The situation of the old guard of the Ashram is the same as that of Bhishmacharya, who was unable to use his
mighty bow in the service of dharma and was forced to fight on the side of adharma
with an anguished conscience. This inability and helplessness to stand for the
truth, this forced loyalty towards the powers that be, and the apparently
virtuous stand which actually facilitates falsehood is what I call the
Bhishmacharya complex!
[read full article below]
[read full article below]
The
Bhishmacharya Complex
The Bhishmacharya
complex is the allegiance of the old guard to the institution they serve at the
expense of dharma. Bhishma in the Mahabharata stood by Dhritarashtra, knowing
full well that the king had chosen the path of adharma and injustice out of putramoha – the delusion caused by the attachment
to his wicked son Duryodhan. Had the grandfather of the Kurus withdrawn his
allegiance to the king and refused to fight with the Kauravas, the War would have
been averted and the lives of thousands of warriors and soldiers would have
been saved. But Bhishma was bound by his word of honour to protect the kingdom of
Hastinapur and at the same time not to occupy the throne himself despite being the
crown prince. The circumstances in which
he made this tremendous vow and sacrifice were very different from what later transpired,
and in our times we would call him foolish not to have broken his oath at the
time of the great war of the Mahabharata. There was no need to be so rigid
about his oath because it only helped the wicked Duryodhan and selfish
Dhritarashtra to prolong the rule of falsehood and injustice.
A similar situation
obtains in Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the present crisis of Peter Heehs. Instead
of the mighty Bhishmacharya, Dronacharya and Kripacharya, we have the current
old guard of the Ashram. Of course, the validity of the comparison is only with
respect to their loyalty to the throne of Hastinapur or the Ashram Trust, as
the case may be. So it should not be misconstrued in any way that I am
comparing the warrior grandsires of the Mahabharata to the elders of the Ashram,
who are naturally of a far lesser stature than the former. But the fact remains
that the old guard of the Ashram has its own merits and qualities and can easily
be distinguished from the recent influx of self-seeking devotees, who are mostly
looking for the prospects of a comfortable life in the Ashram. They grew up in
the golden period of the Ashram, from the 1940s to the 1960s, in the outgoing
period of the Mother’s life when she played tennis every day and attended to the
physical education of the children of the Ashram School for her own divine
reasons. The Ashram was not flush with funds as it is today, and the inmates (including
the children) did not enjoy the comparative life of luxury they can afford to
live now. But they all received
something of that divine touch, which percolated deep into their being and is
now paying rich spiritual dividends in their last years. All said and done, a
respectable generation which has stood together in service of the Mother through
the thick and thin of Ashram life, despite their human limitations! It is
precisely because they enjoy such credibility and trust among the younger
inmates of the Ashram that I find fault with them for not raising their voices,
or rather, of not finding their voices at all in the present crisis!
What is ironical
about this total lack of dissent is that literally all of them privately grumble
about the administration of the Ashram Trust, discreetly voice their intense dissatisfaction
and harshly criticise it among themselves, but when push comes to shove, there
is no hesitation whatsoever, not even a squeak of protest, but only the
bleating of obedient lambs. They all stand together in full support of the present
Trustees, as if the Mother were still physically around, approving of every
decision they take – their political maneuverings, their whims and fancies, their
partiality and vindictiveness, and above all the senseless expenditure on court
cases against those members of the Ashram and other disciples who have dared to
voice their opinions publicly. Let me explain the genesis of this misplaced
allegiance.
The main reason why
the old guard stands together as one indivisible block is their unquestioning allegiance
to the Ashram as an institution founded by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and
hence inseparably linked to them. Excellent attitude, no doubt, when the Gurus were
physically present and directly dealt with the spiritual and material problems
of Ashram life! But what happens when lesser mortals occupy their place in the outer
management of the Ashram and pretend to fill the spiritual vacuum left after
their passing away? For a few decades, the habit of unthinking obedience seems
to have worked (with hiccups) as long as the administration was run by the
first generation of disciples who came to the Ashram in the 1920s and 1930s
or even earlier, as opposed to the current old guard which came later, in the 1940s
and 1950s. The hallowed names of the first generation that come spontaneously
to our minds are Nolini, Amrita, Pavitra, Dyuman, Satyakarma, and a number of other
self-effacing disciples of that period who worked silently and efficaciously,
setting a living example of Yoga in daily life. They helped to establish the inner
Ashram and build its outer structure brick by brick, wall by wall, building by
building for more than three quarters of a century. For them, the outer Ashram was
the symbolic representation of their Gurus and was therefore too important to
be sacrificed at the altar of their own egos! Very much unlike the present old
guard! What a marked difference between the two generations, the first that
built the Ashram and the second that now claims its ownership!
But is it legitimate
for the more recent inmates of the Ashram to have greater expectations from the
present old guard of the Ashram, which has had the immense good fortune of being
so closely associated with the Mother herself? Do they have at all the right to
question the spiritual or moral capacity of the latter, when they themselves
can hardly pass muster in front of others? Moreover, they have not been
assigned the onerous responsibility of running the Ashram, so their first
reaction to the administrative rot should be to simply shut up and mind their
own business. Finally, the foremost reason that justifies a submissive attitude
to the decisions of the present Ashram Trust is that “United we stand, divided
we fall.” For at no cost should the Ashram break into pieces, as it belongs to
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and nobody else!
But what if the
original purpose of the Ashram is forgotten for the sake of one Duryodhan in
the form of Peter Heehs? What if the present day Dhritarashtra (in the form of
Manoj Das Gupta) is bent upon sacrificing the spiritual character of the Ashram
to protect and please his foster son? And what if Dhritarashtra insists on following
the crooked ways of a modern day Shakuni (in the form of Matriprasad
Satyamurthy), who will certainly lead the Ashram Trust down the path of
self-destruction? And while the Ashram is falling apart, will its respectable elders
continue to observe a painful and helpless silence because they don’t want to
cause internal divisions? It is here that I draw the comparison between the
Mahabharata and the present crisis in the Ashram. The situation of the old
guard is the same as that of Bhishmacharya, who was unable to use his mighty
bow in the service of dharma and was forced to fight on the side of adharma
with an anguished conscience. This inability and helplessness to stand for the
truth, this forced loyalty towards the powers that be, and the apparently
virtuous stand which actually facilitates falsehood is what I call the
Bhishmacharya complex!
I hope the old
guard wakes up to the current realities of Ashram life before it is too late. They
should realise that the times have unalterably changed, and that things have
deteriorated to such an extent that they can no longer be ignored with the
pretext of being loyal to the Mother. The naive assumption that Mother works
through whoever is in power and whatever be his limitations, will only further
ensure a quick downfall; for it is not the Mother who has failed her disciples,
but they who have failed her! In the present circumstances, the Ashram Trustees
can never hope to fill the spiritual and administrative vacuum left by the
passing away of the Gurus. Nor can they pretend that the outer administration
of the Ashram has no connection with its spiritual aim, because the outer life of
the Ashram is inextricably linked to its inner life. To say that each inmate is
left free to do his own Yoga (so that he does not poke his nose into Ashram
affairs) is simply a ruse of the Trustees to avoid embarrassing questions.
The truth of the
matter is that the Ashram as a whole is undergoing a rapid process of
normalisation, by which I mean a sinking back to the normal level of
consciousness. The divine moment when Sri Aurobindo and the Mother lifted their
disciples to unthinkable skies of spirituality has definitely passed. Even the
memory of it is fading away and we are once again left free to fend for
ourselves “with the strength or the weakness”[1] of
our own egoism and face the harsh realities of life. But the prime question now
is not how to retain what we have collectively gained from that divine moment, but
how to prevent a further fall into the abyss we are plummeting. Bereft of
morality (because we profess to be above morality), rejecting religion (because
we cannot follow the spiritual discipline), cleverly misinterpreting the integral
Yoga without any qualms of conscience (on the basis that each one has a right
to live his own way without any reference to the collective ideal), how are we to
prevent this free fall into a moral morass, even as we become the laughing
stock of the society around us?
The need of the
hour is to first find a fail-safe mechanism by which to arrest this free fall
and bring about the necessary collective clarity, so that we at least know our
place in the wider framework of the world around us. Then perhaps with the
consultation of all those who feel concerned about the spiritual work of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mother, the Ashram can hopefully stabilise around
a lesser ideal and its inmates live with dignity and self-respect than deceitfully
hide behind the professed ideal and make a thousand compromises with life! In
this crucial change, on which will depend the future of the Ashram, I have no
doubt that the old guard would have an important role to play, provided it does
not show a shameful allegiance to the arrogant anachronism the Ashram Trust has
now become.
This article needs wider publicity.Well written.Lovely sense of humour.
ReplyDeleteComment by a disciple:
ReplyDeleteA snatch from the early history of the Integral Yoga for the Bhishmas, Dronas, and Kripas (administrators, teachers & captains) of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The following conversation of 21 August 1926 recorded by Anilbaran Roy is with regard to Motilal Roy’s Sangha at Chandernagore inspired by Sri Aurobindo, even before the founding of the Ashram at Pondicherry:
Sri Aurobindo: I had some constructions in mind; I gave them to Motilal to be worked out by him. Even then I had nothing definite, I knew that my construction might not succeed, yet my idea was to see the possibilities. But Motilal put forth his vital elements into the plan and the vital forces at once proceeded to frustrate it, as they always have done in the past. They also caught hold of Motilal. At first I tried to withdraw Motilal from it but did not succeed. Now, I have put the whole thing outside my atmosphere and do not think about it. It will be known as Aurobindo Ghose’s first garbhasrava. The only course now left is that those who are worth ought to come out of it. I wanted it to consist of Yogins; it might be a Sangha [or Ashram], but a Sangha of Yogins.