It has been a long time since the “No
Religion” refrain in Ashram and especially in Auroville is becoming louder and
louder to the extent of becoming “No Spirituality”. The cry against Religion has
now become so belligerent that there seems to be no place left for
spirituality, no place for devotion and reverence, no place for the aspiration
of the soul, and finally no place for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother themselves.
The reason that is promptly given is that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were
themselves against the founding of a new Religion, and especially the Mother’s
sharp remarks on Religion in the Agenda
seemed to have sealed its fate for good, that is, if you believe in the Mother
as the final authority in these matters, which ironically becomes again a sort
of Religion. So you really cannot disprove Religion by quoting Mother if you
adopt a religious attitude towards Mother herself! Either you throw the baby
with the bathwater, that is, throw religion out of the window along with its
founders, or accept what they say and try to understand the difference between
spirituality and religion, and where exactly religion becomes spirituality or
how spirituality deteriorates into religion. The problem then becomes complex and
you begin to grasp the various nuances, and of course you can give a rational explanation
to this highly emotive issue to diehard anti-religionists.
9 Aug 2014
3 Aug 2014
An Interview with Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in May 1991 (2)
Interviewer(s): How did your family come here?
Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya:
My family? All that I have given in my paper. My grandfather died and my father
and uncle wanted to have some spiritual guidance, they were looking for a Guru.
All that I have said, I need not repeat.
Interviewer(s): When you first came here, did Mother say anything?
PKB:
That also I have said, there was no talk, but I felt that she liked me from the
beginning. I had a plan about which I have not spoken in that paper. I have
told you that I opened a physical culture club there, and though it was a
physical culture club, I was moulding the character of the boys. It was my idea that
I would prepare good specimens of men who would make the country rich by their
experience and their service. That was my idea, and it worked quite well. I was
at that time 17 or 18 years old, and it worked very well.
28 Jul 2014
Connecting the Dots between the pro-Ashram Trust Nexus – Sridharan
The Well-wishers
of Sri Aurobindo Ashram website which follows closely our site has recently
done some “remarkable investigation” and announced how it has “connected the
dots” between the so-called anti-Ashram nexus. Let me first remind these “highly
intelligent sleuths” that Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Pondicherry) is different from
the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust (Pondicherry). The Ashram Trust was created by
the Mother in 1955 for protecting the assets and properties of the Ashram,
whereas Sri Aurobindo Ashram spontaneously began in 1926 when Sri Aurobindo
gave “the spiritual and material charge” of his disciples to the Mother after
the Siddhi Day. The Ashram is the spiritual institution and the Ashram Trust is
only a legal body, whose administration has at first gradually and then rapidly
deteriorated in recent times after the passing away of its Gurus. A section of
the Ashramites are extremely unhappy with the corrupt and dictatorial
functioning of the Ashram Trust and have therefore gone against it in various
legitimate ways. They have not gone against the Ashram itself nor do they want
to destroy the Ashram from the face of this earth, as the supporters of the
Ashram Trust would like the ignorant public to believe. The solution to this
rudderless present situation of the Ashram without any spiritual heads, or
rather with the present Trustees who always get into loggerheads with anybody
who differs from them, is an alternate system of fair and democratic
governance. If this is difficult to understand and highly objectionable, then I
think we have to set the clock back and go back to pre Magna Carta days.
25 Jul 2014
An Interview with Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in May 1991 – History Desk
[Pranab
Kumar Bhattacharya (1922-2010) was one of the closest attendants of the Mother
and the Director of the Physical Education Department of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry.
Physical Education is taken very seriously in the Ashram, far more than what most
people would expect in an institution dedicated to spiritual growth. Literally
all the members of the Ashram have a daily routine of physical exercise
interspersed with work and meditation. All the students of the Ashram School
have compulsory physical education every day for an hour and a half. The Dept.
of Physical Education is thus very well-organised and pools the talent of more
than a hundred voluntary captains, coaches and helping instructors, without
mentioning those who maintain its numerous grounds for playing football,
basketball, hockey, volleyball and other games. There is also enough infrastructure
for the regular practice of Athletics, Swimming, Gymnastics and even Combatives.
Competitions are held every year in which older Ashramites vie with the young students
of the Ashram School. Ashram records are timed with stop watches, carefully measured
with tapes, and systematically noted down. These are then databased and
preserved for posterity so that you can get an analysis of your athletic performance
twenty years back at the touch of a button. One would actually wonder as to whether
the Ashram is a Yogic or a sports institution! But no, in the Integral Yoga of
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, sports can be turned towards Yoga, and the
perfection of the body can become a Yogic ideal. At the same time, physical
health undoubtedly imparts a great stability to life, whether you choose to do
Yoga or not.
18 Jul 2014
Reply to Manoj Das’s Letter to Niranjan Naik (2) – by Bireshwar Choudhury
Manoj Das suffers from an uncontrollable itch to
put down his critics. It would have been so much better had the writer’s itch
channelised itself in a more fruitful manner in his own realm of creative writing. But
I have been told that from the last decade or two his literary creativity is
ebbing in inverse proportion to his mounting desire to be honoured by all sorts
of awards. The last big award he successfully managed to canvas for was the
Padma Sri award, accorded by the Govt. of India in 2001. Now I suppose
he is eying for the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan. But what is he doing
at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, and how does the Ashram help him in his
enterprise?
No, he has certainly not thrown fame
to the winds to attain the Supramental Transformation or even to achieve a Yogic
poise! If he had really done so, why would he rush out for a fresh round of
self-promotion each time he receives an invitation from literary circles? Why would he criticise other awardees who
have outshone him in literary output and perhaps deprived him of the award that
he might have won instead? And why is he so keen on saving his reputation which
has recently plummeted in his home state of Orissa after this site published
the less known details of his activities in Pondicherry?
11 Jul 2014
Reply to Manoj Das’s Letter to Niranjan Naik – by Sripad Singh
Dear
Mr. Das,
I have read your letter of
15.06.2014 to Niranjan-bhai (Niranjan Naik). As you have requested him not to say
anything about you, I am interested to reply to your letter because I am
thoroughly conversant with the facts of the controversy. Also the nature of
your letter demands an answer.
On 10.05.2013 in your article “Last
Appeal”, you had said that you will not to write anything more on the present
controversy in the Ashram. As you frequently break your own promise and baffle
the common devotees and disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, an answer to
your letter is therefore badly needed. All your letters like the present one
are factually wrong, unsubstantial, discordant, irrelevant and full of unnecessary
emotion.
5 Jul 2014
Sources of Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy
Sri Aurobindo’s intellect was influenced
by Greek philosophy.
[SRI AUROBINDO's Correction:] Very little. I read more than once Plato’s Republic and
Symposium, but only extracts from his other writings. It is true that under his
impress I rashly started writing at the age of 18 an explanation of the cosmos
on the foundation of the principle of Beauty and Harmony, but I never got
beyond the first three or four chapters. I read Epictetus and was interested in
the ideas of the Stoics and the Epicureans; but I made no study of Greek
philosophy or of any of the [? ]. I made in fact no study of metaphysics in my
school and College days. What little I knew about philosophy I picked up
desultorily in my general reading. I once read, not Hegel, but a small book on
Hegel, but it left no impression on me. Later, in India, I read a book on
Bergson, but that too ran off “like water from a duck’s back”.
28 Jun 2014
Rajiv Malhotra on Hegel
But it was Hegel, among all German thinkers, who had
the deepest and most enduring impact on Western thought and identity. It is
often forgotten that his work was a reaction against the Romantics’
passion for India’s past. He borrowed Indian ideas (such as monism) while
debating Indologists to argue against the value of Indian civilization.
He posited that the West, and only the West, was the agent of history and
teleology. India was the ‘frozen other’, which he used as a foil to define the
West.
19 Jun 2014
Introducing "Being Different" by Rajiv Malhotra
[Being
Different by Rajiv Malhotra (published by
Harper Collins, 2011) is a must read
not only for young Indians of modern India, especially those who are ashamed of
being Hindus, but also for the followers and disciples of Sri Aurobindo, who
have sometimes the misguided notion that Sri Aurobindo rejected Hinduism. The
first effect the book has on you is that it makes you proud of being a Hindu,
of Being Different from what the West wants you to be. One of the frequent
accusations of Westerners on India is that it is a Chaos not only materially
but also spiritually, and that there is no Order, which is so prominent in the
West. Rajiv Malhotra brilliantly explains this point and analyses the nature
and reason for this difference between Westerners and Indians. The Chaos, he
says, is only apparent for people who look only for one Order whereas Indians
have learnt to live with multiple orders from times immemorial, and have
therefore acquired a far greater complexity of mind and attitude than
Westerners. I reproduce below an excerpt from Being Different by Rajiv Malhotra. -- by Krish Patwardhan]
12 Jun 2014
Anti-Hindu Rant on the SAICE Forum – Sridharan
Sridharan:
Prophet cum Historian Benimadhav Mohanty Speaks, or shall we say more
appropriately, Beni Speaks Nonsense Again!
The
following is a forward sent to the SAICE forum by Benimadhav Mohanty, an SAICE
product! (The quality of academic production in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Centre
of Education, Pondicherry, certainly seems to have hit the rock bottom. It is perhaps time to infuse some foreign
funding to raise the standards!) What Benimadhav has forwarded on 8 June, 2014
is an atrocious rant on Hinduism by another ex-student to his brother in
Australia. Benimadhav finds this “interesting” to read and forwards it to the
rest of the SAICE alumni as if they are eagerly waiting to lap up this hate speech
on Hindus. Now Benimadhav cannot simply shrug away his responsibility by saying
that he has not written it, because it is he who has found it worthy of
attention and brought it to the notice of the other members of the SAICE forum.
As for the author of the piece itself, he should either be behind bars or sent to a
madhouse. But I will nevertheless respond intellectually to this foam spewing
hatred of the Hindus. As I don’t know the name of this frustrated ex-student,
let me call him Anti-Hindu for the sake of convenience.
7 Jun 2014
SRI AUROBINDO ON HEGEL
SRI AUROBINDO:
Somebody has said that I have a great
similarity to Hegel because I used the word "synthesis" and he speaks
of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But I must confess I have no idea of what
Hegel says.
Western philosophies are so mental and
dry. They seem to lead to nothing, only mental gymnastics trying to find out
things like, "What is judgment?" and "What is not
judgment?" They appear to be written for the purpose of using the mind,
not for finding or arriving at the Truth.
(Nirodbaran,
Talks with Sri Aurobindo (2001), 18
January 1939, pp 172-73)
1 Jun 2014
Sri Aurobindo and Hegel (1) – Krish Patwardhan
Situating Sri Aurobindo –
A Reader, edited by Peter Heehs and published by Oxford University Press in 2013, is one
of those arid unreadable books, the heavy metaphysical content of which simply
puts you off. The book is almost entirely a compilation of articles by professors
in American Universities who evaluate, analyse, dissect, compare, and situate
Sri Aurobindo within the framework of their disciplines. Though most of the
essays are surprisingly favourable assessments of Sri Aurobindo, considering
that they have been chosen by Peter Heehs, one still gets the impression
(except in a few cases) that the professors are straying beyond their
legitimate and natural boundaries. Understanding Sri Aurobindo certainly needs some
spiritual empathy, and that comes from a little inward opening, even if it be
only a drop of genuine spiritual experience. Otherwise one commits not only
spiritual but intellectual errors such as some of these professors have made,
despite the expertise in their own fields. I bring to the notice of our readers
one such major misunderstanding by Professor Steve Odin of the University of
Hawai’i, which should be set right before it spreads further in the academic
world. I quote below his conclusion with regard to Sri Aurobindo and Hegel:
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