The Sun and The Rainbow

THE PAST RELIGIONS, THE OLD

YOGAS AND SRI AUROBINDO'S IDEAL

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Time and again the question has cropped up: Can Sri Aurobindo's ideal be realised by means of the past religions and the old Yogas?

An answer in the negative, insisting on the newness of the ideal and the consequent need of a new spiritual praxis, is usually given. But a very positive criticism is couched in the following terms which call for our notice by the striking quotations they incorporate from Sri Aurobindo himself and the sweeping conclusions drawn on the strength of them:

"Many people are of the opinion that for the Supramental Yoga we require exclusively Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The devotion of these people is commendable, but we must see what Sri Aurobindo has said on his Integral Yoga. Otherwise there is every possibility of sectarianism being developed.

"Sri Aurobindo was dead against sectarianism. He wrote in The Synthesis of Yoga, in the Chapter The Four Aids': "The sadhaka of the integral Yoga will make use of all these aids, according to his nature; but it is necessary that he should shun their limitations and cast from himself that exclusive tendency of egoistic mind which cries, "My God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru," and opposes it to all other realisation in a sectarian or a fanatical spirit. All sectarianism, all fanaticism must be shunned; for it is inconsistent with the integrity of the divine realisation.'

"Then again in Letters on Yoga we read these lines: I have

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no objection at all to the worship of Krishna or the Vaishnava form of devotion, nor is there an incompatibility between Vaishnava Bhakti and my supramental yoga. There is in fact no special and exclusive form of supramental yoga: all ways can lead to the supermind, just as all ways can lead to the Divine.'

"So I think the matter ends here. Sri Aurobindo warned us and gave his final word which we must remember.

" 'Well, have we truly the "final word" here?

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The words of a Master of the Integral Yoga are bound to be such that they seem to lend countenance to various standpoints at various times and places. They present many aspects of truth and can be quoted by one side or another to suit particular purposes. Unless taken in the context of the entire Aurobindonian vision they cannot yield their full significance.

But even if the quotations made from The Synthesis of Yoga and from Letters are taken on their own merits, do we really get the impression that Sri Aurobindo considered his ideal to be realisable by means of the past religions and the old Yogas?

To reject the cry "My God, my Incarnation, my Prophet, my Guru" is surely not to say, "Any kind of God, any type of Incarnation, any sort of Prophet, any brand of Guru will straightaway do for the Integral Yoga." And to forbid "all sectarianism, all fanaticism" is surely not to go in for a mighty mixture of the world's religions in an impartial acceptance of everything in them exactly as it is. A broad-minded view of the function and utility of all spiritual and religious motives, a willingness to let different human beings accept different creeds and guides and paths according to their natures — this is the obvious intention.

Again, look at the declaration that the worship of Krishna and the Vaishnava form of devotion are compatible with the

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Supramental Yoga and that there is no special and exclusive form of such a Yoga and that all ways can lead to the Supermind. Is it tantamount to asserting that it makes no difference in the least whether one follows Vaishnavism in the manner current so far or whether one takes to it in accordance with a larger and more plastic spirit which we should expect to be proper to a Yoga admittedly many-sided and widely inclu-sive and openly designated by a non-Vaishnavite term, a term hitherto unheard-of: "Supramental"? Nor must we overlook the small yet important word "can". It is not replaceable by a sweeping "will" or an unconditional "must". This too should be obvious.

A deeper scrutiny of the first quotation would attend to the point markedly suggested in it that the student or practitioner of the Integral Yoga should avoid "all sectarianism, all fanaticism". He should avoid them because he casts from himself the "exclusive tendency" and takes the essence of all spiritual paths and impregnates it with the new Aurobindonian revelation, making that essence yield the secret truth in it that tends towards integrality. But, if we admit this, then we imply integrality to be the distinguishing Aurobindonian feature, so that what is of living value to us is not one particular cult or another as it is in itself but that in it which can blend with the new endeavour. There is always this blendable part, for the work of Sri Aurobindo is not a negation of the past but its fulfilment: if the Supermind is the truth of truths and if it is meant to complete the evolutionary movement everything in that movement must hold something which points — however vaguely, indirectly, even perversely — towards the supramental. But the Supermind fulfils the past not by merely encouraging it: it fulfils by bringing a novel light and power and only by this light and power can the past's pointer be disengaged and employed with fruitful results. So there is no question of reaching the goal set by Sri Aurobindo without appreciating the Aurobindonian work as something which the past in itself cannot give and without which the

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past is inacceptable to us for our special ends, however valid its acceptance may be for those who — quite legitimately for their own objectives — do not share-our aim to consummate the universal evolutionary drive.

The gods and avatars and teachers who have influenced the world are not to be brushed aside: all of them carry a concealed cry for the Supermind, but mostly for an aspect of it rendered separate and exclusive, and we cannot lose ourselves in such a form of the aspect. Thus Shiva has mostly been invoked to grant a liberation from the cosmic imbroglio — "Hara, Hara! Vyom, Vyom!" ("The Free, the Free! The Void, the Void!"): this has been the Shiva-mantra. The Free and the Void are indispensable to Sri Aurobindo's Yoga, for they are the base and the milieu for the supramental dynamism in the world. But if we go in for the Shiva-mantra as made effective in the past we shall hardly be Aurobindonians. Vaishnava bhakti has brought the sweetness and intensity and concreteness of the personal Divine into life and, as such, it is indispensable for us, human persons who have been doing the Integral Yoga under gurus whom we have believed to be the Divine embodied. But there has been a lot of emotional and sensational excitement associated with this bhakti, and that certainly is no objective for us: a calm flickerless flaming of the heart is what Sri Aurobindo wants: no loss of true fire is here, but nothing of the dramatic, the uncontrolled, the lopsided, the fitful. Again, Vaishnava bhakti has fixed for its terminus a beyond-life of Goloka-felicity: a wonderful lila, play, here with Krishna's inner presence and then a happy storm of passage to a heaven on the other side. This transmundane terminus is also not suitable for the direction of our consciousness. No doubt, the worship of Krishna or the Vaishnava form of devotion can go along with the Supramental Yoga, as indeed all ways can lead to the Supermind, but it is poor logic to think Sri Aurobindo is deliberately recommending it. If anybody is so minded or so conditioned psychologically as to want to practise it, Sri Aurobindo would not forbid him, provided the

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potentiality it possesses of being compatible with the Yoga of the Supermind is made active and dominant. We should commit the grossest mistake to think that according to Sri Aurobindo any past spiritual way would be helpful for our ultimate purpose without the least qualification, without the slightest reorientation.

Sri Aurobindo has never said: "Go and follow Shankara and you will reach the Supermind. Be a follower of Ramanuja or Chaitanya and you will automatically do the Supramental Yoga." Nor has he gone out of his way to advise people to take up old cults, as if saying: "Why bother about coming to the Ashram and devoting yourself to the Mother or to me? Stay where you are and as you are and continue in your own religion, carry on your ancient puja of this or that Ishta-devata, chosen deity, for you are sure to be supramentalised and bound to be a brilliant sadhaka of the Integral Yoga if you just do what your ancestors have done or you have been habituated to do. In fact, there was no need for the Mother or me to get born and pass through the ordeals of a path that had never before been trod in its fullness and in its details, no need for us to have discovered new lights and powers for earth's transformation which has never been rightly attempted or even properly dreamt of. Any old path, any past cult, any god or avatar or teacher will serve for practising a Yoga with which they themselves were never associated."

Actually, Sri Aurobindo's central stress is on a new life, a transcendence of the spiritual past as well of the past in any other form, though in that spiritual past there are naturally some helpful hints for the new life. Sri Aurobindo appreciates all true seeking and permits the prolongation of the past when sincere people are somehow too addicted to it: he discerns in it those helpful hints and throws them into relief for the benefit of the aspiring addicts: he is eager to aid every man according to his individual bent. But he nowhere welcomes into his Yoga such addiction on its own merits nor does he offer an unconditional carte blanche to it. Merely because big-

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otism and exclusivism are not in his line, merely because he can extract from everything some luminous affinity to his own message, we should not misunderstand his position. To view his wideness, his considerateness, his'comprehensiveness as our commentator does is to render pretty meaningless those words of Sri Aurobindo's in a letter on the process of spiritual transformation he has worked out in terms of the Supermind. Among the reasons why he has called his Yoga "new as compared with the old yogas" he lists the following: "... a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive. I have not found this method (as a whole) or anything like it professed or realised in the old yogas. If I had, I should not have wasted my time in hewing out a road and in thirty years of search and inner creation when I could have hastened home safely to my goal in an easy canter over paths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped, mac-adamised, made secure and public. Our yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure."

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