In the Mother's Light

Asceticism

IN its simple and moderate form, asceticism is a self- imposed mortification or privation for the discipline and control of the lower nature. When the animal in man refuses to be tamed or quieted, but opposes his inner quest and living by an obstinate insistence on the satisfaction of its base appetites, a curb or brake is put upon it by his will. The objects of desire are renounced, so that the outer obsession may cease and the being may be free to discover its inmost truth and live in it. Asceticism in this sober form can be, in many individual cases, an unimpeachable, perhaps indispensable, preliminary to spiritual discipline, and those who decry or deride it are either innocent of spiritual life or addicted to an unthinking self-indulgence. However much it may be buttressed with dialectical subtlety and ingenious sophistry, indulgence of one's lower cravings is absolutely incompatible with spirituality. Those who dream of attaining to a harmony and happiness in their psycho-physical being by "following Nature" and making light of self-restraint and discipline, are only deceiving themselves and wandering away from the true path of purity and freedom.

An initial self-control preceding a direct, higher control is, therefore, a prerequisite of spiritual life. A resolute and persevering will, fired by a high-soaring aspiration, rejects the turbulence and waywardness of the lower nature, its disquieting desires and impulses that seek only egoistic gratification, and imposes a rhythm, a balance and a poise on it, so that a certain amount of self-mastery may be achieved by the individual soul, and its consciousness, released from the trammels of ignorance, may advance, unimpeded, towards spiritual realisation. This practice of self-discipline, unless it goes to extreme forms of renunciation and mortification, is common to all religions and Yogas.

But asceticism usually defeats its own purpose by three wrong movements ;—

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(1) it easily runs to extremes, turning rejection into a systematic repression;

(2) it often betrays a tendency to gravitate towards tamas, inertia, and becomes formal and mechanical, a matter of habitual routine;

(3) it induces an anti-pragmatic mentality and encourages a progressive withdrawal from the world and life.

(1) The history of religions is replete with instances of ascetic excesses. It is not only in India, but even in the West, that asceticism has gone to rabid extremes and delighted in the mortification of the flesh for its own sake. Most often the ethical mind exerts its will upon the erring vital-physical nature and represses those of its movements which it disapproves or deems detrimental to its self-improvement. Sometimes it is the vital will that turns a red eye upon some of its own movements and takes a perverse pleasure in a ruthless 'self-repression. Sometimes—and this is very common among people of poor mental development—the mind or the vital tramples upon the body, crushing even its healthy instincts and natural capacities, and reducing it to a limp bundle of battered nerves, as if the poor "brother ass" were solely responsible for all the ills and infirmities of human nature. Countless spiritual seekers have lost themselves in the labyrinth of ascetic practices and never emerged from them to reach the goal of their pursuit; and among the few who have been fortunate enough to emerge, the majority have had to pass the rest of their days as physical wrecks. Very few, indeed like Suso and St.Catharine of Genoa, escaped unhurt and continued to live as vigorous champions of practical spirituality. The modern mind reads with horror Madame Guyon's description other own ascetic practices: "Although I had a very delicate body, the instruments of penitence tore my flesh without, as it seemed to me, causing pain. I wore girdles of hair and of sharp iron, I often held wormwood in my mouth. If I walked, I put stones in my shoes."

In the serene, full-blooded spirituality of the Vedas and the Upanishads there is hardly any trace of self-torture as a means

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of self-purification. The spiritual vision of the God-lovers was clear enough to perceive that the causes of deviation and fall are within and not without, and that an inner conquest by detachment and equality and not an outer abstention and renunciation is the surest means of spiritual perfection. The Gita, a great synthesis of the living spiritual traditions of the past, denounces in no uncertain terms the extreme forms of asceticism and brands them as a violence on the indwelling Divine. But the mind of man is not, except in extraordinary individual cases, capable of so strengthening its will and raising its consciousness as to remain equal and impassive to the seductions of the senses, even while giving the senses full play and moving freely in the midst of their objects of desire. In fact, in all forms of ascetic extremism we find, if we probe into their roots, a lack of the right knowledge of human nature, an ignorance of the source and character of the frailties and impurities which hamper our spiritual progress, and an impatient haste born of ignorance and weakness. It can be said that ascetic excesses are an outcome of a mental or vital fear in the face of assailing impurities, an exaggerated stress and overmeasure, and a perversity of vindictive violence on oneself. From the standpoint of Yogic knowledge they are a dangerous preoccupation.

(2) Ascetic excesses, if practised for a long time, tend to produce a sort of anaesthesia in the being and end in a mechanical, routine observance. The initial spiritual ardour is soon lost, and the unchallenged pressure of tradition and the dull drive of habit continue to supply the momentum. Asceticism then becomes tamasic, clouding the consciousness and deadening the springs of life.

(3) Ascetic extremism takes its stand upon the trenchant duality of the Spirit and the flesh. Light and Life, sin and virtue. It negates or spurns the world in order to gain Heaven or realise the freedom of the naked soul. It acts as a constant blight upon life and its activities. Renunciation is carried to the length of utter destitution and poverty on the one hand, and fierce and fantastic self-torture on the other, over which

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the ego of the individual secretly gloats as a remarkable achievement. Renunciation of the world is a natural corollary to extreme asceticism, which, even if it engages in works of philanthropy or social service, as it has done in some outstanding Eastern and Western mystics, holds on to its base of physical renunciation and regards it as the sole condition of all selfless service. But the basic problem remains unsolved, for asceticism does not seem to touch it at the right point—the ego and its separative self-assertion.

The Mother's approach to the problem is altogether on a different footing. She agrees with the Gita that a relentless repression of nature, nigraha, is a perilously barren method of self-purification. Solitude, vows of silence and inaction, abstinence from even the necessary and healthy pursuits of life are, even at their very best, but temporary makeshifts, and cannot yield any substantial and abiding results. The question is essentially one of consciousness. If the being is enslaved to sense-pleasures, it means that the consciousness has not risen beyond the sense-mind. Not a rigorous renunciation of all sense-objects—if that were at all possible—but a raising of the consciousness will bring the desired freedom. A totally different vista opens before our eyes as we look at the problem from this new angle of vision.

Man is essentially a consciousness, a certain individual formation of consciousness with major and minor vibrations in it, and his complex nature is only an instrumental mechanism, a realising and revealing medium, of that consciousness. The greater the limpidity and lightness and wideness in the consciousness, the greater its freedom from the yoke of the sense-objects. The positive and spiritually fruitful method of self-purification is, therefore, detachment, equality, and sublimation of consciousness, and not self-repression. Asceticism may be helpful in some cases of stubborn attachments and impurities, but, then, it must be a sane and seeing asceticism, mild and patient in its dealing with the peccable parts of nature, which have to be educated and enlightened and not coerced and crushed? for, the end of self-purification is not self-mutilation or self-

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annihilation, but a harmonious self-perfection, a divine self-fulfilment. "Certainly, it is easier to suppress than to organise, but a harmonious order is a realisation or superior to suppression.”¹The Mother, therefore, advocates the positive way of spiritual progress, the way of psychic aspiration and surrender, the "sun-lit path", as Sri Aurobindo calls it, and not the negative way of painful and precarious ascetic repression. If you are attached to certain persons or things, it is almost futile to think of running away from them, you will remain attached to them even in their physical absence, or you will develop new attachments to other persons and other things. Even when you think you have got rid of all attachments, you have done nothing better than drive them underground and expose yourself to their surprise assaults. Besides, as the Mother says, "The attitude of the ascetic who says, 'I want nothing’ and the attitude of the man of the world who says, 'I want this thing’ , are the same. The one may be as much attached to his renunciation as the other to his possession” The solution of the problem with which the ascetic vainly struggles, is an ascent of consciousness by aspiration, rejection, and surrender. If the impurities of your nature seem to be obstinate, detach yourself from them, feel that they do not belong to your essential being, which is ever pure, but are an excrescence, a discharge from the surrounding universal nature, and reject them quietly and sincerely. A quiet, sincere, and uncompromising rejection is infinitely more powerful than a desperate wrestle and a perturbed preoccupation with them. The Mother counsels detachment, rejection of all wrong movements, and sublimation of consciousness, and not repression. Turn to the Divine and advance towards Him with a consuming love and resolute will, and most of your bonds will snap and drop of themselves, the few that will remain the Divine will cut asunder.

There is "the very universal superstition, prevalent all over the world, that asceticism and spirituality are one and the same

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother

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thing. If you describe someone as a spiritual man or a spiritual woman, people at once think of one who does not eat or sits all day without moving, one who lives in a hut in great poverty, one who has given away all he had and keeps nothing for himself. This is the picture that immediately rises in the minds of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, when you speak of a spiritual man, the one proof of spirituality for them is poverty and abstinence from everything that is pleasant or comfortable. This is a mental construction which must be thrown down if you are to be free to see and follow the spiritual truth. This false conception has to be broken down and disappear. Once it is gone, you find something that is much higher than your narrow ascetic rule, a complete openness that leaves the being free. If you are to get something, you accept it, and if you are to give up the very same thing, you, with an equal willingness, leave it. Things come and you take them up; things go and you let them pass, with the same smile of equanimity in the taking or the leaving....The only true attitude for a Yogi is to be plastic and ready to obey the divine command, whatever it may be; nothing must be indispensable to him, nothing a burden. Often the first impulse of those who want to live the spiritual life is to throw away all they have; but they do it because they want to be rid of a burden, not because they want to surrender to the Divine. Men who possess wealth and are surrounded by the things that give them luxury and enjoyment turn to the Divine, and immediately their movement is to run away from these things, —or, as they say, to 'escape from their bondage.’ But it is a wrong movement; you must not think that the things you have belong to you,—they belong to the Divine. If the Divine wants you to enjoy anything, enjoy it; but be ready too to give it up the very next moment with a smile”¹

These words transport us from the stale and stuffy atmosphere of traditional asceticism into the serene freedom and amplitude of the true spiritual consciousness. No longer do we take our stand upon the vital or mental will injuring and impairing the manifoldness and elasticity of our nature, but upon the

¹ Words of the Mother.

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innate and inalienable sovereignty of our divine Self and the Grace of the Self of our Self for the purification and perfection of our natural instruments. We realise that each part of our nature, each fibre of its composition has its proper function and individual utility in the economy of the corporate organism, and has to be cleansed, fostered, illumined and transfigured to serve the divine ends of our life, and not to be starved and suppressed or mangled by the cruel excesses of a life-shunning asceticism. We remember that Rama, one of the most harmonious spiritual personalities ever born, was no ascetic; nor was Krishna, the embodiment of the most versatile perfection realised in the past. Yajnavalkya had such a wealth of cows as might make an American master dairyman giddy. Janaka, Ajatashatru, Kartavirya—to name only a few—led a robust spiritual life in the midst of material opulence. Buddha had to pay heavily for his initial, immoderate austerities, and was forced to relinquish them in favour of a sane method of moderation : the golden mean; Sri Ramakrishna, after a pretty long spell of physical neglect and ascetic practices, had to pray to the Mother (Kali) to let him live a life of easeful sweetness, and not to turn him into a desiccated ascetic. The Christ, we all know, was no ascetic, nor did he preach the mortification of the flesh, so common in his day among the followers of John the Baptist. In reply to the charge that his disciples were not fasting, but feasting and enjoying themselves, he said, "Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them ?" St. Paul, regarded as second only to the Christ in spiritual stature and transparent purity, exerted his powerful influence to check the spread of extreme asceticism, and exhorted men to revert to the inner Christ and live from within outwards. All this proves that the greatest stalwarts of the Spirit have always been led by the calm light of knowledge in their dealings with their nature, and not stampeded into panicky devices which constitute asceticism in its immoderate forms. Harsh asceticism is a symptom of spiritual anaemia and decadence, and, even at its best, a negative way, which has to be complemented or replaced by the positive way of spiritual progress—

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The Mother's gospel of an unfettered life of consecrated service, a life in God, equal in plenty and poverty, sounds the death-knell of rigorous asceticism and initiates a new era of the radical purification and transmutation of the flesh for the manifestation of the Spirit.

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