Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny

Criteria of Admission: A Suggestion

If we would like to maintain the spiritual character of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, care should be taken to see that there is no lowering of the standard of admissibility for the new entrants. The issue is: If someone comes and says that he is ready - or pretends that he is ready - to work in an Ashram Department for a stipulated number of hours every day, should that be deemed to be a sufficient qualification for him to be admitted into a spiritual group-life like our Ashram? Will that not introduce many an unprepared ādhāra into the community and thus lead to a progressive derailment from its basic orientation?

It is true we can't be too choosy about the new entrants. It is not that only sattwic people with a spiritual inclination will seek admission to our Ashram; along with them there may be many more, representing all strands of humanity, who will opt to join the institution. And that is necessary too in a way. For, Sri Aurobindo has clarified:

"It is necessary or rather inevitable that in an Ashram which is a 'laboratory' ... for a spiritual and supramental yoga, humanity should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic and cultured men come for yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because the difficulty of the vital element in terrestrial nature has not been faced and overcome, it might well be that the endeavour would fail. ... Those in the Ashram come from all quarters and are of all kinds; it cannot be otherwise." (Letters on Yoga, p. 856)

This is one side of the picture but there is another side

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too. Sri Aurobindo has warned about the possible invasion by non-spiritual elements bringing about in the long run miscarriage of the whole attempt at transforming human nature. Therefore, one has to be vigilant that the core light does not get extinguished by the submerging darkness settling in.

Especially now, when the Mother is not there physically to select the new entrants on the basis of their inner preparation, also when senior Ashramites - who had been in contact with the Mother, had worked with her and had been conversant with her way of working - are all "departing" from us one by one, leaving a tremendous vacuum of transition, one has to be, in order to prevent the qualitative deterioration of the collective life of the Ashram, very strict in the matter of admitting new entrants. Otherwise, there is fear that our Ashram too will meet the same fate as befell many other spiritual communities attempted in the past history of the human race. There may be, in Sri Aurobindo's words, "an intrusion of the lower forces into it, an acceptance by the world more dangerous than its opposition, and in the end an extinction, a lowering or a contamination of the new principle of life". (The Life Divine, p. 1063) And Sri Aurobindo warns that this has been "a frequent phenomenon of the past." (Ibid.)

In order to avert this adverse eventuality, may we humbly suggest that, whatever be their other deficiencies and frailties, the intending entrants should fulfil one basic minimum psychological requirement? What is, then, this precondition? Let us explain.

In the earlier stages of the Ashram Sri Aurobindo was very particular about this point. He used to term it as "receiving the call." Whenever someone approached him and expressed a wish to join the Ashram and follow his Yoga, Sri Aurobindo would enquire: "Have you received the Call?" In one of his letters written to a disciple Sri

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Aurobindo has made clear why he laid so much stress on "receiving the call". This is what he writes:

"The sadhak who comes to this yoga must have a real call, and even with the real call the way is often difficult enough.... When one has the real thing in oneself, one goes through and finally takes the full way of sadhana, but it is only a minority that does so. It is better to receive only people who come of themselves and of these only those in whom the call is genuinely their own and persistent." (Letters on Yoga, pp. 1615-16)

So, the call should be persistent and genuinely their own and not something imposed upon them from outside. But how does one know that one has recived the basic call? What are its psychological signs? For the right answer, let us listen to the Mother; she has lucidly explained the whole thing and pointed out how the call arises in one and what is its character. We quote below in extenso from what she said on 13 August 1958.

"You are going to wake up all of a sudden to something you never noticed but which is deep within you and thirsts for the truth, thirsts for transformation and is ready to make the effort required to realise it. ... You will suddenly feel an irresistible need not to live in unconsciousness, in ignorance, in that state in which you do things without knowing why, feel things without understanding why, have constradictory wills, understand nothing about anything, live only by habit, routine, reactions - you take life easy. And one day you are no longer satisfied with that.

"It depends, for each one it is different. Most often it is the need to know, to understand; for some it is the need to do what must be done as it should be done; for others it is a vague feeling that behind this life, so unconscious, so

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futile, so empty of meaning, there is something to find which is worth being lived - that there is a reality, a truth behind these falsehoods and illusions.

"One suddenly feels that everything one does, everything one sees, has no meaning, no purpose, but that there is something which has a meaning; that essentially one is here on earth for something, that all this - all these movements, all this agitation, all this wastage of force and energy - all that must have a purpose, an aim, and this uneasiness one feels within oneself, this lack of satisfaction, this need, this thirst for something must lead us somewhere else....

"You no longer live like a little machine, hardly half-conscious. You want to feel truly, to act truly, to know truly. ... The starting-point: to want it, truly want it, to need it. The next step: to think, above all, of that. A day comes, very quickly, when one is unable to think of anything else." (Questions and Answers 1957-58, pp. 373-75)

So, this is what we mean by "receiving a call" and an intending entrant into our Ashram life should feel in some measure the "need" for the higher spiritual existence and life the Mother is referring to. If he has got this, his other deficiencies may be remedied in time; but if he has not this, he will move here like a rudderless boat tossed about hither and thither by the passing waves. This "call" will act as the stable point d'appui, the solid foundation, of the sadhak's consciousness. Without this point d'appui, without an unshakable commitment to the ideal given us by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, how can anyone hope to stand firm in moments of his personal crises and difficulties, or how can he successfully contend against the upsurge of the lower tendencies of his as-yet-unregenerate nature? Hence the necessity of satisfying this basic psychological criterion before any one is considered for admission to the Ashram.

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Otherwise he will prove himself to be a nuisance to the Ashram's collective life and himself be harassed by unruly drives and impulses. For, every sadhak staying in the Ashram has perforce to confront a host of personal difficulties. There is an occult reason for this upsurge. Let us see what it is.