Second Response to Debashish Banerji -- by Raman Reddy

Coming to the expansion of the Ashram from the 1940s, it happened spontaneously and the Mother accepted it, encouraged and took advantage of it to widen the physical base of the Ashram, so that fresh energy flowed in without losing sight of the ideal set forth by Sri Aurobindo. This is the miracle that happened in the physical presence of the Mother. Expansion necessarily leads to dilution, as you cannot mass produce yogis like Nolini, Amrita and Pavitra, but the loss in height is offset by the gain in width. If the Mother were reluctant about expanding the Ashram, why did she go out of the way to start a school and later a centre for higher education in 1951 for the children who came in the early forties? Why did she set up a wonderful sports infrastructure through the late Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, whom she considered to be one of her best instruments of action? Why did she encourage Udar Pinto and Dayabhai Patel to start business units? Why did she start the Press and the handmade paper unit to mention only a few of the numerous departments of the Ashram? And what about the workshops and farms? What about the building construction work and finally even a Sugar Mill in the mid sixties? Does Debashish know enough of Ashram history to comment so glibly about its development?

Second Response to Debashish Banerji

[This is my response to Debashish Banerji’s comment published in Auroville Today of March 2010. The journal published my earlier response to his interview which was published in the issue of February 2010.]

Debashish: The impression being given in this response to my interview is that conscious sadhaks in a glorious period of the Ashram, directed by Mother and Sri Aurobindo, created the identity construct which accounts for the “homogeneity” of the present Ashram. This view is quite incorrect.

In the 1940s, there was a large influx of people into the Ashram, allowed because they sought protection from the war. Most of these were not admitted because they came for sadhana. The Mother makes a tripartite division of sadhaks, workers and those supporting with money as constituting the post-40’s Ashram community. In recent times, there have been more incursions of people who have come to settle in the Ashram environs with little intent of doing the integral yoga, but of being part of the “homogeneous” devotional community.

Debashish Banerji’s response to my rejoinder seems to imply that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother lost control of the Ashram from the 1940s when there was a large influx of people who sought refuge from the War. He says these people, including the children who grew up under the Mother’s care and are now at the helm of the Ashram administration, did not come for sadhana. I can understand that the children at that time did not consciously come for sadhana (though most of them stayed back after their studies to precisely take up the sadhana), but on what basis does he say that the adults did not come for sadhana? On the basis of his own sadhana (!) or that of Peter Heehs, who always has held cynical views of the Ashram and the Mother?

Coming to the expansion of the Ashram from the 1940s, it happened spontaneously and the Mother accepted it, encouraged and took advantage of it to widen the physical base of the Ashram, so that fresh energy flowed in without losing sight of the ideal set forth by Sri Aurobindo. This is the miracle that happened in the physical presence of the Mother. Expansion necessarily leads to dilution, as you cannot mass produce yogis like Nolini, Amrita and Pavitra, but the loss in height is offset by the gain in width. If the Mother were reluctant about expanding the Ashram, why did she go out of the way to start a school and later a centre for higher education in 1951 for the children who came in the early forties? Why did she set up a wonderful sports infrastructure through the late Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, whom she considered to be one of her best instruments of action? Why did she encourage Udar Pinto and Dayabhai Patel to start business units? Why did she start the Press and the handmade paper unit to mention only a few of the numerous departments of the Ashram? And what about the workshops and farms? What about the building construction work and finally even a Sugar Mill in the mid sixties? Does Debashish know enough of Ashram history to comment so glibly about its development?

Even Auroville, for that matter, is a logical culmination of this ever-widening movement of the Mother’s action. Many don’t even know that the concept of Auroville with cultural pavilions representing all the nations of the world was first clearly stated by the Mother in 1952,[1] shortly after the opening of the university, which later was renamed for technical reasons as the Sri Aurobindo Ashram International Centre of Education. For some reason, the collective experiment did not pick up as much as the education, which provided a new and alternative curriculum to several generations of students and is still continuing to do so. In the sixties, there was a natural spillover of the Ashram into the formation of Auroville. Many of the first pioneers were in fact those persons who got married and had children and were sent by the Mother to settle there because they were not ready for the yogic life of the Ashram. This does not mean that they were failures – there is no failure in Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, only evolution – but that they were instrumental for the next phase of the Mother’s action. It is in this spontaneous way that things always happened at the Ashram and the Mother made use of every opportunity to expand the ambit of her spiritual influence.

After the Mother’s passing away in 1973, the circumference of her spiritual action seems to have further increased and spread across India, especially in the states of Orissa and Tamilnadu and less in the rest of the world, so that no single institution can now claim monopoly over Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s teachings. The question that comes to my mind is how is it that the most difficult Yoga, a Yoga which begins where the old Yogas end, has been at all accepted by so many? It only shows the Power that is behind and the infinite plasticity it has to adapt itself to various levels of consciousness. It is in the context of this action of the Mother that the present situation should be judged. People often compare the glorious days of old with the present times, but they don’t visualise what would have happened had there been no takers after the first generation of disciples disappeared with time. Thus, ironically, it is this very dilution that has been our gain, for so many of us would never even have had the chance to enter the life of the Ashram. This of course does not mean that more dilution is welcome, because there is a point at which we have to stop, prevent a further fall and even defend the institution from the hostile attacks of those forces which are too ready to enter the Ashram and destroy it from without or within.

Debashish: This majority is in the process of redefining the yoga in its practical and theoretical foundations so as to turn it into a religion, a development which the Mother foresaw and warned against. Predictably, leaders of this inchoate mass have appeared, so as to give voice to their narrow interests. These leaders use events such as the publication of Peter Heehs’ book as occasions to set themselves up in positions of power.

Moreover, homogeneity is the very antithesis of the Integral Yoga. Rather, it is the basis of what could properly be called Totalitarian Religion. What I have said in my interview is that devotion can very well be a part of the integral yoga community, but an integral yoga community which was set up to be representative of world humanity, must have the openness to allow different approaches to the yoga. It should not turn into a homogeneous mass of narrow traits, beliefs and practices which responds with aggression – in Peter’s case, court action, arrest warrants and deportation – to “cleanse” itself through extermination of whatever escapes the limits of its small and ignorant interpretation.

As for religious fundamentalism due to the homogeneity of temperament of the Ashram community, hasn’t this argument become a little stale? It seems to be made up only to protect Heehs and nobody else. Incidentally, a young Indian friend of mine had to leave the Ashram due to some allegations thrown at him. This happened after Heehs’s scandal and removal from the Archives. So why did not these great defenders of freedom come to his rescue? This shows how this whole episode has been unfortunately turned into an American (or Westerner) versus Indian issue by the supporters of Heehs. I guess it is because of this that the Trust could not take any firm action against him, and certainly not because they found his book good. How I wish that this group had shown more solidarity with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother than with Heehs. The symbolic unity of the East and West is after all represented by the coming together of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and not of Debashish Banerji and Peter Heehs!

It has been argued that in America the kind of unfounded criticism of Sri Aurobindo that Heehs has indulged in, is taken lightly as part of life. That could also be now true in India, but I wonder whether that applies to the circumstances of this particular case. We have been saying right from the beginning and I repeat that there is a big difference between what happens outside the institution and inside it. Outside, in scholarly forums, you can keep discussing all sorts of theories till the end of Time and nobody is going to object, but inside institutions dedicated to a specific purpose, be it spirituality, business or politics, certain rules are observed by all the members. This is not totalitarianism, but plain common sense. For example, can you conceive of a Microsoft employee denigrating Bill Gates and expect him to be honoured for his opinions? Or Barack Obama welcoming with open arms Osama-bin-Laden? Or even the SCIY website posting articles which are critical of its stand on Heehs? You don’t, for the simple reason, that organisations are necessarily founded with a particular end in view, which, in case of disagreement, you quietly distance yourself from, instead of creating a rumpus over your resignation.

There is thus no “larger issue”, no “religious fundamentalism”, no “totalitarian view” imposed by the many over the few in this issue. The fact that it has been represented as such is plain politics. How can Heehs after criticising Sri Aurobindo left and right hope to be reinstated with honour in the same office in which he did his mischief? Which disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother would like to work under him? The Ashram is after all dedicated to them and not Heehs, who wanted to simply use its infrastructure to further his own ambition of becoming a famous writer by criticising a great Yogi. His book is full of uncalled for speculations on Sri Aurobindo’s sexual life, highly biased judgments on his major works and deceptive presentations of his personality. It is true that there is plenty of raw data in it, but the interpretation is that of a newcomer who refuses to understand spirituality. What Heehs has been insidiously doing from the last 37 years is an attempt to portray Sri Aurobindo bereft of his spiritual greatness!

Despite the accusation that our website has been emotional on this issue, we have exposed the defects of the book with ample intellectual arguments. We have posted more than 70 articles, comments and letters on the subject from last year but, to date, we have received very few academic responses in defence of Heehs. By serious academic responses, I don’t mean general overviews of how readers have felt (or mostly not felt) but coming down to the nitty-gritty of historical documents or at least making a detailed analysis of the presentation of various events in the book. All that we have got are accusations of being fundamentalists, personal attacks and allegations of wanting to take over the Ashram administration! But I suppose this is what people do when they don’t have any genuine arguments to defend their stand!

Debashish quotes:

Religion exists almost exclusively in its forms, its cults, in a certain set of ideas, and it becomes great only through the spirituality of a few exceptional individuals, whereas true spiritual life, and above all what the supramental realisation will be, is independent of every precise, intellectual form, every limited form of life. It embraces all possibilities and manifestations and makes them the expression, the vehicle of a higher and more universal truth.

A new religion would not only be useless but very harmful. It is a new life which must be created; it is a new consciousness which must be expressed. This is something beyond intellectual limits and mental formulae. It is a living truth which must manifest.

Everything in its essence and its truth should be included in this realisation. This realisation must be an expression as total, as complete, as universal as possible of the divine reality. Only that can save humanity and the world. That is the great spiritual revolution of which Sri Aurobindo speaks. And this is what he wanted us to realise.

(The Mother, MCW 9, p 78)

I smile when Debashish pulls up a long quote of the Mother to attack the Ashram and in the process try to turn people against her, for that is what it amounts to. How can you quote Sri Aurobindo and the Mother against their own Yoga? Either you follow them or you don’t, but you can’t have it both ways. Either you say that their ideas are outdated and insufficient to face the problems of life today and offer an alternative package or you simply accept and follow them as best you can. There is even a logical fallacy in the presentation of the quote from the Mother. If the Mother herself has said not to make a religion out of spiritual experience, would you now consider this very idea of “not making a religion of spiritual experience” as an outdated concept, because she said that forty-three years ago? Or would you simply listen to her advice and be cautious about not ritualising things? Truth remains truth as long as it is applicable, so also what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said will remain true until you really exceed them, which will surely take a pretty long time. Therefore, when somebody challenges Sri Aurobindo and attacks him in a hostile way, he is supposed to come up with an alternative philosophy and not merely quote Sri Aurobindo to undermine him. Or is it that he wants to improve upon what Sri Aurobindo has said? In that case, I would surely question his credentials!

The accusation that the present disciples are making a religion of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga has to be substantiated, not just proclaimed. Is expressing devotion and allegiance to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother symptomatic of religion? Is cleaving to the path of the Yoga as indicated by them a sign of stupidity? Is looking upon them as Avatars contrary to spiritual sense? Secondly, what kind of rituals do the Ashramites practise? Eight hours of work, physical education, cultural participation and meditation at the Samadhi or the Playground -- are these the stifling rituals that have to be changed? I thought that these are pretty healthy activities. Religion generally implies a set of compulsory observances such as the reading of namaaz five times a day or conducting pujas on certain days of the week, which if you don’t follow, you do not belong to that religion. Where is that kind of compulsion in the Ashram? There are disciples who never go to the Samadhi and are yet respected. Or is it the march-past on darshan days that has become a ritual? But these programmes are performed with pride in the most secular of institutions, especially the army. Finally, you should not be put off by the large number of visitors that arrive on Darshan days, which are more meant for them than the residents of the Ashram. In India, where pilgrimages are more popular than picnics and tirthayatra is equated with trekking, you should always expect a crowd wherever there is a trace of genuine spirituality. It only shows how quickly the Indian mind can log on to the spirit.

There remains the possibility of formulating a set of precepts out of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s vast body of knowledge and imposing them on everybody as a new religion. If such a formulation has indeed been made, where is this booklet of precepts? We have only a book of the most basic rules of yogic life such as no alcohol, no drugs and no sex, and rules telling us to inform the concerned authorities whenever we go out of station, not to lodge other people in the houses allotted to us, etc., but where is the set of directions on how to do the sadhana? Even if such a set of instructions has been informally practised, I would like somebody to put it on paper with the agreement of all the disciples of the Ashram. The result of such an attempt, I am sure, will be an explosion of disagreement, in the classic Indian style of discussion. In fact, this possibility was discussed by the Mother in the Agenda where she expressed her strong misgivings about this kind of formulation. It is perhaps because of this that there are very few good compilations of their works. She was even against too many explanations by teachers of Sri Aurobindo’s books because she feared they would misinterpret them. She instructed them to simply read aloud the text and give the minimum of their own commentary. Actually, it is not the simple-hearted disciples who have the capacity to formulate a religion, it is the pundits allied with the politicians who generally create it. So, if at all a new religion is formulated by the followers of Sri Aurobindo, it will be the intellectuals and administrators who will do it for “the good of humanity” at the risk of losing all inner spontaneity. From this point of view, the common disciple will be far better off with the good old basics of spirituality – faith, peace, aspiration, perseverance, surrender and devotion, and above all relying on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s own words than anybody else’s interpretation of their Yoga.


Raman Reddy

1 April 2010



Endnotes:

[1] CWM, Vol. 12, On Education, pp 39- 42