AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER
Ask Alok da

I have a question regarding the rejection of lower mental activities. Sri Aurobindo has written in The Mother book as following, “rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind” What I have understood from above sentence is, for example if I have a Mayavadi point of view of looking at the world and now Sri Aurobindo is saying something higher than that, then I should drop my Mayavadi point of view and accept his vision of the world. Is this a right understandingšŸ¤”?

This is very true from the practice point of view, a path that I myself took. What it means however is not to remain shut in any one-sided formula of Truth but to see it in its totality with each thing in its rightful place. This comes as we grow in true knowledge. All one-sided standpoint, views and opinions, based on our habitual conditioning or temperamental predilections and intellectual preferences becomes by its very nature a limiting factor and hence a form of ignorance masquerading as Truth. Thus, for example, there is a truth in Mayavada, a truth even in atheism but when stressed as the sole or ultimate truth excluding all other experiences it itself turns into a fresh ignorance if not a falsehood by an excessive stress and exaggeration of one side to the exclusion of others.Ā 

Ofcourse the integral, all encompassing Truth cannot come by any amount of mental reconciliation but by a growing experience through a progressive heightening and widening of consciousness. And for this one must first get rid of all one-sided formulas and exclusive formulations of the Supreme Reality. Hence the need for rejecting the lesser truths until the ground is found where the reconciliation is spontaneous. It comes as we grow in aspiration, rejection and surrender. 

Affectionately,

Alok Da

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