The Well-wishers
of Sri Aurobindo Ashram website which follows closely our site has recently
done some “remarkable investigation” and announced how it has “connected the
dots” between the so-called anti-Ashram nexus. Let me first remind these “highly
intelligent sleuths” that Sri Aurobindo Ashram (Pondicherry) is different from
the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust (Pondicherry). The Ashram Trust was created by
the Mother in 1955 for protecting the assets and properties of the Ashram,
whereas Sri Aurobindo Ashram spontaneously began in 1926 when Sri Aurobindo
gave “the spiritual and material charge” of his disciples to the Mother after
the Siddhi Day. The Ashram is the spiritual institution and the Ashram Trust is
only a legal body, whose administration has at first gradually and then rapidly
deteriorated in recent times after the passing away of its Gurus. A section of
the Ashramites are extremely unhappy with the corrupt and dictatorial
functioning of the Ashram Trust and have therefore gone against it in various
legitimate ways. They have not gone against the Ashram itself nor do they want
to destroy the Ashram from the face of this earth, as the supporters of the
Ashram Trust would like the ignorant public to believe. The solution to this
rudderless present situation of the Ashram without any spiritual heads, or
rather with the present Trustees who always get into loggerheads with anybody
who differs from them, is an alternate system of fair and democratic
governance. If this is difficult to understand and highly objectionable, then I
think we have to set the clock back and go back to pre Magna Carta days.
28 Jul 2014
25 Jul 2014
An Interview with Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya in May 1991 – History Desk
[Pranab
Kumar Bhattacharya (1922-2010) was one of the closest attendants of the Mother
and the Director of the Physical Education Department of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry.
Physical Education is taken very seriously in the Ashram, far more than what most
people would expect in an institution dedicated to spiritual growth. Literally
all the members of the Ashram have a daily routine of physical exercise
interspersed with work and meditation. All the students of the Ashram School
have compulsory physical education every day for an hour and a half. The Dept.
of Physical Education is thus very well-organised and pools the talent of more
than a hundred voluntary captains, coaches and helping instructors, without
mentioning those who maintain its numerous grounds for playing football,
basketball, hockey, volleyball and other games. There is also enough infrastructure
for the regular practice of Athletics, Swimming, Gymnastics and even Combatives.
Competitions are held every year in which older Ashramites vie with the young students
of the Ashram School. Ashram records are timed with stop watches, carefully measured
with tapes, and systematically noted down. These are then databased and
preserved for posterity so that you can get an analysis of your athletic performance
twenty years back at the touch of a button. One would actually wonder as to whether
the Ashram is a Yogic or a sports institution! But no, in the Integral Yoga of
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, sports can be turned towards Yoga, and the
perfection of the body can become a Yogic ideal. At the same time, physical
health undoubtedly imparts a great stability to life, whether you choose to do
Yoga or not.
18 Jul 2014
Reply to Manoj Das’s Letter to Niranjan Naik (2) – by Bireshwar Choudhury
Manoj Das suffers from an uncontrollable itch to
put down his critics. It would have been so much better had the writer’s itch
channelised itself in a more fruitful manner in his own realm of creative writing. But
I have been told that from the last decade or two his literary creativity is
ebbing in inverse proportion to his mounting desire to be honoured by all sorts
of awards. The last big award he successfully managed to canvas for was the
Padma Sri award, accorded by the Govt. of India in 2001. Now I suppose
he is eying for the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan. But what is he doing
at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, and how does the Ashram help him in his
enterprise?
No, he has certainly not thrown fame
to the winds to attain the Supramental Transformation or even to achieve a Yogic
poise! If he had really done so, why would he rush out for a fresh round of
self-promotion each time he receives an invitation from literary circles? Why would he criticise other awardees who
have outshone him in literary output and perhaps deprived him of the award that
he might have won instead? And why is he so keen on saving his reputation which
has recently plummeted in his home state of Orissa after this site published
the less known details of his activities in Pondicherry?
11 Jul 2014
Reply to Manoj Das’s Letter to Niranjan Naik – by Sripad Singh
Dear
Mr. Das,
I have read your letter of
15.06.2014 to Niranjan-bhai (Niranjan Naik). As you have requested him not to say
anything about you, I am interested to reply to your letter because I am
thoroughly conversant with the facts of the controversy. Also the nature of
your letter demands an answer.
On 10.05.2013 in your article “Last
Appeal”, you had said that you will not to write anything more on the present
controversy in the Ashram. As you frequently break your own promise and baffle
the common devotees and disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, an answer to
your letter is therefore badly needed. All your letters like the present one
are factually wrong, unsubstantial, discordant, irrelevant and full of unnecessary
emotion.
5 Jul 2014
Sources of Sri Aurobindo’s Philosophy
Sri Aurobindo’s intellect was influenced
by Greek philosophy.
[SRI AUROBINDO's Correction:] Very little. I read more than once Plato’s Republic and
Symposium, but only extracts from his other writings. It is true that under his
impress I rashly started writing at the age of 18 an explanation of the cosmos
on the foundation of the principle of Beauty and Harmony, but I never got
beyond the first three or four chapters. I read Epictetus and was interested in
the ideas of the Stoics and the Epicureans; but I made no study of Greek
philosophy or of any of the [? ]. I made in fact no study of metaphysics in my
school and College days. What little I knew about philosophy I picked up
desultorily in my general reading. I once read, not Hegel, but a small book on
Hegel, but it left no impression on me. Later, in India, I read a book on
Bergson, but that too ran off “like water from a duck’s back”.
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