The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo

Misunderstandings of Mysticism

A LETTER OF 1947

Professor K has fallen foul of the advice I gave a friend of mine to make an attempt at Yoga under the guidance of Sri Aurobindo before trying to solve the problem of life's misery by taking to social service and philanthropy as the arch-panacea. In a nutshell my plea was that to do real good to the world we must become by a yogic self-transformation conscious channels of God's will and purpose, for otherwise we with even the best intention can never be sure of our work being truly beneficial. We are not sufficiently illumined to do always the right thing in the right way - there is not only our human ignorance as an obstacle but also our human frailty which often interferes with whatever in us happens to be genuinely inspired. And my words to my friend were coloured by the mood in which he was turning to social service and philanthropy: he was surcharged with an extraordinary idealistic fervour, an intense desire to outgrow the limited ego in him and merge in a larger reality. His state had all the symptoms of a mystical awakening without his knowing it and the milieu of ideas in which he lived was such as might keep him in the dark for quite a long time.

Prof. K says that my argument puts a discount on the whole ethical endeavour of mankind. I am not against ethical endeavours, but in the case at hand there was a pointer to something else much greater which does not discard ethics but floods it with a more-than-human light. Even apart from my friend's case, I should opine that ethical endeavours by themselves are not the highest activity possible to a man who wants to do good to the world. If Prof. K were an atheist he might rank them above attempts at God-realisation, though of course he would be hard put to it to produce from atheism a satisfying ground or sanction for the moral passion as also for the aesthetic hunger and the intellect's cry for truth. Since he does believe in the Divine he must automatically imply that God being the highest reality the direct union with Him is the highest value: not only philanthropy but art, philosophy, science, politics, industry fall into a lower place. This is simple logic. My advice to my friend has

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respect for sincere social service: what it does not acknowledge is the giving to it a status at the very top. At the very top there can be nothing save union with God.

"There is no guarantee," complains Prof. K, "that the perfect Yogi will be of use to the world." How to be sure that God-union will build a world-worker rather than a world-shirker? I am suspected of suggesting that from the Yogic point of view "all fight against disease, hunger, ignorance and various other miseries the flesh is heir to may be utterly futile." This is strange, because my entire letter to my friend was concerned with the best way of helping mankind to get rid of its troubles: I never doubted the need to succour and salvage humanity - I merely doubted the supreme efficacy ascribed to philanthropy and social service without any Yogic illumination. The fight against the ills of the flesh is not futile, but there is a lot of difference between waging the fight humanly and waging it divinely, between a fight full of natural errors as well as subtle egoistic perversions and a fight radiantly guided and free from the insidious ego. My attack was never on action in and for the world - and that is precisely why, for my friend, I chose Sri Aurobindo and his Ashram. The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo is dynamic, aiming at the world's regeneration, wanting ardently the manifestation of the Divine here and now and in all our parts and in all human creatures. The life its followers are asked to lead is so framed by the Master as to keep them awake to the significance of the earth and prepare them for fulfilling and not rejecting all that the earth has been labouring for through the ages.

Of course there are Yogis who reject the world. Even here it is wise to distinguish between those who do the rejecting from the ultimate standpoint and those who do it from the immediate. The latter are "cave-dwellers" immersing themselves as much as possible in a samādhi in which all outward things are lost to the consciousness. They may be considered as of no perceptible use to the earth - but uselessness cannot be charged against those who believe that our goal is to get out of the round of rebirths and be absorbed ultimately in a supracosmic Eternal but who still live in the world and work for it as long as the body lasts. Buddha was such a Yogi; also Vivekananda. Surely these great men did not do less good than ordinary social workers and philanthropists? Even what they did in the specific field of social work and

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philanthropy was much more potent; add to that the blissful spiritual light they radiated, uplifting the consciousness of their fellows as no ordinary social worker and philanthropist can ever hope to do, and we see at once how a mysticism that finds earthly values false in the ultimate reckoning can still produce colossal benefactors of the earth.

In an integral vision of reality, the samādhi-sunk "cave-dweller" must be pronounced defective, but he is not more defective than those who never do Yoga of any sort. The former seeks the Divine and ignores the Divine's world; the latter acknowledges the Divine's world but ignores the Divine - except in the weak and watery way of popular religion. If God exists, to refuse to be mystically united with Him can be no less a shortcoming than to refuse a share in His world's activity. To say this is not to recommend entranced isolation; it is but to rectify the wrong emphasis laid by Prof. K on the world to the neglect of what is greater than the world. The balanced harmonious course is to accept both - to be a Yogi as well as a world-worker - and this is the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo.

No Aurobindonian would deny, as Prof. K supposes me to do, that "feeding the poor, clothing the naked, healing the sick and sharing a tear with the stricken neighbour are acts of value." But those elementary acts which do not present much of a problem are not the whole of the philanthropic field: there are many more complicated acts to be chosen from, acts varying according to various consciences and codes. And even if the elementary acts were all, they could not bring the end of humanity's toil and tribulation. What is wrong at the root of things is the lack of the divine consciousness in the inward and outward man. Without the divine consciousness in toto there will always be the poor, the naked, the sick, the stricken, no matter how much we go feeding, clothing, healing and sharing a tear with them. Over and above practising generosity and charity we must try to impart the divine consciousness, and how can we do this unless we have first done Yoga? With the help of Yoga we would even do generous and charitable deeds far more beneficially because we would avoid the manner and form which sometimes harm those whom we serve and aid. So the prime necessity from every standpoint is to transcend the half-obscure and semi-stumbling condition of mind which is ours at present. And if that transcending demands

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that we should withdraw for a while from directly and apparently serving and aiding the destitute and the unfortunate, we surely must not let humanitarian sentimentalism distract us. We do not ask a scientist absorbed in cancer-research to start "slumming" and paying comfort-visits. He is at a job of the utmost importance to the welfare of the world. Similarly, the Aurobindonian Yogi is at a mighty magnificent job - combating an evil far more heinous than cancer, the bacillus of ignorance and selfishness, the germ of man's failure to evolve the god that is involved in him.

Here I may, in passing, draw attention to the truth that genuine world-work does not connote only social service and philanthropy. It includes inspired art, acute philosophy, constructive science, wise politics, fair industry. The swabhāva or innate nature of a man should determine his vocation; to ask a Beethoven, for instance, to stint for the problem of bad housing of the poor the time wanted for his symphonies and sonatas and quartets is to rob humanity of priceless boons. Every Yogi, too, is not compelled by the concept of world-work to devote himself to such problems. Only those whose innate nature is cast for social service and philanthropy will tackle them under spiritual impulsion. The rest will be just in warm contact with the world while mainly pursuing under spiritual impulsion the jobs they are best fitted for by their soul-bents.

There is a school of altruistic extremism as there is of egoistic. And it believes that all human beings can naturally labour with unselfishness. I am surprised to find Prof. K naively remarking: "Particularly to-day, after the second great war, we are convinced that mutual service and philanthropy alone can save us from destruction." It is like saying that if the sky fell we would all catch larks. The trouble is that the sky won't fall. The only sense in which it can fall is the Aurobindonian "descent of the divine consciousness." From high above the mere mind the hidden glories and powers and beatitudes of the Supreme have to come down and make us their moulds. When the Spirit's sky falls, the larks of light will be in our hands. But till then we shall not save ourselves from destruction. There is a flaw in our consciousness and out of this flaw derive all our vice and folly. Mutual service and philanthropy cannot be practised by each Tom, Dick and Harriett; when practised by those who can they go a certain way

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to alleviate our troubles, but can never remove them for ever. Ambition, greed, lust, cruelty, strife will always be with us - they will erupt even in our so-called altruists - as long as we are men and not recast in God's image by a sustained and difficult and self-consecrated and self-transforming Yoga on Aurobindonian lines: that is, lines dynamic for world-change and not questful of a supracosmic aloofness. Mutual service and philanthropy to the degree and extent required for saving us from wars are impossible until what Sri Aurobindo calls the Truth-conscious Super-mind has been attained and brought down into all our self and all our activity. In the supramental Truth-consciousness lie the basic unity and harmony and egoless infallible compassion by which the ideal altruism that would be our saviour can be born.

I am afraid Prof. K goes off the rails also as regards the psychology of the mystical search. He traces the hunger for God to a feeling of inferiority or a sense of frustration in us: when life does not provide us with the proper mundane satisfaction we want, we fly to God's arms - mysticism is an escape and a hiding from our own failures, a gilded sham substitute for what we really desire and ought to possess. From what I have already said, it should be evident that even if a sense of frustration sets us off towards the Aurobindonian Yoga the result is splendid and just the thing the world needs: the more rampant such a sense the better for humanity! But it is not true that such a sense is the real motive-power behind mysticism. The real motive-power is the divine origin of us all: we have come from the absolute Godhead and that is why we seek the absolute Godhead: if the Supreme Spirit is our starting-point, it is also our goal, and because it is our starting-point as well as our goal we ache for the perfect in the midst of imperfection. Our venturing out, in this direction and that, in order to perfect ourselves and our life, is due to the Divine within us waiting to be delivered. Frustration is there because we fail to let the Divine outflower. It is not simply the consequence of our missing one or another of the common joys our outward nature craves. We shall be discontented in the midst of a thousand such joys! Frustration is of the essence of a life divorced from the all-consummating Divine. It takes diverse forms and, in the Final perspective, reveals itself as the outcome of our falling short of the Absolute which is our inmost core. Many people turn to the via mystica after disappointments - but

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disappointments are only the superficial cause: the fundamental cause is the urge in our central being towards God. Since the outward being is hard and crude, it sits up and takes notice of that urge mostly when outward blows fall thick upon it and make it look within. But without that urge the blows would soon be forgotten and a man would return to his ordinary existence. Many would-be mystics fall back upon their old mode of living and never think again of God-realisation: in their case, the inward urge has not taken hold of the outward being and there was just a temporary process of escape. The vast difficulties of a thorough Yogic discipline far outweigh the so-called hardships of the normal routine and they cannot be met by one who has no qualification except that he has been beaten down by life. A lion's heart alone can hunt for God and get Him.

Hence the sevenfold questionnaire Prof. K elaborately draws up to ascertain the source of the mystical turn strikes me as childish, to say the least. According to him, if the feeling is very strong about any one of the shortcomings he mentions, then a man is psychologically ready to join Sri Aurobindo's Ashram. Let us look at the very first question: "Am I getting two square meals a day and am I satisfied with my income?" It seems that if I am not, my heart is on the verge of saying, "Sri Aurobindo's Ashram, I am yours!" But just a minute: is it not a fact stressed again and again that three-fourths of the people of India never have even one square meal a day, that they are always hungry and underfed and that the average income of the Indian is no more than a few rupees a month? How is it that not even one-fourth of the numerous crores of India, leave aside three-fourths, are packed in the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo? Not all the Yogic Ashrams in our whole sub-continent house even one-fortieth of its ill-nourished and ill-paid population. As a rule, when a man is poor and hungry and feels very strongly about his condition he either doubles his efforts to get on in the world or starts stealing or else drowns himself in alcohol for spells of temporary forgetfulness. The genuine spiritual aspiration does not arise so cheaply. Mere failure and frustration in the matter of food and money never light that exalted flame in the heart and mind, that gigantic ego-devouring passion for purity and perfection that we find in the true God-seeker.

As inane as the question I have quoted are the rest put by Prof. K.

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To be dissatisfied with one's status in society, to have any serious fault or defect that makes one feel inferior in the presence of others, to lack children or, having them, lack the means of giving them a fair start in life, to be unable to satisfy one's sex properly and adequately, to be conscious of having committed a sin of which one is acutely ashamed, to be insufficiently enjoying social importance - all these conduce mostly to some secular readjustment and not to a single-pointed quest for the Superhuman and the Absolute with the countless trials and hardships natural to a swimming up-stream and against the current of common desires a-flow in the human constitution for centuries. Millions of men suffer from at least one of these defects: several perhaps from all, and yet how few plunge into the unknown abysses of the Divine! Social anxieties set a man nosing for a better job, personal inferiority makes him vindictive or assertive, childlessness sends him to a long series of doctors or else incites him to divorce his wife and remarry, sexual infirmities turn him towards aphrodisiacs or self-abuse, sense of sin converts him to church-going or charity. When none of these steps are taken nor any "sublimating" mental or physical activity initiated to pull him somewhat out of himself, there is a smouldering despair which renders him a pest or a drunkard or a listless melancholic or at the worst a suicide. Sometimes he develops a sort of hysteria with a religious penchant, a semi-deranged pseudo-mystical state. Very rarely indeed does he blossom into a real God-lover, casting aside greed and lust and ambition as well as social attachments, facing the lure and the danger of the undiscovered Infinite, helping humanity not with an ego assuming altruistic colour but as a selfless medium of the Supreme Will that wants to evolve man into Superman. When he does blossom into a real God-lover, it is the sleeping God in himself that has stirred and the failure or disappointment has but served to direct his gaze inward: the failure or disappointment is only the occasion and not the source of the blossoming. If it were the source, the majority of human beings would be at Sri Aurobindo's feet by now, since the majority suffer from some frustration or other. I at least have not yet come across a perfectly happy man in the ordinary round of life: there is always a strong lack in some place, but I look in vain for a teeming of the mystical mood!

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No, Prof. K, mysticism does not take birth from cheap negatives and it is not a flight from life's call. The basic call of life, of all evolutionary Nature, is the struggle for the Divine, the pursuit of a more-than-mortal Truth and Goodness and Beauty. The mystic goes forth in answer to this call - it is the ordinary man, the non-Yogi, who shirks it, keeps revolving in the mortal groove because such revolving is far more comfortable and easy than entering God's mysteries and magnitudes. The peace that passeth understanding, the ecstasy that never sinks are won through tremendous bravery and endurance: the hero and not the escapist makes the mystic. No doubt, all Yogas are not dynamic in the Aurobindonian way. Several believe, as I have already said, that our fulfilment cannot be totally achieved in earth-terms and so they make the Supracosmic their final status. But here too there is no escapism in the sense of running away from earth like a broken-hearted coward. A journey as beset as Yoga with enormous struggles and self-conquests and renunciations of egoistic desire is not escapist in a depreciatory sense of that word. Superficial failures in the ordinary existence provide a mere chink or fissure for the bursting out of the hidden soul, the concealed divine spark. By that spark essentially is created the Yogi. Nor are superficial failures always necessary. Often the spiritual thirst is there without any measurable occasion of failure. A masterpiece of art, a splendid scene in Nature, an act of human nobility have been known to start a man suddenly on the mystical pilgrimage. There are even men who from their childhood have shown a mystical turn: later circumstances have just brought things to a head, not given rise to them. Modern psychologists who see a mechanism of compensation or flight in the mystical process do not look beyond their noses. At most they catch sight of the morbid imitations. As an Indian, Prof. K should have avoided this western myopia.

And if those whose eyes wait ever for the Supracosmic are no escapists but braver than the normal flock of men, though interpreting life's call towards the Divine in a one-sided fashion, how much less of escapism must be in the Aurobindonians who embrace and do not reject earth, who exceed the normal flock both by following with immense difficulty the Divine beyond the human and by bringing with still immenser difficulty the Divine into all our earth-terms! To dub the Aurobindonians frustrated

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fugitives from life's demands is the height of misunderstanding.

The three or four queries Prof. K puts about Sri Aurobindo at the close of his article offer a clue to how he could get perched on that obscure height. He has not acquainted himself with Sri Aurobindo's philosophy and that is why he has put the queries whose answers have already been given in Sri Aurobindo's books. The don has left a big hole in his learning: no wonder he misunderstands so much. To talk about spirituality in general and the Aurobindonian brand in particular without getting intimate with the writings of Sri Aurobindo, our greatest modern Yogi, is rather rash. Every point raised will be found tackled in that magnum opus from the Ashram at Pondicherry, The Life Divine, which even a westerner like Sir Francis Young-husband has declared the most significant and vital book to appear in our day. There Prof. K will read exactly what Sri Aurobindo is doing, what consequences his work will have, what use his vision and realisation will be to the world and how mankind's "ever-increasing misery" which Prof. K laments, will be victoriously dealt with if people with faint hearts and bewildered minds will only try to have enough courage and open-sightedness, enough patience and humility to become Aurobindonians.

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