Archives for September 2007

The sixth in the series on Sri Aurobindo’s aphorisms and my understanding of it.

It was a blistering 45 degrees Celsius in that famous temple town in southern India, cradled by an arc of mountains that reflected the searing heat. One felt the upper lip burning with every exhalation of breath. I was like a cauldron into which fate had poured unpleasant ingredients. Where the traveling pilgrims saw God and his benediction I saw an unyielding Tyrant. The heat brought it to breaking point. In the middle of road, near the outskirts of the town, away from all that I loved and hoped, I was being dissected.  And it was not the first, or the last, time I felt life-sapping pain.

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Who amongst us has not known pain? It is one of the few universals that make up the human condition. Whether it is physical pain or the more destructive emotional pain, it is such an intense feeling that we almost instinctively recognize and avoid it.

To the aspirant pain is a harsh reality, more than a common man with conventional ambitions. I believe the pain one undergoes is in proportion to the quest undertaken. To gain a glimpse of the Infinite is to challenge the vast machinery of manifest existence and its rules. We pay the price to unravel every knot and to peer through every appearance.

But an Omniscient’s creation would not manifest something without purpose, pain included. Sri Aurobindo says-

I used to hate and avoid pain and resent its infliction; but now I find that had I not so suffered, I would not now possess, trained and perfected, this infinitely and multitudinously sensible capacity of delight in my mind, heart and body. God justifies himself in the end even when He has masked Himself as a bully and a tyrant.

To consider one type of experience would suffice to understand what positive changes pain can manifest. I would like to mention how my appreciation of music has changed over these troubled years. I have always listened to music, especially classical music, with a certain intensity. Have tried to perceive it with my heart since I have no formal training or knowledge of music. One of the most exhilarating experiences in my life was when I intuitively understood Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. I still cannot explain it but it stands like an unseen monument within my heart, a thing of constant awe and joy!

I believe what made this possible was a re-forging of the emotional being. The old vocabulary was pulled down. The landscape within had been changed, newer pathways established. Life was not lived in the senses alone. Other worlds could enter my bleak existence. Honeyed whispers of a higher self could reach me now.

The fifth in the series on Sri Aurobindo’s aphorisms and my understanding of it.

Sacrifice plays a central role in the spiritual ecology of India. The Gods are said to be fostered within us by sacrifice, they enter into communion with us by sacrifice, man rises to the stature of the Gods by sacrifice…even the act of creation is said to be a sacrifice on the part of the Supreme Divine, since he consents to be bound by the illusion of ignorance and rise through the infinite cycles of existence to the primal state.

But this lofty idea has been through quite some contortions, to put it mildly, in current times. Tonsuring ones head is a very popular ‘sacrifice’ down in southern India, giving up non-vegetarian food or certain days, fasting on certain days etc. All of them have one thing in common, whatever is convenient to give up is given up. Even when this is not the case, say giving up non-vegetarian food, it often benefits the doer, rather than “fostering the gods within”.

And now the Guru clears the cobwebs and defines how sacrifice aught to be.

Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.

The scope of sacrifice is very clearly defined and needs no further explanation. But the interesting point to note is to whom the sacrifice should be offered, “..to God within thee”. Very Advaitic in its formulation and even impersonal. But the very next line clears up the lofty impersonality with the call to found all our acts, waking and sleeping within Krishna, the Beloved of the aspiring soul.

The fourth in the series on Sri Aurobindo’s aphorisms and my understanding of it.

Each of us carries a world within. The limits of this world is circumscribed by the extent of our knowledge. The greater the knowledge, the richer the world within. But knowledge is often confused with mere awareness of something. To know the words, even a precise pronunciation perhaps, say like the priest who mouths the mystic words in front of a Deity, is considered enough ‘knowledge’.

But knowledge that does not find its way into action has not served its function. It is as harmful as action that does not have enough knowledge behind it.

What is the use of only knowing? I say to thee, Act and be, for therefore God sent thee into this human body.

Ancient Indian tradition gave its highest regard to the spiritual man; the Rishi set the rhythm of its life. The Sage was seen as the fount of knowledge that helped unravel the mystery of life. Every aspect of its life- arts and science and everything in between was permeated with a spiritual air. The external was enriched by the intuitions within.

We lost our path along the way. We looked up to the Sanyasi, or the ascetic; someone who stood aloof, within the world yet above it.  The Rishi who cavorted with life, even as men, and yet in communion with the highest Divine, was a myth now. The ideal of a Buddha, or a Shankara was nearest to the memory of the race. Knowledge was still cherished, we learnt mantras by the thousands, the brahmin who spouted the mantras was still venerated but we as a race lost the will to live.

A life of contemplation and rumination is all well but it is action that effectuates the thought, that manifests what was just a hazy vibration in the mind. An entire race besotted by the Purusha and the closest route to Him is not the purpose of the human body Sri Aurobindo seems to clarify, to act was our chief mandate.

The third in the series where I post an aphorism of Sri Aurobindo and my understanding of it.

Nature proceeds in tiny little steps, she loves the order and regularity of her existence. All variety she has evolved over many millenniums. What seems a surfeit of possibilities was but a series of imperceptible and tardy changes at the cellular level over thousands of years. Her revolutions are often seeded and nurtured over centuries before they bloom to sound of guns and spilling of blood.

Our focus for this post is going to be nature’s instinct to preserve, to replicate, to not change or at least not significantly. Call this inertia, lack of impulse or just ignorance; this constitutes most of nature’s set of manifestations. And where would you find most abundant example of this, in which species you ask?

Its everywhere but none as systematized as in man. The first fish to stick its head out in air, the first ape to walk upright, the first ape to use a tool, the first man to fly..all of them were geniuses. And all of them were imitated and followed by their own species. But they did it out of instinct, out of an unsaid need to do that act, rather than imitating what it saw its neighbor do. We could safely say that there was no one master fish that sniffed the first breath of air. But man is a different story. He copies because he does not wish to think. He thinks to shortcut the process of creating something, he mimics, he goes through the motions..all in the hope of achieving the same result.

Genius discovers a system; average talent stereotypes it till it is shattered by fresh genius. It is dangerous for an army to be led by veterans; for on the other side God may place Napoleon.

Though the aphorism has a military example, I find it helpful to think of this as having relevance across all contexts. Most of all in evaluating where we stand. We might not be able to evaluate whether anything is the result of average talent or genius, the opinions of society not withstanding, but we can and must ask ourselves in all that we do – Are we propagating stereotypes, making the dead past live again? Are we crafting the future?

The second in the series where I post an aphorism of Sri Aurobindo and my understanding of it.

Imagine this – what would every spiritual victory be without a Satan or a Mara, or the countless personifications of evil and ignorance across cultures and societies and religions. Would Christ be the same without Satan and his temptations? Without Mara would there be a Buddha?

In fact every major accomplishment becomes that way because of the impediments that come in the way. The greater the block the higher the effort and hence bigger the victory.

But it seems that we as a species, often, in spite of our best intentions, get it wrong as to the identity of the villain.

I was much plagued by Satan, until I found that it was God who was tempting me; then the anguish of him passed out of my soul for ever.

Here, Sri Aurobindo demolishes a old spiritual myth. That there is a highest evil personified, Satan, or whatever name a culture attributes to it, and it holds all responsibility of pushing back aspirants to the highest realm of existence. Of course Sri Aurobindo does not just demolish the myth out of malice or lack of understanding, he points to a higher truth, or should I say the highest truth?

Satan, evil or its ilk and their infinite manifestations are only a half-complete evolution of the possibilities of creation. It is the immanent Divine who is leaving behind each of the layers of ignorance. To not recognize this is to only possess one facet of the Divine, to place in him responsibility for virtue and none of the vices does not make him completely the Highest Divine.

It is perhaps a testament to the maturity of the eastern religions that this line of thought is even attempted. Even from the times of the Vedas and the Upanishad the notion of a transcendent, one who exceeds Space and Time, and hence all notions of morality, one who stands apart from the visible manifest Universe, the highest Self, the highest Purusha, the Purushottama of the Gita has existed. This Transcendent exceeds notions of morality, and in exceeding it contains both Good and Evil within himself.

All that exists is contained within Him. This is the “Uttama rahasya”, the highest secret, of the Gita. To not know this is to be taken by the masks that God wears upon Himself to lead an erring humanity.