AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER
Ask Alok da

Recently while surfing through my phone I came across the youtube channel of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Delhi and at that time a video surfaced across where they have invited a Sanyasi to talk about something in the Delhi Ashram branch. I felt it bit odd, because what help will a Sanyasi bring in the Yoga centered around Transformation rather than Nirvana? Haven’t people there read Sri Aurobindo and The Mother’s opinion on asceticism? 🧘✨🔓🌀

Mother’s experience of Supramental Ship? I am confused whether my line of thinking is correct or whether am I becoming too much mentally rigid ?

Your line of thinking is very correct. But that is how the world is. People are mixed and hence the world goes on in the old way working through all the resistances of the old world. I am sure people who do so have their own logic, such as wideness etc. But wideness does not mean indiscriminate mixture of things that may look similar, though there is hardly any similarity in the old world spirituality unless you go back to the roots of the Vedas, the Gita and to an extent, the Upanishads. Though even there, different schools give their own interpretation to justify a world shunning spirituality. There is no real reason to invite all kinds of people representing different schools of thought as it can easily confuse the neophyte. Personal likes and dislikes are one thing and an institutional promotion of all kinds of thought some of which may not only be quite contrary to the central spirit but even opposed to it is quite another. That is not wideness but indiscriminate mixture. Here are Sri Aurobindo’s words that caution us.

‘For the way that humanity deals with an ideal is to be satisfied with it as an aspiration which is for the most part left only as an aspiration, accepted only as a partial influence. The ideal is not allowed to mould the whole life, but only more or less to colour it; it is often used even as a cover and a plea for things that are diametrically opposed to its real spirit. Institutions are created which are supposed, but too lightly supposed to embody that spirit and the fact that the ideal is held, the fact that men live under its institutions is treated as sufficient. The holding of an ideal becomes almost an excuse for not living according to the ideal; the existence of its institutions is sufficient to abrogate the need of insisting on the spirit that made the institutions. But spirituality is in its very nature a thing subjective and not mechanical; it is nothing if it is not lived inwardly and if the outward life does not flow out of this inward living. Symbols, types, conventions, ideas are not sufficient. A spiritual symbol is only a meaningless ticket, unless the thing symbolised is realised in the spirit. A spiritual convention may lose or expel its spirit and become a falsehood. A spiritual type may be a temporary mould into which spiritual living may flow, but it is also a limitation and may become a prison in which it fossilises and perishes. A spiritual idea is a power, but only when it is both inwardly and outwardly creative. Here we have to enlarge and to deepen the pragmatic principle that truth is what we create, and in this sense first, that it is what we create within us, in other words, what we become. Undoubtedly, spiritual truth exists eternally beyond independent of us in the heavens of the spirit; but it is of no avail for humanity here, it does not become truth of earth, truth of life until it is lived. The divine perfection is always there above us; but for man to become divine in consciousness and act and to live inwardly and outwardly the divine life is what is meant by spirituality; all lesser meanings given to the word are inadequate fumblings or impostures.’

Affectionately,

Alok Da

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