Originally posted on sciy.org by Debashish Banerji on Sat 10 Jan 2009 09:46 AM PST
The human mind works naturally, and too often, through simple contrasts, strong distinctions. It is our famous foible to see and see well only one thing at a time and try to put the pieces together into some kind of construction. We tend to take sides, ignoring nuance, lights and shading; easier to make decisions that way, though they may not be the best decisions. We tend to construct the simplest of dichotomies between religion and spirituality and this is problematic. I would like to try to try and see the grayscale in this simple dichotomy. Because, to me, they seem more like stages in a continuum or relations to be linked - spirituality being a further stage of the aspiration and impulse that religion leads to, but not in any straight, forward or simple line; more through a spiraling inclusiveness.
I see us staking opposite sides of a position and loudly calling names. And yet, somehow truth does exist, it must, and it must have a more stable, concrete existence than anything in our little world: rocks and shrubs and chimps and chips mimicking minds -- it must be somewhere beyond our rock-solid oppositions, our chirping contradictions, and smiling and assimilating them, finding some place for every perception and position, however greatly changed.
Where does each of us fit into the scream of things?
According to Sri Aurobindo, as I understand, religion takes aim at the Divine. It starts from the felt perception of a deep disparity between ourselves and what we feel must be the Divine. Religion, at its best, is the impulse towards a truer spirituality. In the West, religion tends to be comprised of three elements: “faith, works and pious observances.†In India religion tends to have a wider range; it “briefly†is “Dharma…, the whole life being governed by religion.†Sri Aurobindo also differentiates “true religion†that “seeks to live in the spirit,†from “religionism†that lays “stress on intellectual dogmas, forms and ceremonies, on some fixed and rigid moral code†(these quotes are from pp. 132 to 134, “Glossary of Terms in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga,†Sri Aurobindo Ashram 1978).
On p. 134 Sri Aurobindo writes, “If we give…to religion the sense of the following of the spiritual impulse in its fullness and define spirituality as the attempt to know and live in the highest self, the divine, the all-embracing unity and to raise life in all its parts to the divinest possible values, then it is evident that there [has been] not too much of religion but too little of it. [SABCL14: 433]†He also, as I mentioned, writes that religion sets up a gulf (an “immeasurable gulf†between us and the divine power), which “Yoga in its culmination abolishes…for Yoga is union. [21:528].†But note that he states that this gap is abolished by yoga-in-its-culmination. How close are we, yet, to this culmination of yoga? I, for one, have some ways to go.
The founder of Integral Yoga also write in his Letters on Yoga, p. 151: “The spiritual life (adhyatma-jivana), the religious life (dharma-jivana) and the ordinary human life of which morality is a part are three quite different things and one must know which one desires and not confuse the three together.†Our aspiration in the yoga is for the spiritual life, and it is a distinctly different aspiration from the religious life and much more different from the ordinary human life. But through the process, the dynamics, the ongoing of our yoga, we have to take into its embrace ordinary human life and the religious life, still never losing sight that it IS the spiritual life we want: a spiritual life that somehow includes all of life; does not lose connection with ordinary life and with the religious life or at least the truth behind religions.
The Mother’s Vision, (an extensive compilation-by-subject-matter from the Mother’s “Questions and Answers†– Entretiens - selected by George Van Vrekhem and published by the Ashram) gives a clue to provide some continuum here. Mother builds for our battling minds and vitals a sturdy bridge, one by which our warring viewpoints might even connect. I believe here she is commenting on Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine; perhaps answering questions from schoolchildren and older sadhaks. She posits four categories, four paths: spirituality (direct experience of reality through the inner soul—the psychic being—and the higher spirit, spiritual-mind planes, the superconscient), spiritual philosophy, occult experience (by which here she means the inner vital), and the religious element. Spirituality is the “highest,†but it can find no firm foundation in our lives without a philosophical axis, an occult (here, a vital or inner vital) basis, and without the religious element by which, in this specific context, she means the expression of all of these in action, in life in the world. In other words, an ivory-tower spirituality is not a complete or integral spirituality. “If any of these things is lacking, the result is not complete†(p. 304, The Mother’s Vision). And a little earlier: “In order to follow these four paths simultaneously, and to practice them with an integral benefit for the being, one must already be a complete individual, capable of having a conscious life in the four principal elements in human and spiritual nature.†Now, I ask you, who among us is yet a “complete individual†(in the Mother’s sense of the term in the context of these principal elements)?
Yet, one can assert that a goal and result of this Yoga of Transformation, the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, proceeding by self-surrender to the Supreme – that one of its essential aims is to produce that complete individual. Such an individual is one fully conscious of their universality — their relatedness in the flourishing cosmic creativity of all beings and all things—and whose awareness goes beyond to the transcendence of all relations and manifestation—the absolute freedom that, though beyond all things and beings, yet embraces them and also allows for a provisional egoistic and eventually a complete spiritual individuality. Sri Aurobindo expresses this in a chiseled fashion, one I would call mantric, in The Life Divine (10 pages or so into the chapter on“The Gnostic Being,†p. 1011 of one of my editions):
“For the complete individual is the cosmic individual, since only when we have taken the universe into ourselves, - and transcended it - can our individuality be complete.â€
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother worked on and in themselves, not only as an individual achievement, but in a fashion firmly linked to the evolution of the Earth-Being and of ourselves; and “by the power of yoga transformed the ignorant and struggling human individual into an integral divine consciousness†(to paraphrase, or try to quote from memory, Debashish Banerji). The power of yoga can and will do - and it is doing - likewise, in us; any of us that it has engaged and that are engaged in its practice and body of processes.
But how is that “likewise, in us†to become more than a mere analogy? Really, how could any yoga do that likewise in us? We are so far from it, it seems, I mean our actions appear much too often to fail to express any realization. The gap between us and the pioneers of the Integral Yoga seems to be simply too great. What can we do really but stake out some fragmentary position - be fully devoted to them, or learn of them with our little human brains, or work for them in some way, or try to perfect our nature in all its parts as a more-fit instrument? Seldom in the course of human events has there seemed to be a greater gulf, a deeper disparity, between the followers of a path and its pioneers and founders, than there seems to be between the followers of the Integral Yoga and the founders of Integral Yoga.
Well, this perception, which does seem to bear some weight, too much weight at times, is somewhat of a religious statement, or perhaps a psychically inspired (though perhaps vitally diverted) perception. Both the religious impulse, and also the psychic aspiration, seem almost to begin in this feeling-perception that we are so far from what we struggle for and often fail even to reach. Ours is that quest of the “moth for the star,†as Sri Aurobindo says, quoting from Shelley. Nevertheless, we must remember that this is an evolutionary yoga. The CULMINATION of this yoga is a “union with the Divine†- in the case of the Integral Yoga, a complete all-inclusive, dynamic, fully embodied union; luminous dynamic identity in an all-rounded transformed collective life. It’s a long process, full of dangers, ambushes, serious threats, pratfalls, insane diversions, seemingly insuperable contradictions. And we need as they did and are doing now to make use of everything that happens in order to somehow bring us closer to the Divine. Religion brings us closer to the Divine; yoga brings Union with the Divine - we can’t have one entirely without the other; but neither can we forget that our goal is a true spirituality founded on direct realization of the Spirit, and working always from there.
Let me make clear and please note (since here I am trying to show the necessity of religion in the continuum, and not as the culmination!) that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother unequivocally did not found any new religion (even a more-universal or the most universal religion), but a Yoga based in a complete all-inclusive spirituality that would lead even beyond the transitional human condition to a direct power of Spirit in matter: the materialization of the free Spirit, individual and collective, in fulfilling, living action. “All Life is Yoga,†and to reach this goal, this seemingly distant culmination (which is probably only the beginning of a new and greater lift to something even more inclusive, or into another “category†beyond inclusive) - we need to make use of any and all materials and get to know realistically the materials we have at our disposal. As the Mother said, religion is one of those elements “true religion†and not “religionism†in Sri Aurobindo’s earlier-quoted sense): physical actions, devotion - and I’m not saying here that devotion is only a religious phenomenon - far from it! Sri Aurobindo himself as he grew in his realizations grew ever so greatly in a spiritual Bhakti - worship, morality, some level of rules - these play a needed part, serve as a springboard to our spirituality, may give a needed (though temporary) form to our aspiration.
For most of us, devotion is a very strong foundation for our yoga; and for those for whom knowledge is the basic driving force, reliable advance, though possible and inevitable, tends to be more difficult. But we cannot choose our basic essential temperament, can we? Herein may lie part of the conflict between Peter Heehs (author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, a biography based on extensive research) and a majority populace of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He may be coming to the yoga from a different basis - after all most of us do not usually start the Integral Yoga from all bases at once, though that too is possible and would be preferable - i.e., there may be a devotion dichotomy here that has turned into an apparent absolute conflict, which, seen from a wider, though admittedly not particularly human perspective, could simply present complementary approaches. This complementary, more inclusive understanding, if approached from a psychic or spiritual view, could even potentiate mutual growth among us all. Just a suggestion.
The “vital†also plays its crucial part in yoga, and there can be no living realization without it. Spiritual philosophy (I’m referring, again, to those four “paths†or “principal elements†the Mother was speaking about) provides a needed underpinning, in the inner mind, so that the mind will not pose as its usual self inimical to spiritual advance, but be of some humble help, in being more open and quiet and peaceful and calm. And spirituality - once we start to have experiences, even realizations, we need to work to express them in life, not sit in them or get stuck in them - that, I believe, was part of the pretext for the founding of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram where spirituality is to be realized in life, embodied. If we regard Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as avatars, are they living Avatars, or are we stuck in a religious formula, an empty shell? I think, if we look at ourselves - as I look at myself, anyway - I see that sometimes I am using religious springboards - mantras, pictures, relics even - as a living impulse toward Spirit - but sometimes, I am not. Sometimes I’m trapped in an empty shell, wrapped up in a formula. One moment, or one month, my inner consciousness may be spiritual; the next moment, or for two months I may be religious. And as the Mother said, in the passage I quoted, to be complete this yoga requires expressing the spiritual impulsion in living actions that, in the context of the passage, she called religious! We can also see this (this necessity of expressing our spiritual aspiration in outward actions, sometimes even in seemingly religious forms of expression) woven into “The Yoga of Divine Works†in Sri Aurobindo’s essential The Synthesis of Yoga. And it might help, even in the attempt to become integral karmayogins, if we have some foundation in our outer and inner mind in a living spiritual philosophy; because, if we do, we maybe can give a decent explanation to someone else who asks a question. Gently, I am suggesting that it might help if more of us actually read Sri Aurobindo in an ongoing fashion and find our spiritual philosophical understanding in some kind of greater spiral inclusiveness. His writing seems to become more clear as we do, and even the attempt to read him may help in promoting some mental quiet, mental clarity through which spiritual force can come.
And perhaps, just perhaps we don’t need to make a choice - that clean mental cut that our minds often fall upon the sword of! - between “worshiping†and “becoming.†I believe the Mother did make a statement about sadhaks worshiping because they were too lazy to become. When we look at this contexted in a yoga that embraces all of life, if we admire, devote ourselves, worship, then we can do it in such a way that we do not get stuck in our worship. We can worship in such a way that we strive to become, emulate, even identify actively with the Divine or at least its representatives. Or, our work-to-become may be a way of worship for some of us. Or, if we get stuck, and the soul in us is aflame and the guidance is there, then we get unstuck and start to move again. We come to surrender ourselves to the object of worship or devotion, not as worms, but as living, evolving beings who have a soul in us that is part and portion of the Divine - of the same essence as the Saccidananda and the very Transcendent itself, and aspiring also towards Braham-actualization - and we begin to identify with the Divine in form or representation and START TO TAKE IT ON. We take it on by “grace†because we are not doing it ourselves, but only setting up conditions that may in time allow it to happen. This seems to be the only way we can bridge that gulf, between us and the pioneers of Integral Yoga - that distressingly infinite-seeming gap - that I mentioned. And there are many starts and steps, and turnabouts and bridges, and religion and spirituality seem to intertwine; and only the Divine Grace can really extract that fiber of true spirituality, from religion or religiosity. That divine grace in this yoga is the working of the Mother, the conscious bliss-force of the Shakti.
Dear fellow westerners (and fellow easterners who already know this, I suppose), this seems to me what Guruvad might really be about, in its truth and not in its distortion. We can’t do it with our minds and vitals - we can make a show of it, of course, we can distort it and fool ourselves and others. But with our souls coming awake and operating more and more through bringing increasing order to our messy dysfunctional natures, and opening to what Sri Aurobindo called the Mother’s Force, this yoga can be done by the Divine and Shakti, for us and above us and in us. It is, I believe, our souls (and perhaps higher vitals, though they are not the same) to which so-called religion is the impulse toward spirituality; a springboard towards realization of the Self, and to the Brahman in all respects, and even the divinely dynamic Brahman. Our souls gravitate toward whatever guides we need to turn that flame of divinity into a roaring conflagration of divine becoming - though, from time to time, we blaze into argument in the parking lot.
Our psychic beings, as they develop, in order to relate to the outer world effectively, need not only a better-organized and functional inner vital to work through, but a more developed inner mind—and that vital, and this mind, must come into greater harmony, even through this recent conflict—and a truer expression in the physical world through our physical body, physical vitals, and physical minds (Sri Aurobindo called the physical mind, in Savitri, “a smile from the Preserver of the Worlds,†I seem to remember—that is what they are, in essence and someday soon enough, in their entirety!). The psychic being of each of us, as it comes out of the clouds and smoke of our natures into its full stature, recognizes its guide or guides, and isn’t confused by the overly trenchant distinctions of our minds and the battling of our vitals, because it is much smarter and wiser than our minds, and can differentiate the true vital from the charlatan.
Another thing about “religion.†This relatively new term is a Western one at that. To me, Indian religion and spirituality is like some vast gene-pool: full of diversity, color, the most extreme contradiction. Think of the African gene-pool in physical evolution: it is much richer than the gene-pool of the rest of the Earth; more diverse, and that diversity gives it greater staying power. Similarly, this relatively ancient gene-pool of Indian spirituality has much more staying power than more-recent religious models and spiritual modalities. Sri Aurobindo was not expressing, I believe, any form of national chauvinism when he perceived India as a Shakti, India as the soul and guru of the world; nor was the Mother when she saw clearly that Auroville was to be built up out of a wasted desert in India. After his realizations began, and began to fuse together, nothing was abstract anymore to Sri Aurobindo. He based his yoga and philosophy, and also his every movement and action, more and more on a growing and developing experience that is detailed partially in his works and in what has been discovered of his Record of Yoga (his own spiritual diary).
And he approached the Upanishad, the Gita and the Veda from a spiritual, yet also scientific and post-religious spirit that got to the core, to their inmost realizations. Realization is direct experience that becomes frequent and even constant, stemming from an all-inclusive opening and perception that is more real to the consciousness than any physical thing could ever be; and it can take body. From the Upanishad he directly perceived sadhanas leading to direct Brahman-Knowledge that he inhabited and expanded; from the Gita he gleaned the Triple Path, Triple Purusha, a profound approach toward integrality and an integral karma yoga, the soul taking refuge in the Supreme Divine; from the Veda he identified the direct flash and even personal being of Mystic Fire sparking ten thousand years ago an embodied and integral though individual spirituality, a way to embrace life—and he incorporated all these and went far beyond them in what appears to be a more bracing and embracing approach that any before: one that to “justify the labour of the suns†- make sense of our endless suffering in a supramental transformation, where Saccidananda takes breathing form and lives luminously and effectively in the material world.
There are different approaches than his to the Veda, Gita, Upanishad and all forms of Indian spirituality; but I think that as he has perceived it, in a remarkably clear way, there is a directly spiritual Veda, Gita, and Upanishad that is much more universal than the Western approaches, the Western faiths. It is simply part of the common spiritual heritage of humanity. That explains why Westerners who want a direct experience, a realization or a series of them culminating in a fully dynamic yogic life in the world, seem to have to turn to the East. Where else to turn? And for an affirmative spirituality, a “proactive yoga,†where better to turn than to Mother and Sri Aurobindo? Westerners may have something to add, also, with their kind of religious approach to living ideals in the practical life - but we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can collapse all religious and spiritual expressions into some oozing equality where they all express the same monotonous dichotomous homogeneous religious mess; lump in “Hinduism†indiscriminately massed with anything else. But this is not true to the massive reality and even the history of Indian spiritual practice. We have to respect this most diverse gene-pool of Indian spirituality & will fail to put spirituality into practice if we hack away its foundation. Sri Aurobindo can help us here, so can Mother; Nolinida but also Sastriji and M.P. Pandit and Amal Kiran and the list goes on. And really, if we are looking for truth, we must develop each one our own truth-sense, our own truth-bell; our instruments: our mental sentinel and “clear austerity of the mind,†work diligently for the transformation of our vital ego into the true vital (not easily done), and the aspiration of our physical body and entire physical consciousness to participate, as it can and must. If we do this, we might find some truth we need to progress by a casual remark from a passing stranger, learning to read life even as we read Sri Aurobindo.
Another thing: a cake must be allowed to bake. Admittedly it might not look like much during some of the stages of its baking. We strive, in Integral Yoga, towards a conscious yoga, but some of the stages of psychic development (the development of our inmost souls, that is) require a great deal of faith and trust. We feel we are on the right track, our inner guidance indicates we need to keep going with confidence. We go on somehow. Outwardly, we don’t seem any better; we might seem worse. Our family, friends, fellow sadhaks, may say: you are on the decline, in fact you’ve never looked worse. Look what you did; does this stupid action of yours show any growth in yogic consciousness? Give it up; admit your sadhana is a failure.
Mother has said somewhere that this sort of thing is what spiritual aspirants have been told from time immemorial, and it can be a most effective argument. Many accept it and quit. I say, when you’re on the bridge, keep walking. If you fall off the bridge it’s a long way down, and you’re usually dead even before you reach the water. If you take refuge in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (whatever form of refuge you feel is appropriate to you, it will evolve), you are very fortunate. Graced. No matter what anyone may say. But, as Mother and Sri Aurobindo both point out, the outermost part of us, the part that needs so badly to change - the part of us the world judges us by, and that we, falsely, often continue far too long to judge ourselves by - is the last part of our nature to change. Change must work from the innermost through many stages to the outermost (though we must never pass up an opportunity to take up at any given time the best outer action we can muster).
Most of this yoga goes on behind the surface, or below it; the Lord knows where. Mistakes, contradictions, conflicts, dichotomous duels - are only stages in an inevitable growth. Once we start we need the perseverance to go to the end of the journey, and the beginning of the next one. Behind the surface, not only in our inner beings but our innermost beings, not only in our parts above but those valleys deep below, in our subconscient selves—the higher nature is working. The Shakti has taken charge. The work proceeds best with some measure of calm, on a certain basis of equality. Behind the curtain there’s no Wizard of Oz, but there is a Wisdom that detests ostentation even as She very patiently organizes something new to this world. The spirit is rematerializing and we are the material.
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