”
Sri Aurobindo: “Certainly, very few seem to
realise what a possibility has been given them here, all has been turned into
an opportunity for the bubbling of the vital or the tamas of the physical
rather than used for the intended psychic and spiritual purpose.”[2]
Sri Aurobindo’s translation of a
poem by Bhartrihari perfectly illustrates this headlong fall from the initial
attempts at serious spiritual practice into this bubbling of the vital and the
tamas of the physical:
Facilis Descensus
In highest heavens the Ganges’ course began;
From
Shiva’s loftiest brow to the white snows
She stumbles, nor on the cold summits can,
But
headlong seeks the valley and the rose.
Thence downward still the heaven-born waters ran.
Say not “Is this that Ganges? Can her place
Be now
so low? Rather when man at all
From heavenly reason swerves, he sinks from grace
Swiftly.
A thousand voices downward call,
A thousand doors are opened to his fall.[3]
Significantly, the Mother considers
Shiva the Lord of Transformation, and Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is nothing if not a
Yoga of Integral Transformation – the most difficult of all Yogas ever propounded.
This is why in July 1926 (before our Ashram was founded) Sri Aurobindo warned:
“All ashramas have a tendency to degeneration. It is due to the incapacity of
human nature. Whatever it receives from Above, it spoils very soon. As long as
the influence of the founder lasts, his teaching remains pure, but then his
disciples, who cannot fully grasp it or can only grasp it intellectually,
deform the whole thing.”[4] He had
foreseen how the clamour of our thousand-voiced lower nature for an
unrestrained life of animal instincts and the thousand-faceted reluctance of
our mental nature to serious spiritual practice would sink us swiftly from His
Grace.
An
apt depiction of this intellect that is inept in grasping but adept in
deforming this Yoga is found in a letter of Sri Aurobindo written in 1946: The
forces hostile to any success in this Yoga, usually “find their point d’appui in the sadhak himself, in
the ignorant parts of his consciousness and its assent to their suggestions and
influences; otherwise they could not act or at least could not act with any
success.” The sadhaks whose minds are “rationalised by a modern European
education are not inclined to believe in or at least to attach any importance
to this knowledge,” they “seek the explanation for everything in their ignorant
reason, their surface experience and in outside happenings”. In their case the
chief points d’appui of the hostile
forces “are the extreme sensitiveness of the lower vital ego and the physical
consciousness with all its fixed or standing opinions, prejudices,
prejudgments, habitual reactions, personal preferences, clinging to old ideas
and associations, its obstinate doubts and its maintaining these things as a
wall of obstruction and opposition to the larger light. This activity of the
physical mind is what people call intellect and reason, although it is only the
turning of a machine in a circle of mental habits and is very different from
the true and free reason, the higher Buddhi, which is capable of enlightenment
and still more from the higher spiritual light or that insight and tact of the
psychic consciousness which sees at once what is true and right and
distinguishes it from what is wrong and false.”[5]
*
A disciple in 1930s: “In some Ashrams, the disciples
make too much of their Gurus. Even if the Gurus are just ordinary siddhas they
insist on calling them Bhagavans, while here you and the Mother are brought
down to such an ordinary level. How unintelligent must be our bright
intellect!”
Consider these achievements of our
rationalised Ashramites with their Truth-killing brilliance:
1. Officially approved scholarly (=anti-spiritual) biographies
of Sri Aurobindo presenting a well
researched, documented and objective treatment of his life purged of the unwarranted
assumptions and unverifiable claims made by hagiographist disciples; providing verifiable facts of his human characteristics and personal drama,
viz. cowardice, lying, cheating, sexuality, etc; and scholarly interpretations based on these facts; psycho-analysing his spiritual system for the non-/anti-devotional world by a
scholarly study of its sources, arguments, conclusions, and their
rhetoric and style. [The phrases in Italics are from Peter
Heehs’ biographies of Sri Aurobindo.]
2. New editions of
published and unpublished writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother by the editors
of the Archives Department by scrupulously applying the laws of scholarly editing which are, primarily, to present the text exactly as the author
would have wanted it presented; and to
emend previous manuscript readings
that to them were clearly not what
the author had intended. [The
phrases in Italics are Peter Heehs’ in his Archives and Research.]
3.
Censuring study of Sanskrit and its literature as religious fanaticism, in
spite of knowing that Sri Aurobindo learned Sanskrit “to apprehend the true
inwardness and glory of the Indian religious and spiritual tradition, the
Sanatana Dharma”, and “to make use of Sanskrit and the indigenous languages so
as to get to the heart and intimate sense of our own culture and establish a
vivid continuity between the still living power of our past and the yet
uncreated power of our future”.[7] No matter that in 1970, the Mother told the
Registrar of SAICE that “When India goes back to her soul, Sanskrit will
naturally become India’s national language.”[8]
4. Avoiding the slightest
public homage to Sri Ramakrishna and Vivekananda in spite of knowing their
crucial roles in Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s sadhana for fear of being branded
a religious institution. But regularly commemorating the life and works of Tagore in poignant speeches and emotive
presentations, knowing that he had not the slightest role in Sri Aurobindo’s or
Mother’s sadhana; knowing that, in the Mother’s opinion, his spiritual
attainments were not exceptional and the fame he has gained in the West is only
“because his stature does not go beyond the understanding of the Western mind”,
whereas “India has far greater geniuses than him in the most varied fields,
scientific, literary, philosophic, spiritual”.[9]
These are even not the
achievements of their “true and free reason, the higher Buddhi, which is
capable of enlightenment” (forget those of the higher spiritual light or the psychic
consciousness), but rather those of “the extreme sensitiveness of their lower
vital ego and their physical consciousness with all its fixed or standing
opinions, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual reactions, personal preferences,
clinging to old ideas and associations, its obstinate doubts and its
maintaining these things as a wall of obstruction and opposition to the larger
light”.
Fortunately, there are
many disciples in whom, to quote the Mother, “the psychic movement, the
emotional impulse is stronger than intellectual understanding. They feel an
irresistible attraction for the Divine without knowing, without having the
slightest idea of what it is, of what it can be, what it represents – nothing,
no intellectual notion – but a kind of impulse, attraction, a need, an
inevitable need.”[10]
It is these disciples who
may open to “the higher spiritual light or that insight and tact of the psychic
consciousness which sees at once what is true and right and distinguishes it
from what is wrong and false” in external worship; it is they who are qualified
to gauge whether an external action is mere
ritual or a sincere spiritual expression.”
Dhyāna-moolam
Guro-murtīh – Puja-moolam Guroh-padam;
Mantra-moolam Guror-vākyam – Moksha-moolam Guror-kripā.
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