THE MOTHER - 10-2. Establishing the Ashram You take up the path only when you think that you cannot do otherwise. — Sri Aurobindo When reading the stories of some aspirants who became disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we have seen that, in every case, time was given to them to think over their decision, even when they knew from the very first moment of meeting Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that their destiny lay with them. ‘I never push anyone to take the path,’ said the Mother. ‘When you have started, you must go to the very end. Sometimes to people who come to me in a surge of enthusiasm I say: “Think it over, it is not an easy path. It will take time, it will need patience. You will need much endurance, much perseverance and courage and untiring goodwill. Look and see if you are capable of having all this, and then start. But once you have started, it is decided: there is no going back any more. You must go to the very end.”’458 When Nirodbaran, influenced by Dilip K. Roy and others, wrote to Sri Aurobindo that he was fishing for disciples, Sri Aurobindo reacted sharply: ‘Your image of fishery is quite out of place. I fish for no one; people are not hauled or called here, they come of themselves by the psychic instinct. Especially I don’t fish for big and famous or successful men. Such fellows may be mentally or vitally big, but they are usually quite contented with that kind of bigness and do not want spiritual things, or, if they do, their bigness stands in their way rather than helps them... The spirit cares not a damn for fame, success or bigness in those who come to it. People have a strange idea that Mother and I are eager to get people as disciples and if anyone goes away, it is a great blow, a terrible defeat, a dreadful catastrophe and cataclysm for us. Many even think that their being here is a great favour done to us for which we are not sufficiently grateful. All that is rubbish.’459 This being an Integral Yoga in which all aspects of life have to be tackled,460 the prescription of fixed rules and guidelines was not feasible. (This has led to much confusion concerning the Integral Yoga, and a repeated effort, in spite of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s integrality and openness, to write books about their ‘system’ of yoga.) The simple reason of this individuality of the way is that every human being is a unique and extremely complex whole. Not only does it consist of different layers and parts proper to it and to nobody else, it is also the outcome of a whole range of experiences through many lives, which may be momentarily hidden and forgotten, but which are the constituents of its soul and its adhara. All this is the material given to the human being to work out its yoga, the vibrations composing the individual, private field of it. ‘Each Sadhak has to be dealt with according to his nature, his capacities, his real needs (not his claims and desires) and according to what is best for his spiritual welfare,’ wrote Sri Aurobindo. And also: ‘Each one has his own way of doing Sadhana and his own approach to the Divine and need not trouble himself about how the others do it.’461 ‘I believe in a certain amount of freedom,’ he said, ‘freedom to find out things for oneself in one’s own way, freedom to commit blunders even. Nature leads us through various errors and eccentricities. When Nature created the human being with all its possibilities for good or ill, she knew very well what she was about. Freedom for experiment in human life is a great thing. Without freedom to take risks and commit mistakes, there can be no progress.’462 And in a letter he wrote: ‘What the Mother wants is for people to have their full chance for their souls, be the method short and swift or long and tortuous. Each she must treat according to his nature.’463 ‘The long rope is needed,’ he would write to Nirodbaran. And the Mother said: ‘Everybody here represents an impossibility that has to be solved.’464 The transformation of the physical consciousness into a Divine Consciousness is in itself an impossibility. Each sadhak and sadhika, son and daughter of Mother Earth, contained that impossibility in his or her person. The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is intended to make the impossible possible. The collaborators in their yoga were therefore supposed to do the same, to begin with themselves. One evening the Mother told her youthful audience in the playground: ‘At the beginning of my present earthly existence I came into contact with many people who said they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something that was deeper and truer, but that they were tied down, subjected, slaves to the crude necessity of earning their living, and that this weighed them down so much, took up so much of their time and energy that they could not engage in any other activity, inner or outer. I heard this very often, I saw many such poor people — I don’t mean poor from the financial point of view, but poor because they felt imprisoned in material necessity, narrow and numbing.’ ‘I was very young then, and I always used to say to myself that, if ever I had the possibility to do so, I would try to create a small world — just quite a small one, but still... — a small world where people would be able to live without having to worry about food, lodging, clothing and the other imperative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material existence would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realization. Well, towards the middle of my life — I mean what is generally speaking the middle of a human life — the means were given to me and I could realize this, in other words create such conditions of life.’465 As we have seen, Mirra’s first question when meeting Sri Aurobindo in 1914 was whether they would hew out the path in the jungle themselves first and then let the others follow, or whether all would go forward together. It proved to have been an important question, though it did not have to be answered by a voluntary decision: the circumstances, guided from Above, had brought the first collaborators to them as it were automatically, and all had started on the path together. ‘The whole thing [i.e. the Ashram] has taken birth, grown and developed as a living being by a movement of consciousness (Chit-Tapas) constantly maintained, increased and fortified. As the Conscious Force descends in matter and radiates, it seeks for fit instruments to express and manifest it.’466 (Sri Aurobindo) ‘When people, born scattered over the world at great distances from one another, are driven by circumstances or by an inner urge to come and gather here,’ said the Mother, ‘it is almost always because they have met in some life or other — not all in the same life — and because their psychic being has felt that they belong to the same family. So they have taken an inner vow to continue to act together and collaborate. That is why, even though they are born far from one another, there is something which compels them to come together: it is the psychic being, the psychic consciousness that is behind. And only to the extent that the psychic consciousness is strong enough to order and organize life’s circumstances, that is, strong enough not to allow itself to be counteracted by exterior forces, by exterior life movements, can these people meet. This is a profound truth of reality. There are large families of beings who work for the same cause, who have been together before in various numbers, and who come down [into the world] in groups as it were.’467 As such a ‘family of beings’ is formed by a higher Force in view of a particular aim, so it is constituted of elements which form a meaningful and effective whole in order to accomplish the aim. As the Mother said: ‘I have a sampling here [in the Ashram] of all possible [inner] attitudes.’468 And to the youth of the Ashram she said: ‘From the occult point of view [you are] a selection. From the external point of view you might tell me that there are people in the world who are much superior to you and I won’t contradict it. But from the occult point of view [you are] a selection. One can say without being mistaken that most of the young people who are here have come because they have been promised [in a former life] that they would be here at the time of the Realization. They do not remember this.’469 ‘This is the place of the Realization,’ she averred. One can safely assume that from the very moment she was put in charge of the Ashram, she established and protected it in an occult way, like a yantra. We recall how she had experienced Sri Aurobindo’s atmosphere, or aura, ten nautical miles out at sea on the occasion of her second arrival in Pondicherry. Now her atmosphere was joined and one with that of Sri Aurobindo. The innumerable reports of the special feeling people had and still have when visiting the Sri Aurobindo Ashram originate, without their being aware of it, in this invisible, extended and very strong presence that enabled the ‘place of Realization’ to survive and develop. There are many stories in ancient Indian writings about attacks by Asuras, Rakshasas and Pishachas on the sacred fires and on the ashrams of Rishis and other holy men. Far from being nothing but imagination, they refer to an occult fact all spiritual endeavours have to reckon with — especially an endeavour undertaken to bring to an end the realm of these hostile beings. It is little realized that an important aspect of the sadhana of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother consisted in acquiring and exerting the power to protect the cradle of their New Creation in Matter and all who became involved in it. ‘The Ashram is a first form which our effort has taken, a field in which the preparatory work has to be done.’470 (Sri Aurobindo)43..
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 02:10:49 +0000