The Bhishmacharya Complex – by A Concerned Ashramite

The situation of the old guard of the Ashram is the same as that of Bhishmacharya, who was unable to use his mighty bow in the service of dharma and was forced to fight on the side of adharma with an anguished conscience. This inability and helplessness to stand for the truth, this forced loyalty towards the powers that be, and the apparently virtuous stand which actually facilitates falsehood is what I call the Bhishmacharya complex!
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Response to Jayantilal Parekh’s Article – by An Irrational Ashramite

Jayantilal Parekh’s article “The Sri Aurobindo Ashram and its Administration” posted on the Well-wishers’ site is rather outdated. It applies perhaps to the first two decades of Ashram life after the Mother’s passing away in 1973, but certainly not to the next two decades, and especially to the present situation. Given the undeniable fact that the Ashram is going through a process of deterioration of values and motivations, we can hardly keep justifying all that happens here under the name of spirituality and Integral Yoga! How long are we going to repeat that “the Ashram is the cradle of a new world” and “not a religious monastery” in order to justify our human frailties? The question therefore is of the proportion of sadhana and human weaknesses, of when and how much their precarious balance tilts to the wrong side rather than a clear definition of what exactly qualifies us for the Ashram life. What I mean is that everybody in the wide world knows that “staying in the Ashram despite human weaknesses so that one day we can outgrow them” is different from “staying in the Ashram in order to fulfil our physical propensities and make the best of the facilities provided by the institution for that very purpose”.

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The Rationalised Ashramite – by An "Irrational" Ashramite

Roused by the escalating anti-theist refrain of ‘No Religion’ in Auroville (see “The ‘No Religion’ Refrain” posted on this site on 9^th 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.

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