Even after hardships, they get bolstered instead of being torn down, as some people say happens when we turn towards the Divine. I have always wanted true relations with those I am associated with, and I have learnt over time to be cautious about friendships formed on a Vital level.
Especially with parents, I feel a lot of love from my side, for them doing what they could in situations given to them, and in general, I feel a deep welling of love for their future lives and their growth, and I am glad that I got to share a journey with them. With all the grievances and imperfections in the past, the only thing that remains with me is the appreciation and gratitude that we got this wonderful life together to learn and live together. And this gratitude has become a constant living thing in me. I feel strange if I hold even a tiny feeling of anger within for my parents, it just changes to compassion and gratitude for humanity in general.
However, many say that over the course of time in Divine life, we get disconnected from all worldly relations and get disconnected more and more. This is in contrast to my experience so far. Could it be that we take different paths? Is it not possible that when we turn to the Divine, some relations in our lives will also rise and grow together? Also, I feel it is possible to practice wideness and goodwill, even when we follow different paths while aspiring towards the same goal of Divine living. I understand that there is no set rule about it, but why is it that many experience more and more disconnection with worldly relations, or am I still lacking the depth to understand it in full measure? Kindly share your insights.
There is no set rule of things, especially because sadhana moves largely in the inner being and it is the inner state, motives, attitudes that matter most. Gratitude, spirit of harmony, understanding, sympathy, compassion, wideness, generosity, tender feelings, care, deep unconditional love, are all psychic qualities and psychic movements without a doubt. Of course, one should not be attached egoistically, which implies there should be no want or expectation, no forgetting or distraction from the goal, but love and care for those who are near us or have been given to us as part of destiny is very much a psychic movement. Cutting off is required only if and when a relationship comes in the way of the Divine, but the true aspirant uses everything for the Godward propulsion. Divine Life does not exist in isolation with the rest of the world. What is needed is not leaving the world but reorienting our relations from the ego to the psychic being and centering it all around the Divine. Here is a revealing letter of Sri Aurobindo.
‘Absence of love and fellow-feeling is not necessary for nearness to the Divine; on the contrary, a sense of closeness and oneness with others is a part of the divine consciousness into which the sadhak enters by nearness to the Divine and the feeling of oneness with the Divine. An entire rejection of all relations is indeed the final aim of the Mayavadin, and in the ascetic Yoga an entire loss of all relations of friendship and affection and attachment to the world and its living beings would be regarded as a promising sign of advance towards liberation, Moksha; but even there, I think, a feeling of oneness and unattached spiritual sympathy for all is at least a penultimate stage, like the compassion of the Buddhist, before the turning to Moksha or Nirvana. In this Yoga the feeling of unity with others, love, universal joy and Ananda are an essential part of the liberation and perfection which are the aim of the sadhana.
On the other hand, human society, human friendship, love, affection, fellow-feeling are mostly and usuallyβnot entirely or in all casesβfounded on a vital basis and are ego-held at their centre. It is because of the pleasure of being loved, the pleasure of enlarging the ego by contact, mutual penetration of spirit, with another, the exhilaration of the vital interchange which feeds their personality that men usually loveβand there are also other and still more selfish motives that mix with this essential movement. There are of course higher spiritual, psychic, mental, vital elements that come in or can come in; but the whole thing is very mixed, even at its best. This is the reason why at a certain stage with or without apparent reason the world and life and human society and relations and philanthropy (which is as ego-ridden as the rest) begin to pall. There is sometimes an ostensible reasonβa disappointment of the surface vital, the withdrawal of affection by others, the perception that those loved or men generally are not what one thought them to be and a host of other causes; but often the cause is a secret disappointment of some part of the inner being, not translated or not well translated into the mind, because it expected from these things something which they cannot give. It is the case with many who turn or are pushed to the spiritual life. For some it takes the form of a vairΔgya which drives them towards ascetic indifference and gives the urge towards Moksha. For us, what we hold to be necessary is that the mixture should disappear and that the consciousness should be established on a purer level (not only spiritual and psychic but a purer and higher mental, vital, physical consciousness) in which there is not this mixture. There one would feel the true Ananda of oneness and love and sympathy and fellowship, spiritual and self-existent in its basis but expressing itself through the other parts of the nature. If that is to happen, there must obviously be a change; the old form of these movements must drop off and leave room for a new and higher self to disclose its own way of expression and realisation of itself and of the Divine through these thingsβthat is the inner truth of the matter.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/human-relations-and-the-spiritual-life#p8)
Affectionately,
Alok Da
