Aspects of Sri Aurobindo

Our Destiny Human And Divine

LETTER TO A LAY NUN

Your account of your new life in Bihar is a bit of an eye-opener to us. Your own eyes too must have opened somewhat — but it must have been a good thing for all around you to receive so much of their fine blue in the midst of a rather grey existence.

I am sure you have managed to adjust yourself as a soldier of God is bound to do. The only thing which may keep you unadjusted is the absence of a typewriter! Well, this absence will help keep my presence actively remembered — if at all I am in danger of being swallowed up

In the dark backward and abysm of Time,

as Shakespeare puts it, though elsewhere than in his son-nets, my exploration of which you were kind enough to start typing for me in those luminous afternoons in the Ashram.

Poverty in India is something far beyond what an American could dream of (rather, could "nightmare" of). But you will also find an attitude of acceptance not discoverable in the U.S. I don't mean a fatalistic attitude, though that is there at times. I mean an attitude which can allow one to smile again and again despite the sad circumstances. This comes of not laying on the outer life such an enormous stress as falls on it in the West. Even bodily infirmities and accidents don't loom very large in the Indian mind. Provided the lesser looming does not render one passive, it tends to make for more of quiet happiness than elsewhere.

Leprosy is still a big problem in our subcontinent. Pondicherry itself has a sorry exhibition of lepers. Luckily the disease is not very communicable. In fact, hardly any adult catches it. If it appears in adult life, it is only after long incubation from the time of childhood. Children are more

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exposed. Usually, there is no risk except when one comes in extremely close contact, such as sleeping in a leper's bed or being wrapped in his clothes. Adults, however, have to be careful not to be carriers to children, which they can be in spite of the practical immunity they themselves enjoy.

The subject of leprosy brings up that of philanthropy, on which you have put me a question. St. Francis undertook to kiss the wounds of lepers. Gandhi used to go out of his way to handle leprous bodies and massage them and make them comfortable. We must admire the compassion and the courage involved — but foolishness too is involved, a certain perversity of philanthropic goodness. Fellow-feeling can be exercised in a wiser way and, as for helping lepers, one does not need to do such exceedingly out-of-the-common things as might invite infection — especially a gesture like St. Francis's. Perhaps the saintly passion with which he burned had the subtle power to protect him, but his example does not cry out to be followed. Even some such passion did not protect Father Damien. Most of whatever else of philanthropy the little friar of Assisi did may be worth following if one's turn of temperament points in that direction. But Francis was not merely a philanthropist. And his life gives me the cue to say a few things which I consider to be of central importance.

It is not easy to say them in an understandable manner. One is likely to be misinterpreted as running down a noble activity. I call the activity noble when I have in mind persons like you who are genuinely devoted to the service of their fellow-creatures. Often it is merely a noble-looking means of pandering to one's ego — the desire to be accounted good, the greed for publicity and fame, the urge to use one's high reputation for one's private benefit. But there is surely a fine species of philanthropy and there are natures that have a true bent for it, just as there are natures with a true penchant for art or science or philosophy, industry or business or even warfare. Then philanthropy becomes a worthy occupation — a mode of fulfilling one's destiny. However, there is a human

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destiny and there is a divine destiny. The former proves one a dedicated brother or sister of God's children. The latter shows one to be a consecrated child of God.

This is certainly the essential, the fundamental destiny of each one. Along with it, one has to pursue the right line — or lines — of one's nature, whether philanthropy or any of the others I have listed. There is no compulsion to give oneself exclusively to philanthropic activity. We can't wish a Shakespeare to stop writing plays or a Beethoven to cease composing symphonies and carry on social service any more than we can wish them to become doctors or engineers when their natural turn is towards drama or music. What we can unquestionably ask them, as well as everybody else, is to be considerate and honest and to exercise some control over their "drives". Such a call on them goes inevitably with their being members of a community. If they answer it while being playwright or composer or anything else, they fulfil their human destiny, as much as does he or she whose being is drawn towards philanthropy as a career.

Still, in none of these expressions of one's being is there the fulfilment of what I have termed one's divine destiny. That destiny is met only when one moves towards the realisation of God by the via mystica. All may not have it in them to be a Saint Teresa or a Mirabai, a Meister Eckhart or a Ramana Maharshi — much less to come anywhere near the Mother or Sri Aurobindo. But all can make a beginning in the inner life. By the inner life I do not mean merely the practice of religion — going to Church or temple, saying prayers or doing puja. I do not here envisage even the adoption of the life of a priest or a sadhu. No doubt, a priest or a sadhu is nearer the inner life than the ordinary religious person, yet the critical threshold may still remain uncrossed. A direct devotion to the Divine is required — a constant habit of what I would summarise as: "Remember and offer." As a background to this movement there would be an attempt at detachment from one's common self, a stepping back from its immediate reactions and, as a result, a wide equanimity, a

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deep peace. The formula of "Remember and offer" would take the whole of one's life, outer no less than inner, into the compass of spirituality and establish a persistent connection with a Higher Light, Love and Power — until in an in-creasing degree they descend into one's mind, one's heart, one's centres of vitality and stream out in their pure state into the world through one's soul which feels spontaneously the Divine as its Source and Sovereign.

Not philanthropy alone, but all other forms of living are insufficient. They fall short of the basic demand on man from the great Beyond, the great Around, the great Within that variously haunt every consciousness which is not immersed totally in the passing moment. The danger of the intensely philanthropic outlook and movement is that, more than the other forms of living, it is prone to regard itself as the ne plus ultra of being what life is meant to be. Not only does it incline to forget that there are hundreds of ways of human fulfilment, but it also overlooks the fact that it fails to be authentic spirituality. The ringing slogans of high ethics — "Love thy neighbour as thyself", "To love man is to love God" — can deafen us to the still small voice from the inmost silence and the call of Krishna's flute from dream-distances. Yes, such is the allure of the altruistic mission that we are tempted to consider ourselves as obeying God's dictate to the full. Actually, the altruist is doing no more than serving, however creditably, an attenuated and subtilised version of the ego. Here is nothing to be ashamed of: far from it, here is something to be happy about. But we must guard ourselves against growing oblivious of the real aim in life.

If one's altruistic act is not inwardly offered to God, if His Presence is not invoked to enter us and guide the philanthropic gesture correctly, if an endeavour at mystical communion at all times is not made while serving our brothers and sisters, then all such service remains in the realm of Ignorance and there is no direct awakening of the soul, no straight flowering into a sense of God's fatherhood and motherhood. Here the figure of St. Francis is an apt re-

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minder. For, he was, first and foremost, one swept by mystic communion with God — and, even if he had not been philanthropic, he would have consummated his divine destiny.

I would be the last to dissuade a person like you from philanthropic activity. What I would point out, first, is that it is not the ultimate and, secondly, that there are other activities equally legitimate if one's nature tends towards them and, thirdly, that those who are seriously intent on progressive union with God are not obliged to be remorse-stricken if they do not give themselves to social service. On this last matter I may add that these people are not in-different to humanity — they simply put humanity next to divinity, holding as they do that the greatest boon they can bring to the former is to become radiating centres of a Consciousness higher than the human, centres from which a luminous sweetness and strength and wisdom can flow out to ease the sorrowful, nerve the weary, enlighten the seeker and help all of them to get into touch with their souls and thereby acquire some awareness of the Super-human in a direct manner.

Not that the mystics, the Yogis, should shirk the several functions of a collective existence. They must work harmoniously in whatever mode they can to build a fairer future on earth — but the work, again, is not in itself the goal. The Latin proverb goes: Quis laborat orat, "He who works prays." But I would say with our Mother: "To work for the Divine is to pray with the body." What counts is the spiritual attitude, the remembering and offering. To be free from the ego and to channelise what the Rigveda hymned as satyam ritam brihat, "the True, the Right, the Vast" or, in more open language, the eternal and infinite Godhead — this has to be the motive of all work. For, it is through such work that the Aurobindonian transformation can have the chance to take place both within and without.

I have rambled along, spurred by your question about the responsibility for philanthropy. I have done so because I am

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positive that you are in tune with the old injunction, "Love thy God with all thy heart and all thy mind and all thy body" and that therefore you vibrate sympathetically to our life here. Whatever your physical background, whatever your psychological training, whatever your ostensible vocation — all of them valuable in my view — and wherever you may be by choice or by duty, I feel you always at the Samadhi and, on a lesser plane, in my office-room in which, too, I hope, some light and delight drawn by the Integral Yoga from beyond the ordinary world are at play. Always I see you as a lovely and loving companion in the adventure to which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have beckoned those who are ready to recognise themselves as their children. Officially, outwardly you may have a life apart, but, just as many shall come from the East and the West to sit at the table of the Divine, so too many may go to the East and the West and yet be in spirit where Sri Aurobindo's ambrosia and the Mother's nectar are invisibly but most palpably spread out.

9.11.1979

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