It
is the self-regarding desire-driven leap of faith of alumni and Ashramites and
would-be Ashramites that endorses SAAT’s administration as that of the Mother
Herself. And in return for their defence of its assessments, policies and
actions, SAAT certifies them as truly committed to the Mother and Her Ashram, hence
its legitimate inmates or fit to be admitted as inmates, and admits their
children to its SAICE. The criteria Sri Aurobindo and the Mother demanded for
admission as sadhaks to Their Ashram have thus been clearly overridden. – Extract
The GFC – SAAT Nexus
Or the Leap of Faith — by An Alumnus-Disciple
“Are The Golden Chain Fraternity (GCF) and its work
maintained by the Ashram (i.e., Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust – SAAT) in any
manner? And what are its goal & agenda?” Ritwik asked “all Aurobindonians” (a sick term – it
degrades and exploits Him) on this website last 12th December.
Three
days later, Sampdas wrote that GCF’s own website makes it out to be of alumni of Sri
Aurobindo International Centre of Education (SAICE), and admits its connection
with the Ashram Trust thus: “An integral part of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, SAICE
was blessed to have, in its formative stages, the Mother’s active
presence and guidance. Over the years it has continued to serve as a field
of experiment and research in education…. . All of us have fond
memories of the growing-up years we spent there. We appreciate the immense
privilege of having studied in that very special place.” From this Sampdas
infers that “since the formative years are over, the active presence and
guidance of the Mother is a matter of the past. The defence of the Ashram Trust
at present by the alumni of SAICE is perhaps a thin fig leaf covering the nexus
of dispensers of benefits and the recipients of favours.”
This
inference stirred me into enlarging upon some of the facts it implies.
1. It is the self-regarding desire-driven leap
of faith of alumni and Ashramites and would-be Ashramites that endorses SAAT’s
administration as that of the Mother Herself. And in return for their defence
of its assessments, policies and actions, SAAT certifies them as truly
committed to the Mother and Her Ashram, hence its legitimate inmates or fit to
be admitted as inmates, and admits their children to its SAICE. The criteria
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother demanded for admission as sadhaks to Their Ashram
have thus been clearly overridden. This degeneration was foreseen by Sri
Aurobindo in July 1926: Once the Mother’s active presence and guidance became a
matter of the past this Ashram will degenerate due to the incapacity of our human
nature which spoils whatever it receives from above, and our mind which, being capable
only of grasping the Teaching intellectually, will deform the whole thing.[1] Isn’t
this how religiosity swallows up collective spiritual endeavours?
What are SAAT’s Rules
& Regulations of 2003, if not the Shastra-Doctrine-Edict-Charter of a quasi-religious
corporation? What are the SAAT-propped ‘psychic beings’ and ‘advanced sadhaks’,
exponents and scholars, if not its saints, priests, and promoters? For them anyone
who questions the legitimacy of SAAT’s Rules and Regulations, or disputes its
claim of being Mother’s absolute
2. The source of the designation “Golden
Chain Fraternity” is implied in every issue of GCF in this quote from Nolini’s
talk at SAICE on 26 Oct. 1976:
“Mother said many times:
Whoever gets my touch, whoever has a second of true aspiration, true love for
me, he is finished for life, for all lives – he is bound to me. I have put a
golden chain round his neck; his heart is bound eternally to me.”
Those who hit upon this
designation were too thrilled to notice that it crucifies Nolini on the altar
of their alluring elitism. But they knew that Nolini’s “golden chain” merely rephrased
the core of the “world of things” that Mother means by saying “I am with you”[3];
they knew that while alumni admitted by Mother may have had in this or a
previous life[4]
a second or more of true aspiration and love for Her, this cannot be claimed
for those admitted in the absence of Her “active presence and guidance”, since
inferior criteria always intrude in SAICE’s decision to admit or reject
applicants! What they definitely had not realised, as Nolini did, was what She
meant by “All souls who aspire are always under my direct care”[5], or
cautioned by “But
being a disciple does not necessarily imply that one lives in the Ashram. In
fact, there are more disciples living outside the Ashram than in it.”[6]
3. It is time, therefore, for us who have
aspired for or loved the Mother even for a moment, to leave all fond or
troubled memories of our privileged or unprivileged past and present, and run
towards the luminous future[7] in
Her
Golden Chain Fraternity opened for us in these words on 14 May 1958:
“As
the beginnings of the supramental life… develop, perhaps not in a very obvious
way but very surely, it becomes more and more obvious that… it is much more difficult
to pass from the mental to the supramental life than to pass from a certain
psychic emotion in life – something that is like a reflection, a luminous
emanation of the divine Presence in matter….
In this new substance which is spreading and acting in the world, there
is a warmth, a power, a joy so intense that all intellectual activity seems
cold and dry beside it…. A single moment, a single impulse of deep and true
love, an instant of the understanding which lies in the divine Grace brings you
much closer to the goal than all possible explanations.”[8]
And in this assurance: “…there
is a special personal tie between…all who have turned to the teaching of Sri
Aurobindo and myself and, it is well understood, distance does not count…you
may be at the other end of the world or in Pondicherry, this tie is always true
and living.... In
truth, I hold myself responsible for everyone, even for those whom I have met
only for one second in my life…. With those I have
accepted as disciples… there is more than a tie, there is an emanation of me…. The Divine is with you
according to your aspiration. Naturally that does not mean that He bends to the
caprices of your outer nature,—I speak here of the truth of your being. And
yet, sometimes he does fashion himself according to your outer aspirations, and
if, like the devotees, you live alternately in separation and union, ecstasy
and despair, the Divine also will separate from you and unite with you,
according as you believe. The attitude is thus very important, even the outer attitude.
People do not know how important is faith, how faith is miracle, creator of
miracles.”[9]
4. Our first step then is to slay our self-regarding
desire-driven faith in SAAT and its thriving corporation, and leap into the faith
demanded in The Synthesis of Yoga:
“Our faith must first be
abiding in the essential truth and principles of the Yoga, and even if this is
clouded in the intellect, despondent in the heart, outwearied and exhausted by
constant denial and failure in the desire of the vital mind, there must be
something in the innermost soul which clings and returns to it…. The Shakti in
her workings will strike ruthlessly at all forms of ignorance and blindness and
all even that trusts wrongly and superstitiously in her, and we must be prepared
to abandon a too persistent attachment to forms of faith and cling to the
saving reality alone. A great and wide spiritual and intelligent faith,
intelligent with the intelligence of that larger reason which assents to high
possibilities, is the character of the sraddha needed for the integral Yoga.
“This
sraddha is in reality an influence from the supreme Spirit and its light a
message from our supramental being which is calling the lower nature to rise
out of its petty present to a great self-becoming and self-exceeding. And that
which receives the influence and answers to the call is not so much the
intellect, the heart or the life mind, but the inner soul which better knows
the truth of its own destiny and mission. The circumstances that provoke our
first entry into the path are not the real index of the thing that is at work
in us. There the intellect, the heart, or the desires of the life mind may take
a prominent place, or even more fortuitous accidents and outward incentives;
but if these are all, then there can be no surety of our fidelity to the call
and our enduring perseverance in the Yoga.”[10]
[1] Based on Sri Aurobindo’s remark, in a talk
of 19 July 1926 recorded by Anilbaran. See Conversations,
Sri Aurobindo Circle, No. 34, 1978.
[2] Collected Works of the Mother (CWM), vol.
17, 1987, p.72
[3] CWM, vol. 13, 1980, p.75-78
[4] SAICE is “an integral part of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram” because it was started mainly for children of devotees
trapped in vulnerable places during the Second War had to be sheltered by the
Ashram.
[5] CWM, vol. 13, 1980, p.68
[6] CWM, vol. 17, 1987, p.190-91
[7] CWM, vol. 15, 1980, p.178: New Year
Message for 1933: “Leaving the past far behind us, let us run towards a
luminous future.”
[8] CWM, vol. 9, 1977, p.324-26
[9] CWM, vol. 13, 1980, p.75-78
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