The Agenda of Collective Living

The Agenda of Collective Living

 

 

            “In spiritual life, one is always a virgin every time one awakens to a new love, for in each case it is a new part of the being, a new state of being that awakens to divine Love.”⁶

The Mother

           

                 Sri Matriniketan Ashram is one small point of concentration of universe, one small beginning, which rests on the conviction that one experiences all Ocean in a drop of water or a finite Self within can explore multiple subtle worlds of infinite Consciousness; all of earth’s longing can be felt within a whirl of the atom and the Eternal can manifest in a time made finite body. Our mortality is justified only as a step towards immortal all life; a smallest and meanest work can be a sweet, glad and glorious sacrament offered to the One; by the support of the Divine’s touch, a childlike immature thought can be ‘flame-wrapped outbursts of the immortal Word’⁷ and ‘the grandeur of its dreams’⁹ can ‘glow through the centuries;’⁸ our earth can be fulfilled only by opening and embracing the purity of heavens beyond; an individual can live Divine life only when he has discovered greater and higher planes of Consciousness. So, all views of both cosmic and individual existence are incomplete accounts of endless truth; for both depend upon, exist, and are fully satisfied by the invasion of Transcendent Divine Being.

      

The Agenda of Mundane Perfection:

 

The Aim of Mundane Aspiration:

            Almost all men normally devote the major part of their energy to the earthly life, terrestrial needs, interests, desires, care of the body, sufficient development and satisfaction of the vital and mental being, expansion and refinement of the intellect and knowledge, of the will and power, of ethical character, of aesthetic sensitivity and creativeness, of emotionally balanced poise and enjoyment, of vital and physical soundness, regulated action and just efficiency. Without these things man could not attain to his full manhood. If we unduly neglect, belittle and condemn these material and mental facts behind our life for some other higher Spiritual truth or merit or utility or suitability to certain individual temperament then we suffer the unfitness of the general and complete rule of human living. The maintenance of material and mental grounds cannot be allowed to go into the background and Mother-nature takes good care so that the human race shall not neglect these aims of terrestrial perfection of mental radiations. These are a necessary part of her evolution to affirm him in Ignorance before he can perfect himself in Knowledge and all that transpires on earth and all that is beyond fall within the total scope and method of the illimitable Divine plan.

           

            The integral Yoga practiced at Sri Matriniketan Ashram does not reject any of the above essential mundane aims but enlarges, heightens and greatens it by finding its true hidden meaning and transfigures it from a limited, earthly and mortal thing to something infinite, eternal and immortal existence. Or 'For, followed more largely and with less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realization of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings and, finally, the realization of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realization a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilizable for the projection of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualization and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.'¹⁵

 

The Method of Mundane Aspiration:

           The self-discipline of mundane aspiration is an intellectual, volitional, ethical, emotional, aesthetic, physical training and improvement which does not travel beyond the ordinary circle of working of mind, life and body. Our normal perception, imagination, formulation and cognition of things are mental and of constructed understanding. It is still in the obscured and unillumined preparatory Yoga of Nature and pursuit of an ordinary human perfection which is an increasing littleness of its motives, an absorption in an ordinary surface living oblivious of our natural response to the Divine Being’s larger joy in cosmic existence. It does not aspire beyond the mind to that which is purest reason and brightest Intuition and leaves the Spiritual element either undeveloped or insufficiently satisfied or it falls back before the too tense demand of the Spiritual effort. Still the method of mundane existence is unconsciously a heightening of the force of consciousness in the narrow circle of manifested nature.

 

The Perfection of Mundane Aspiration:

            The mundane perfection is conceived of as something outward, social, a thing of action, a more rational dealing with our fellow-men and our environment, a better and more efficient citizenship and discharge of duties, a better and more harmonious associated enjoyment of the opportunities of existence. This growth into the full mental being is the first transitional human perfection which does not liberate the soul, but it lifts us one step out of the material and vital absorption and subjection and prepares the loosening of the hold of the limited knowledge. But the Mother-nature has implanted in us some urge which goes beyond this first terrestrial perfection of humanity and to limit ourselves to the present formula of an imperfect humanity is to exclude our Divine potentialities. For this reason the human race cannot accept or follow for a very long time any view of perfection that ignores the higher and subtler sense and labours to confine us entirely to the purely terrestrial way of living of too mental standard and mental cognition of things are no longer considered sufficient.

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             If we are not satisfied with life as the influence of lower Nature dominates it, then something in us or the Soul within us shall strive for Divine perfection. "In place of the ignorance of the lower Nature absorbed in its outward works and appearances the eye will open to the vision of God everywhere, to the unity and universality of the spirit. The world’s sorrow and pain will disappear in the bliss of the All-blissful; our weakness and error and sin will be changed into the all-embracing and all-transforming strength, truth and purity of the Eternal. To make the mind one with the divine consciousness, to make the whole of our emotional nature one love of God everywhere, to make all our works one sacrifice to the Lord of the worlds and all our worship and aspiration one adoration of him and self-surrender, to direct the whole self Godwards in an entire union is the way to rise out of a mundane into a divine existence."¹⁷

 

Beyond the Mundane Aspiration:

             Most of the thinking humanity conceived ideal development as mundane change and approach at least to an ideal standard of perfection which his mind is able to conceive, fix before and pursue. It is only the minority who concern themselves with self-development as one of the most important aim of life and very few feel the need of a total Spiritualisation of mundane Nature. They can arrive at a point when they can open themselves to the power and presence of the Spirit and admit its direct Divine working. Brahman is at once the foundation of Supra-mundane Knowledge and self-aware manifestation of mundane Ignorance and by the synthesis of both one arrives at the Integral Knowledge. For the material is not the only truth of our existence; other planes of consciousness there are to which we can attain and not to know and manifest their law in our life is to fall short of the height and fullness of our Being. This entire separation of the Divine foreseen in a mundane life can be a starting point of all our Spiritual pursuits and in the Mother's language, "In the beginning of the Yoga you are apt to forget the Divine very often. But by constant aspiration you increase your remembrance and you diminish the forgetfulness. But this should not be done as a severe discipline or a duty; it must be a movement of love and joy. Then very soon a stage will come when, if you do not feel the presence of the Divine at every moment and whatever you are doing, you feel at once lonely and sad and miserable... Whenever you find that you can do something without feeling the presence of the Divine and yet be perfectly comfortable, you must understand that you are not consecrated in that part of your being. That is the way of the ordinary humanity which does not feel any need of the Divine. But for a seeker of the Divine Life it is very different. And when you have entirely realised unity with the Divine, then, if the Divine were only for a second to withdraw from you, you would simply drop dead; for the Divine is now the Life of your life, your whole existence, your single and complete support. If the Divine is not there, nothing is left.”¹⁶

  

 

The Agenda of Moderate Spirituality:

 

The First Condition of the Fortress of Moderate Spirituality or the Law of Moderation:

            The world itself is identified as the fortress of moderate Spirituality where every individual has the right to serve and adore the Divine in spite of his many lapses in outer living and enormous intellectual and spiritual timidity. An individual is considered fit to pursue moderate Spirituality when his mundane existence begins to recognise the God concealed in His creation. Here, the Spiritual change begins by influence of the inner Being, enlargement of the bounds of surface Knowledge-Ignorance, a growth of religious temperament in the heart and piety in the conduct. He experiences Spiritual upliftment or mental illumination through obedience to the law of moderation, and must learn to give full scope to the inner Spirit to develop its own truth and reality and exceeding our present limited Consciousness.

            

              "The seeker of the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction....But this state of perfection arrives later in the Yoga and till then the law of moderation laid down by the Gita is the best for us; too much mental or physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty."²⁰ "Verily this Yoga is not for him who eats too much or sleeps too much, even as it is not for him who gives up sleep and food, O Arjuna."²¹

 

The Second Condition of the Fortress of Moderate Spirituality or the Middle Path of Intellect:

            He chooses the middle path of ‘reason’s vigilant light’¹⁸ which is neither the entire rejection of the ascetic living, nor the entire surrender of the inner and outer life to consecrated living, nor the calling down of the large Divine Descent of high spirituality. His attraction towards world and earthly enjoyment always predominates over attraction towards the Divine. He is to be made fully aware that his endeavour is not directed to become a witness of the miracles of inferior powers and the Spiritual Powers are not meant to be wrongly utilised towards satisfaction of earthly desires and interests but are intended for rightly utilising them for the Divine end, for development of subtle faculties and entry into higher planes of Consciousness. An integral Moderate climbs above the mind and lives in the calm vastness of the One and raises the consciousness to the pure unvanquished Spirit and spreads himself to a wide intense calm and arrives slowly at timeless peace.   

 

The Third Condition of the Fortress of Moderate Spirituality or Generalisation of Spirituality:

            Sri Aurobindo confirmed that such large communities of moderate Spirituality through Religion have succeeded in India and ‘has been one of the greatest triumphs of Spirit over Matter’¹⁹ and moderately practical and scientific societies in Europe with its habit of conscious change and fixed idea of progress have succeeded and is ‘one of the greatest triumphs of Mind over Matter.’¹⁹ Spirituality can be generalised in the mass through practice of moderate Spirituality but its other disadvantage is that its diffusive movement of intellectual formalization of Spiritual knowledge has resulted in materialisation of living practice into a dead mass of cult, ceremony, ritual and mechanisation by which the Spirit is bound to leave in the course of time from its body and structure. Integral Yoga proposes to take this risk²² of expansive movement as this is an inherent necessity of the Spiritual urge in evolutionary Nature and through the general advancement of the human race the victories of the Spirit can be secured. The transformation from Mental to Spiritual is the destiny of the race and the immediate need is a general admission of the Spiritual ideal, a widespread endeavour, a conscious awareness and intensification of our concentration, which will carry the stream of man’s developing tendency to a definite achievement.

 

The Fourth Condition of the Fortress of Moderate Spirituality or Reproduction of Liberated Souls:

              Efforts have been made to accommodate the moderate seekers in the main streams of integral Yoga regardless of their past trends, fixed beliefs and practices. The moderate Ashramites and Devotees will be conversant with the manyfold constraints of integral Yoga from the very beginning of their sadhana life and make their life opulent with the fresh inflow of Spiritual experiences. They receive the immediate Divine call to liberate the Soul and manifestation of the Divine through customary activities like concentration on written truth, Study Circle, Yoga Sadhana camp and other related associations. The objective of this Centre of Moderate Spirituality is to generalise the highest Spiritual aspiration of integral Yoga in humanity or organise an evolutionary general progression through the principle of intensive and concentrated evolution or rigorous Self-control emerging from the secret schools of Spiritual fortress. In the past, the rare Spiritual perfection of the Mystics was generalised in the men in the mass through Religious leaders or this principle of expansion and extension was carried forward with the help of liberated Souls liberating others; for it is the constant upward effort of few towards the vision of this Spiritual change that has kept humanity alive and maintained for it its place in the front of creation.

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            "“This is my word of promise,” cries the voice of the Godhead to Arjuna, “that he who loves me shall not perish.” (The Gita-9.31) Previous effort and preparation, the purity and the holiness of the Brahmin, the enlightened strength of the king-sage great in works and knowledge have their value, because they make it easier for the imperfect human creature to arrive at this wide vision and self-surrender; but even without this preparation all who take refuge in the divine Lover of man, the Vaishya once preoccupied with the narrowness of wealth-getting and the labour of production, the Shudra hampered by a thousand hard restrictions, woman shut in and stunted in her growth by the narrow circle society has drawn around her self-expansion,  those  too,  papa-yonayah,  on  whom their past Karma has imposed even the very worst of births, the outcaste, the Pariah, the Chandala, find at once the gates of God opening before them. In the spiritual life all the external distinctions of which men make so much because they appeal with an oppressive force to the outward mind, cease before the equality of the divine Light and the wide omnipotence of an impartial Power."²³ "For from all, from the thief and the harlot and the outcaste as from the saint and the sage, the Beloved looks forth and cries to us, “This is I.” “He who loves Me in all beings,” — what greater word of power for the utmost intensities and profundities of divine and universal love, has been uttered by any philosophy or any religion?"²⁴ "If Narayana is without difficulty visible in the sage and the saint, how shall he be easily visible to us in the sinner, the criminal, the harlot and the outcaste?"²⁵

 

The Agenda of the Ascetics’ Fortress:

 

The First Condition of Living in an Ascetics’ Fortress or Law of Renunciation:

            Five inner rejections of desire, attachment, ego, three gunas and dualities and two outer rejections of initiation of work and old earth-bound association are binding conditions of sane ascetic living, if practiced sincerely one will arrive at the objective of supernormal energising of Consciousness and Will in order to gain some intense and exceptional Spiritual power and mastery. A developed moderate is considered fit to live in Ascetics’ Fortress when he recognises the conquest of lower nature as a condition of higher Spiritual life. An Ascetic experiences Spiritual upliftment when his tapasya is consistent with the Law of Renunciation.

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            "Then evidently the straight and simplest way to get out of the close bondage of the active nature and back to spiritual freedom is to cast away entirely all that belongs to the dynamics of the ignorance and to convert the soul into a pure spiritual existence. That is what is called becoming Brahman, brahma- bhuya. It is to put off the lower mental, vital, physical existence and to put on the pure spiritual being. This can best be done by the intelligence and will, buddhi, our present topmost principle. It has to turn away from the things of the lower existence and first and foremost from its effective knot of desire, from our attachment to the objects pursued by the mind and the senses. One must become an understanding unattached in all things, asakta-buddhih sarvatra. Then all desire passes away from the soul in its silence; it is free from all longings, vigata-spruhah. That brings with it or it makes possible the subjection of our lower and the possession of our higher self, a possession dependent on complete self-mastery, secured by a radical victory and conquest over our mobile nature, jitatma. And all this amounts to an absolute inner renunciation of the desire of things, sannyasa. Renunciation is the way to this perfection and the man who has thus inwardly renounced all is described by the Gita as the true Sannyasin."²⁸

 

The Second Condition of Living in an Ascetics’ Fortress:

            Individual soul liberation remains the prime concern of an ascetic Ashramite in spite of the limitation of its exclusive seeking. This separate affirmation of the ascetic Ashramite is an indispensable element in human perfection in liberating his vital being from insistent animalism. Then to rise beyond the desire of personal salvation is necessary for the complete rejection of the basis of ego. When he lives inward and arrives at vast equality and peace unnoticed by the reactions of the outer nature, then that is a great but incomplete liberation without the deliverance of outer Nature. Even after the personal deliverance is complete, an Integral Ascetic Sadhaka feels it is insufficient without the deliverance extended to the whole of humanity.

 

The Third Condition of Living in an Ascetics’ Fortress:

            Traditional Shastra preaches three doors of escape; firstly, the renunciation of life itself and of our mundane existence, the entire rejection of world-existence as a lie, an insanity of the Soul; secondly, the Soul’s hunger for individual salvation by escape into farthest height of unalloyed Bliss, its unwillingness to return from the ecstasy of the Divine embrace into the lower field of work, struggle and service of the inferior nature which is bound down to ego in all its activities, chained triply to the stake of differentiated individuality of the gunas; thus, the exaggeration of the difficulties of combining life of works with Spiritual realisation as impossibility becomes prominent; a selfishness grows which does not care of what becomes of those who are left behind us; thirdly, the traditional Yoga develops a weakness that shrinks from struggle, disgust and disappointment and baffled by the great cosmic labour and the indifference to the cry that rises up from a labouring humanity. In integral Yoga none of these escape, weakness, and selfishness are valid in its dealings with the surrounding, nor can there grow a mere sympathy, love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, but rather there must be a conscious unity with his fellow beings, a Divine strength, compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff that an integral Ascetic would take upon himself.

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            "The wise man puts away the shrinkings and hesitations of the desire-soul and the doubts of the ordinary human intelligence, that measure by little personal, conventional or otherwise limited standards. He follows in the light of the full sattwic mind and with the power of an inner renunciation lifting the soul to impersonality, towards God, towards the universal and eternal the highest ideal law of his nature or the will of the Master of works in his secret spirit. He will not do action for the sake of any personal result or for any reward in this life or with any attachment to success, profit or consequence: neither will his works be undertaken for the sake of a fruit in the invisible hereafter or ask for a reward in other births or in worlds beyond us, the prizes for which the half-baked religious mind hungers. The three kinds of result, pleasant, unpleasant and mixed, in this or other worlds, in this or another life are for the slaves of desire and ego; these things do not cling to the free spirit. The liberated worker who has given up his works by the inner sannyasa to a greater Power is free from Karma. Action he will do, for some kind of action, less or more, small or great, is inevitable, natural, right for the embodied soul, — action is part of the divine law of living, it is the high dynamics of the spirit. The essence of renunciation, the true Tyaga, the true Sannyasa is not any rule of thumb of inaction but a disinterested soul, a selfless mind, the transition from ego to the free impersonal and spiritual nature. The spirit of this inner renunciation is the first mental condition of the highest culminating sattwic discipline."²⁹

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The Fourth Condition of Living in an Ascetics’ Fortress:

            Similarly an integral ascetic Sadhaka has to exceed the traditional ascetic’s limitation (1) of saintly inactivity by dynamisation of Divine Will and realise God as the Doer of all action who demands action, obedience and subordination from all; (2) the traditional ascetic’s realisation of God’s shadow, Brahma satya Jagat mithya,¹⁰ is first experienced as indispensable Spiritual foundation and then superseded by the Direct contact with the Divine All, Brahma satya Jagat satya; (3) the integral Ascetic attains the fullness of surrender by realising the fullness of life and this he realises by accepting and transforming life; (4) he realises the fullness of Divine Love by integrating the Personal, Saguna, and Impersonal, Nirguna, aspect of the Divine; (5) in integral Yoga the triune view of mutually contradictory philosophies, Maya of the Mayavadin, Illusionist, Prakriti of the Sankhya doctrine and the Lila, the Divine Play of the Bhakti movement are perfectly consistent with each other, necessary and complementary and must be accepted as the starting-point for all our understanding of the universe; (6) integral Ascetic links the lower deluding mental Maya of Mayavadin with the Supramental Maya of the Vedic seers in which all is in each and each is in all for the play of existence with existence, consciousness with consciousness, force with force, delight with delight; (7) those who come to this ascetic Ashram at an earlier age or those who enter Sannyasa without exhausting the attraction of the outside world, for them adventure into Space through outer wandering become indispensable; so the later Vedantic wandering Eremite for the search of the Divine truth and Divine manifestation is transformed in integral Yoga into the spirit of ancient Vedantic Seers through inner wandering of Soul and in search of higher planes of Consciousness, and become a manifest and manifold power of the Spirit without dropping back the dynamic parts into the indeterminate stuff of Nature. Or after experiencing the ecstatic Divine union an integral ascetic Sadhaka declares in Savitri’s language, “Now of more wandering it has no need”¹ and he begins to understand that he still lives in Matter empty of its Lord and receives the Divine call of illumining the Matter’s depth by manifestation of higher states of Consciousness. His highest Spiritual realisation, while moving towards Supramental status is the entry into the total Nirvana of mentality and mental ego, which is a passage into the silence of the Spirit and in the Void he experiences the Omniscience Supreme.

 

            "The true Sannyasa of action is the reposing of all works on the Brahman. “He who, having abandoned attachment, acts reposing (or founding) his works on the Brahman, brahmanyadhaya  karmani,  is  not  stained  by  sin  even  as  water clings not to the lotus-leaf.” (The Gita-5.10) Therefore the Yogins first “do works with the body, mind, understanding, or even merely with the organs of action, abandoning attachment, for self-purification, sangam tyaktvatmasuddhaye. (The Gita-5.11) By abandoning attachment to the fruits of works the soul in union with Brahman attains to peace of rapt foundation in Brahman, but the soul not in union is attached to the fruit and bound by the action of desire.” (The Gita-5.12) The foundation, the purity, the peace once attained, the embodied soul perfectly controlling its nature, having renounced all its actions by the mind, inwardly, not outwardly, “sits in its nine- gated city neither doing nor causing to be done.” For this soul is the one impersonal Soul in all, the all-pervading Lord, prabhu, vibhu, who, as the impersonal, neither creates the works of the world,  nor  the  mind’s  idea  of  being  the  doer,  na  kartrutvam  na karmani, (The Gita-5.14) nor the coupling of works to their fruits, the chain of cause and effect. All that is worked out by the Nature in the man, svabhava, his principle of self-becoming, as the word literally means."³⁰ 

 

The Agenda of the Divine Centre or the Ashram:

 

The First Condition of True Ashram Living or the Law of Sacrifice:

            The right living in the Ashram begins when one receives the Divine Call of the double movement of the ascent of the Soul and descent of the Divine Shakti and gives his whole life towards the intensification of these double movements. A liberated inner Ascetic (Not a physical ascetism¹⁴) is considered fit to live in a Divine Centre when his practice of inner renunciation or human Tapasya paves the passage clear for equality and consecration. A consecrated child experiences Spiritual upliftment through the practice of the Law of Sacrifice and receives the Divine call to reconcile Matter and Spirit.

​            "A mutual giving and receiving is the law of Life without which it cannot for one moment endure, and this fact is the stamp of the divine creative Will on the world it has manifested in its being, the proof that with sacrifice as their eternal companion the Lord of creatures has created all these existences. The universal law of sacrifice is the sign that the world is of God and belongs to God and that life is his dominion and house of worship and not a field for the self-satisfaction of the independent ego; not the fulfilment of the ego, — that is only our crude and obscure beginning, — but the discovery of God, the worship and seeking of the Divine and the Infinite through a constantly enlarging sacrifice culminating in a perfect self-giving founded on a perfect self-knowledge, is that to which the experience of life is at last intended to lead... Because of this ignorance whose seal is egoism, the creature ignores the law of sacrifice and seeks to take all he can for himself and gives only what Nature by her internal and external compulsion forces him to give. He can really take nothing except what she allows him to receive as his portion, what the divine Powers within her yield to his desire. The egoistic soul in a world of sacrifice is as if a thief or robber who takes what these Powers bring to him and has no mind to give in return. He misses the true meaning of life and, since he does not use life and works for the enlargement and elevation of his being through sacrifice, he lives in vain."²⁶ “They who enjoy the nectar of immortality left over from the sacrifice attain to the eternal Brahman.” Sacrifice is the law of the world and nothing can be gained without it, neither mastery here, nor the possession of heavens beyond, nor the supreme possession of all; “this world is not for him who doeth not sacrifice, how then any other world?”"²⁷

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The Second Condition of True Ashram Living:

            Again, those who live in the Ashram or related with it, without having the above Divine call have two options in their hand, that is either to develop the sense of ownership of the Ashram through practice of pseudo tamasic and rajasic consecration or raise the Being towards The Mother’s Infinite Consciousness through true self-giving, though the latter option is difficult to realise than the former and also it is the latter attitude that draws one towards sane Ashram living. The sense of ownership in Ashram living gives birth to triple internal politics which are internal dialogue between its members by entirely separating themselves from the Divine. Thus, in the first category we observe that one lives in the Ashram without his Soul’s consent but mind, life and body pretend to live a Divine life; in the second category, the Soul has chosen the Divine life but mind, life and body have not wholly consented to such living; in the third category those who support Ashram from outside they carry with them always a behind intention which is not meant for the sole satisfaction of the Divine but the satisfaction of their own desire, ego and interest. So wrong Ashram living leaves an impression on them of God as cruel, hard hearted, immoral, merciless and a monster without noticing that they are precisely like that themselves. So one is considered fit for true Ashram living when he is capable of discerning truth from falsehood and persistently rejects what is false and obscure in him.   

 

The Third Condition of True Ashram Living:

            The true Ashram living emerges when one gives the first priority to the Divine, who is primarily, One, the force of unity, Vijnana, immutable Divine, Nirguna Brahman and secondarily, the manifestation of Many, Saguna Brahman, with whom he has direct contact; the second priority is given to the obedience towards the Law of Divine living, which works out things clearly, decisively and usefully, classify, act, deal with them harmoniously or he is well informed about every nook and corner of the norms of integral Yoga, and he can become a child, replacing the outer law by the inner Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental Law; the more he is obedient to inner and external Divine Law the more he is having proximity with the direct Divine contact and the third priority is given to the fellowship with whom the Law is manifested, the collectivity, the source of mutuality. A true individual has an eternal relation with all other individuals, a practical mutuality founded in essential unity which is the basis of perfect universal Divine contact and Divine life. Those who compromise or violate the above order or sequence meet on their path endless falsehood and discord. A true and right Ashram living leaves an impression on them of God as all-Love, all-Light, all-Good and all-Compassion.  

 

The Fourth Condition of True Ashram Living:

             The Yoga Sadhana in Ashram living must first be pursued in secrecy and silence and the high truth of Spirituality need not be brought to the scrutiny before the tribunal¹² of common mentality which has no experience of these things and they consider their incapacity of Spiritual experience as proof of their invalidity and non-existence and demand physically valid proof of Supraphysical facts or what they find difficult to understand or imagine they consider it their right to deny. It has been observed that common men have indulged in the profanation of the Spiritual mysteries and have lost the truth and significance of pure living and their surface nature revolt or deny entry within and reject any inner change. Secondly, a strict mould of Spiritual discipline is enforced on each Sadhaka which will prevent him from the misuse¹¹ of opportunities available in wide and free Ashram living and turns the eye inward in continuous search of the Eternal and lastly, the integral Yoga pursued is meant for few fit initiated destined twice-born Souls or nameless adventurers in Consciousness and the purity of its motive and special object of extension of inborn Spirituality into various experience need not be popularised or generalised with the help of external machinery because by that ‘hundreds and thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence.’² The Influence of the highest perfection of the consecrated child or man of Spiritual attainment need not rest satisfied with some intermediate tapasya, no longer confines within the boundary of small collectivity, but he seizes upon one Yogic method after another to realise the single integral Truth and one Supreme experience.

 

            His perfection at a single corner point of Ashram can spread across the whole earth and his single disposal towards Truth can change humanity and in order to arrive at the completeness of existence he least depends on external aids. “There is a divine compassion which descends to us from on high and for the man whose nature does not possess it, is not cast in its mould, to pretend to be the superior man, the master-man or the superman is a folly and an insolence, for he alone is the superman who most manifests the highest nature of the Godhead in humanity. This compassion observes with an eye of love and wisdom and calm strength the battle and the struggle, the strength and weakness of man, his virtues and sins, his joy and suffering, his knowledge and his ignorance, his wisdom and his folly, his aspiration and his failure and it enters into it all to help and to heal.”¹³

 

The Agenda of The Mother’s Virgin Fortress:

 

The First Condition of Living in a Virgins’ Fortress:

           A Virgin’s Mind, Life, Body and Soul, seeks only the Divine and she adores the Divine Mother as the Lord and the Protector of her immaculate white virginity. A consecrated individual is considered fit to live in a Virgins’ Fortress when her consecration begins to enter the Divine union and the sole attraction of the Divine. A virgin Ashramite experiences Spiritual upliftment through fulfillment of the condition of the Law of Virginity and receives the distant Divine call of cellular transformation. 

 

The Second Condition of Living in a Virgins’ Fortress:

            It has been pointed out that the Spiritual disciplines in India have entered corruption and decline through the ‘method of self indulgence'³ and have ‘fallen in to discredit’³ with those who were not Sadhakas, or those who were not aware of the truth and practice of original Shastra. Again one cannot be a Sadhaka by intellectual preparation, understanding  and reading of Scriptures; ‘for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought of the Infinite and yet we might not know him (the Divine) at all.’⁴ The essential condition of becoming a Sadhaka is ‘a resolute self consecration from deep within,’⁵ ‘a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind.’⁴ The Virgins’ Fortress is born with its extreme Spiritual doctrine to build a strong Spiritual foundation and to meet the inner deficiency and cause of Spiritual fall and a virgin Sadhaka’s tender purity indulges only in things Divine and Eternal.

 

The Third Condition of Living in a Virgins’ Fortress:

             A true Virgin child is she or he in whom the static Divine Union is prolonged and dynamised and the Ishwara becomes the Shakti. She pours herself into the material mould in ever growing intensities and she or he no longer feels herself as a different entity but identifies as a part and portion of the virgin Savitri or the Divine Mother, one with Her Love, Ananda and Consciousness.

 

The Fourth Condition of Living in a Virgins’ Fortress: An integrated Virgin is she or he who is capable to direct the gained Divine Consciousness earthward for Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental transformation of Nature. She is preoccupied in entire effort to reveal Savitri, the All Mother in humanity. She discovers the Divine in the Subconscient Self and Inconscient Self and her material life is full of the Presence of the Lord.

 

The Agenda of the World’s (Spiritual) Centre:

1: The First Centre:

            The First Centre or the World’s Centre in its inception is a deformation of God’s Eternity.

2: The Second Centre:

            The Second Centre or the World’s Centre in its formation is a deformation of God’s Capacity.

3: The Third Centre:

            The Third Centre or the World’s Centre in its making represents God’s transparency.

4: The Fourth Centre:

           The Fourth Centre or the World’s Centre in its developed state channels God’s Light, Love and Force to earth and man. It fulfills and completes the objective of the Divine Centre of liberating humanity and of the Virgins’ Fortress of transforming humanity.

 

Sri Aurobindo’s Consciousness:

 

First Condition:

          The collective Divine living may not be sufficient for an individual who is destined to become a pioneer and precursor in Consciousness. He can isolate himself from collective Divine action and enter exclusively or his all-inclusive movement of Consciousness will cover vertical heights and depths and horizontal wideness capturing the whole earth and the Transcendence and all the nether planes which are identified as undivine.

 

Second Condition:

          A revolutionary individual effort in Consciousness or a special extreme individual askesis can drag humanity ahead if his subjective and objective preoccupation entirely rests on the highest hinted reconciling, all-embracing and all exceeding Wisdom of the past and the present and his centre of living is shifted more and more within and above leaving far behind the recalcitrant surface consciousness to encircle the whole earth and hews a path towards the future.

 

Third Condition:

            The World-redeemer’s heavy and mighty task in Consciousness is to make world-life a bridge twixt earth and heaven. The Day-bringer must walk in the darkest night of Hell and he who would save the world, must share its pain. His Soul must be wider than the universe to contain all the suffering of Earth and calls down greater Power and larger Light to world’s Inconscient abysm. Then he can hope to break the Wheels of earth’s doom and then shall be ended here the Law of Pain and all would turn ahead to Wisdom and Immortality.

 

The Mother’s Consciousness:

The First Consciousness:

           Observing Consciousness is defined as many-sided movements of effort in Ignorance and Waking Consciousness is defined as spontaneous action of the Shakti in Knowledge to arrive at comprehensive Knowledge.

 

The Second Consciousness:

             The normal real life of a true liberated man is the state of oneness with the Supreme and with all beings and the bliss of that state and perfect knowledge of Spiritual atmosphere and the great Soul cannot regard with indifference the suffering of others and the deliverance of others must be felt as intimate to his own deliverance. He lives in a universalized Consciousness where all Death is realised as the Spiritual necessity for evolution of new being; it is also a stair, a stumbling stride, an instrument of perpetual life and change of robe from birth to birth in the immortal All Life or death is a rapid disintegration of cellular consciousness subservient to life’s necessity of change and variation; all Pain is a symbol of unwillingness to change and become one with the Divine, some secret rapture’s tragic mask and a violent backwash of the waters of universal Delight and without pain he would not get all the value of infinite Delight; all Limitation is a turning of the Infinite upon itself; all Evil is in travail of eternal Good and a circling around its own perfection; all error is significant of all possibility and effort of discovery of Supreme Truth; all destruction and war are small transient storm and rapidly clear the field for new good and a more satisfying harmony; all darkness is a veil of self-hidden Light. This Cosmic Consciousness is a meeting place where the Matter is real to the Spirit and Spirit is real to the Matter and illumined harmony of mind, life and body are perfectly realised.

 

The Third Consciousness:

            The Supramental Consciousness is at once the static self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a dynamic power of self-determination inherent in that self-awareness. In this Consciousness, all contradictions are canceled or fused into each other in the higher light of seeing and being, in unified self-knowledge and world-knowledge. It is the fulfilled existence that will solve all the complex problems of existence created by partial affirmation of Mind and Life emerging from the total denial of the Inconscient. The Divine in its nature is an infinite Consciousness and the nature of infinite Consciousness is a pure and infinite Delight.

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The Fourth Consciousness:

            The Mother’s Infinite Consciousness is that which rests on the One and acts in the All and is capable of free power of self-variation producing infinite results in the phenomenon and form or manifesting and playing with Being in Infinite form and movements in order to cast Herself into the world; Her Consciousness transcends All and denies none; sees all but lives for its transcendent task; transcends the Light and the Darkness to merge in the Absolute; becomes All and yet transcends the mystic whole; She is immortal yet suffers the mortal limitation of birth and death; when most unseen She works most mightily; She can uphold in Herself a million universes and pervades each with a single ray of Her Self-light and a single degree of Her ineffable existence; this whole creation lives in a lonely ray of Her Sun and before Her Infinite Chit-Shakti the Supramental Consciousness grows like a shadow.

 

The Agenda of Evolutionary Synthesis:

            The agenda of the above human aspirations can be satisfying if it can be reconciled by giving equal effort, regard and reverence to all the eight institutions. The fundamental urge of mundane perfection to attain harmony in the material existence is to be linked preliminarily with the moderate effort of linking existence with the Source, the Creator. The surface concentration of the Divine touch of the moderate is to be penetrated within by substituting the sole pursuit of the Divine in an Ascetic discipline. The Ascetic ascent of uniting with the Divine is to be rightly related with the descending Shakti in a consecrated Ashram living. The reconciliation of Matter and Spirit in a Divine Centre is to be rightly related with the perfection of material life and the quest for cellular transformation of a Virgins’ Fortress. The individual liberation of the Soul in the Moderate and Ascetics’ Fortress and individual transformation of the Nature of the Divine Centre and Virgins’ Fortress are to be universalised so that individual can act as a centre of world liberation and world transformation. The mission of the World Centre to act as a channel of Divine Force in liberating and transforming humanity is concentrated further in the movement towards the realisation of the total Consciousness of the Eternal or what we understand as Sri Aurobindo’s Consciousness. The descent of total Consciousness is a dynamic state of Brahman, known as The Mother’s Consciousness, which is responsible for the total Divine transformation of humanity. Thus, the Vedic doctrine of disclosing the Godhead in the manifestation of Spirit, Mind, Life and Body is realised.     

 

OM TAT SAT

 

References:

1: Savitri-412,

2: 02.10.1934, SABCL/26/375,

3: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-42,

4: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-81,

5: CWSA/23/The Synthesis of Yoga-82,

6: The Mother’s Agenda/6/119-120,

7: Savitri-37,

8: Savitri-259,

9: Savitri-327,

10: “A mighty murmur of immense retreat

Besieged the ear, a sad and limitless call (The Spiritual experience of Brahma satya Jagat mithya is sad limitless call.)

As of a soul retiring from the world.” Savitri-391,

11: “Let the mind learn to be silent, let it not be eager to profit immediately by the forces which come to us from Thee for the integral manifestation…” The Mother/TMCW-1/Prayers and Meditations/p-201,

12: “The greatest inner discoveries, the experience of self-being, the cosmic consciousness, the inner calm of the liberated spirit, the direct effect of mind upon mind, the knowledge of things by consciousness in direct contact with other consciousness or with its objects, most spiritual experiences of any value, cannot be brought before the tribunal of the common mentality which has no experience of these things and takes its own absence or incapacity of experience as a proof of their invalidity or their non-existence.” CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-677,

13: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-58,

14: "He (the Lord) discourages the tamasic recoil and the tendency to renunciation and enjoins the continuance of action and even of the same fierce and terrible action, but he points the disciple towards another and inner renunciation which is the real issue from his crisis and the way towards the soul’s superiority to the world-Nature and yet its calm and self-possessed action in the world. Not a physical asceticism, but an inner askesis is the teaching of the Gita." CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-55-56, "As a matter of fact, when people talk of Tyaga, of renunciation, it is always the physical renunciation of the world which they understand by the word or at least on which they lay emphasis, while the Gita takes absolutely the opposite view that the real Tyaga has action and living in the world as its basis and not a flight to the monastery, the cave or the hill-top. The real Tyaga is action with a renunciation of desire and that too is the real Sannyasa.” CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-494,

15: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-38-40,

16: The Mother/TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929-1931/p-26–27,

17: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-336,

18: "The middle path is made for thinking man.

To choose his steps by reason’s vigilant light,

To choose his path among the many paths

Is given him, for each his difficult goal

Hewn out of infinite possibility." Savitri-434,

19: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-23-24,

20: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-348,

21: The Gita-6.16,

22: "Another untoward result or peril of the diffusive movement and the consequent invasion has been the intellectual formalisation of spiritual knowledge into dogma and the materialisation of living practice into a dead mass of cult and ceremony and ritual, a mechanisation by which the spirit was bound to depart in course of time from the body of the religion. But this risk had to be taken, for the expansive movement was an inherent necessity of the spiritual urge in evolutionary Nature."CWSA-22/The Life Divine/p-903,

23: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-335,

24: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-208,

25: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-359,

26: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-126-127,

27: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-122,

28: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-530,

29: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-497,

30: CWSA-19/Essays on the Gita/p-185,

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