Sri Aurobindo and Avatar-hood

The Mother, Mira Alfassa, said thus of Sri Aurobindo :
What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world’s history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action, direct from the Supreme.

She further said:
Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme who came on earth to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the supramental.
Let us prepare for it in all sincerity and eagerness.

There are other messages on Sri Aurobindo, given by the Mother during His birth centenary. One of the messages is as follows:
Man is the creation of yesterday.
Sri Aurobindo came to announce the creation of tomorrow : the coming of the supramental being.

Sri Aurobindo has said :
The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution.

According Him, the Supreme has three aspects, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual. The Individual Person of the Supreme, the Lord, descends on earth, when there is the need of a special Work to be done here, in the matter of the Manifestation of the Divine, in the Progression of the Evolution.
And the Evolution aims at progressively more and more complete a Manifestation of the Divine on earth.

OOOOO

A few persons have said that Sri Aurobindo was the ninth Avatar of Vishnu. And it is also further claimed by them that He has again been reborn in the year 1963 and is the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu.
These claims are not true.
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have never and nowhere stated that He was an Avatar of Vishnu. As The Mother has stated, Sri Aurobindo is an emanation of the Supreme. Vishnu is an aspect of the Supreme, according to the Indian mythology.
Sri Aurobindo has written about the Ten Avatars and has given His view which is very much clear and reasonable and in accordance with His Teaching. According to Him, the Buddha was the ninth Avatar, as it is usually accepted. And Kalki is, as usual, the tenth Avatar.

Sri Aurobindo has said, in this connection:
Avatarhood would have little meaning if it were not connected with the evolution. The Hindu procession of the ten Avatars is itself, as it were, a parable of evolution. First the Fish Avatar, then the amphibious animal between land and water, then the land animal, then the Man-Lion Avatar, bridging man and animal, then man as dwarf, small and undeveloped and physical but containing in himself the godhead and taking possession of existence, then the rajasic, sattwic, nirguna Avatars, leading the human development from the vital rajasic to the sattwic mental man and again the overmental superman. Krishna, Buddha and Kalki depict the last three stages, the stages of the spiritual development – Krishna opens the possibility of overmind, Buddha tries to shoot beyond to the supreme liberation but that liberation is still negative, not returning upon earth to complete positively the evolution; Kalki is to correct this by bringing the Kingdom of the Divine upon earth, destroying the opposing Asura forces. The progression is striking and unmistakable.
As for the lives in between the Avatar lives, it must be remembered that Krishna speaks of many lives in the past, not only a few supreme ones, and secondly that while he speaks of himself as the Divine, in one passage he describes himself as a Vibhuti, vrishneenām vāsudevah. We may therefore fairly assume that in many lives he manifested as the Vibhuti veiling the fuller Divine Consciousness. If we admit that the object of Avatarhood is to lead the evolution, this is quite reasonable, the Divine appearing as Avatar in the great transitional stages and as Vibhutis to aid the lesser transitions. [Letters on Yoga]

And Sri Aurobindo has never described in the discussion above or elsewhere that He is one among the Ten Avatars as mentioned in the Indian mythology.

In the Ten Avatars, let us remember, the name of Krishna is not there, though Krishna’s elder brother Balarāma is enumerated there. Though, He is definitely an Avatar, whose words have created the Gita. Similarly, Sri Aurobindo need not be in the series of the Ten Avatars. Sri Aurobindo Himself admits Kalki, who is yet to come and is regarded as the Tenth Avatar.

OOOOO

Sri Aurobindo’s Avatar-hood is of an extra-ordinary and final importance, as the purpose of his Advent on earth is the transformation of the humanity, the transcendence of the human race.
The sole aim of the Evolution, now, is to go beyond the human race. A new Race, the Supramental Race is now the Task and the Aim. The Supramental Consciousness, which has descended already on 29-2-1956, is now active and it is now the Divine Will.
And Sri Aurobindo is with us till His work is done. Has not the Mother said on 7th December 1950 that He will be with us till His Work, the Work of the Supramental Creation and Transformation, is done?

The Mother said :
Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and that henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work.

The Mother had further said on 21 December 1969 :
Sri Aurobindo is constantly in the subtle physical, very active there. I see him almost daily, and last night I spent many hours with him. If you become conscious in the subtle physical, you will surely meet him, it is what he called the true physical — it has nothing to with the psychic.

Sri Aurobindo has categorically told The Mother, as declared by Her, that he will return as the first supramental being in a supramental body. He is not to return as human being any more.

The Mother said on 11 April 1952:
When I asked Him ( December 8, 1950) to resuscitate his body, He clearly answered: “I left this body purposely. I will not take it back. I shall manifest again in the first supramental body built in the supramental way.”

Hence, we will exhibit our disbelief in The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, if we think and profess that He is reborn again in 1963, or at any other time, as a human being and as the tenth Avatar. The Mother has declared that She had spent time with Sri Aurobindo in the subtle physical on the 21st December 1969 and on many other days. She had never declared that He is born again as a human being or in a human body.

Mankind should, in all humility and with all reverence, wait for His return in the first supramental body built in the supramental way. The Time depends, greatly, on mankind; the humanity should be ready for the change.

Barindranath Chaki
27-6-2008

Comments in Sulekha:

scribblingpad: Why KRISHNA is not there?
Reply by barin chaki: Shrikrishnastu bhagavaan swayam — that is the answer.
komlet : Shi Barindranathji, I read it...........and has to re-read it..............thanks for being here and sharing pearls of wisdom with us.

OOO

Comments from others:

From: Raaye <http://in.mc88.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=kripatirtha97@yahoo.com>Date: 2008/6/28Subject: Sri Aurobindo/Barindranath Chaki/All ChoiceTo: "Tusar N. Mohapatra" <http://in.mc88.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com>Dear Tushar Babu, It may be read by you but there may be others whom this may help knowing Sri Aurobindo.

*****
Dear Barindranath,
How are you? I keep your nice discourse on Avatarhood-
Love,
Aju Mukhopadhyay
OOO

From Mamata Dash

I am following

Dear Mr. Chaki

Recently I am following all the mails that are sent to me. I am grateful to you for including my name in to this discussion. I read your opinion about me even... I really do not know whether I m worthy of Sri Aurobindo and Mother but as you say I do not want to be something. I am surprised by this Thea ... who is she? How we never knew about her? Do you know her? How are her books? How can she claim to be next to Mother?

We are in London now with our daughter. We are here since 5 months. We will be back to Pondy in July. Mira Aditi has now requested me to translate 4th Agenda and they are now to publish 3rd volume which has been translated before. The second edition of Adventure is now published and available. What are you doing now? How are all in your family?

Regards
Mamata
09-06-2008
Mamata Dash
[ Mamata Dash is the Oriya translator of Mira Aditi Centre. She and her family members are ardent followers of Sri Aurobindo And The Mother. ]
Posted by me
Barin Chaki
14-06-2008

Truth will prevail

Truth will certainly prevail.
The Mother had declared that the Supramental Consciousness descended on earth on the 29th December 1956.

During the common meditation on Wednesday The 29th February 1956, The Mother had taken the Action for the FIRST SUPRAMENTAL MANIFESTATION on earth. She says:

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had the form of a living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door, which separated the world from the Divine. As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that ‘the time has come', and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces. Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

Thus the truth is that the Supramental Consciousness is NOW on earth and definitely it is active. And if It has to establish Itself on earth and transform the Mankind, then It has to definitely chose some instruments. The Mother as stated that five persons knew of the Realisation on the day itself, i.e., on the 29th February 1956.

Again She said on 15 April 1972 :
The transition from man to the supramental being is accomplished through the overman. There may be a few overman - there are - who will actually make that transition. [Mother’s Agenda]

That was in 1972. Hence it will be proper to believe that there are a few persons now on earth, who are in the Overmind Consciousness, and the Work of the Supramental Consciousness is being carried through them. It cannot be that none else is there, or none else can be there, after Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, who is in Touch with the Supramental Consciousness. The followers of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have to have absolute faith in whatever They have said. Any doubt or disbelief will turn us insincere.

OOOOO

It is argued by someone that a table cannot stand on two legs and it needs three legs. Similarly, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are two legs of a table, and the table needs a third leg. And the third leg is someone who is regarded by some as the Third Avatar. To compare Sri Aurobindo with two legs of a table is really funny and it is an insult to Them. They have never told about this third leg. They have never told that a third Avatar is necessary or a third Avatar is to come to fulfill and accomplish their Work.

The Mother has said in 1972 about a few persons who will be in Overmind Consciousness. She would have told us about the Third Avatar if that would have been the Truth. Could She be ignorant about the coming of the Third Avatar?

I have earlier said about this in this my blog All Choice, which is quoted below :

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have never said anywhere that there would come a third Avatar, after Them, to complete Them. Of course, there will be others who will carry onward and complete The Work which They began. They will be Their instruments. Even there may be some Vibhutis, as described in the book The Mother.To bring in and add the Idea of Trinity and Trimurty and the references to Triguna and Tridosha in order to activate the Frozen Force of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, does not simply fit in the Philosophy and Teaching of Sri Aurobindo. His Teaching is complete and the most synthetic — it excludes nothing. Nothing is left there so that someone else will fill up the gap.
The Idea of Trinity etc was not new or unknown to Sri Aurobindo. According to Him, the Trinity is the Transcendental, the Cosmic and the Individual Divine.
If one still presses the idea of Trinity, I would say that The Mother has already answered the question. She said to Huta:Love. love and love as much as you can … the Lord, Sri Aurobindo and me. None of this love is wasted.
And one may still argue that The Mother referred to Sri Aurobindo by saying the words ‘the Lord’. But it is not so. There was a question asked to The Mother :
Mother, what is the difference between the Lord and Sri Aurobindo?The Mother says:
There is no essential difference, but the Lord is All and Sri Aurobindo is a part but Conscious of the Supreme Lord of whom He is an emanation.
Thus, those were the Ideas of Trinity Sri Aurobindo and The Mother had.

OOOOO

Let me refer to one more dangerous assumption. I am quoting what recently Alan Kazlev has written:
Add to that PNB's curious claim that her son, known as "the Fourth" (what happened to the Law of Three?) is the reincarnation of Sri Aurobindo (i am not joking). This seems to be an example of the danger, on encountering the great power of the Intermediate Zone, of grandiose opinions. And this is an even bigger reason why I do not consider PNB to be the sole and legitimate successor of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
The claim is not true and is against what the Mother has said:
Some words of the Mother after Sri Aurobindo's passing
Sri Aurobindo has given up his body in an act of supreme unselfishness, renouncing the realisation in his body to hasten the hour of the collective realisation. Surely if the earth were more responsive, this would not have been necessary.
When I asked him to resuscitate he clearly answered:“I have left this body purposely. I will not take it back. I shall manifest again in the first supramental body built in the supramental way.”
***** (Mother India, December 1967)
Thus , there is no possibility of Sri Aurobindo’s being re-incarnated in a human body.

OOOOO

A true follower of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo need not have to take recourse to mud slinging. If someone does so, as has been done by someone, as conveyed to me by my friend Tusar Mohapatra and by some other person through e-mail, I am not going to return the mud slinging.
Not also a true follower shall start beat his own drums.

I am on my Way, as are Tusar, Aju, Alan Kazlev, Mamata Dash and others enlisted in the e-mail. We are definitely on the Way inspired by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. We are not engaging ourselves in debates. That is never our primary work or method.

I know all these four instruments of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, whom I have named, and I am sure the Higher Consciousness is in touch with them and made them Its instruments. Whether or not these instruments are in touch with the Supramental Consciousness, partly or fully, is the concern of The Mother. Others need not be concerned about these instruments in a negative way. Whatever work of The Mother they are doing, it is Her concern. And when She is concerned, their beings are definitely in Touch and in Obedience, and others need not decry them.

The outer being of the instrument, sometimes, may not even be conscious of the Touch of the Higher Force, but their inner beings are surely conscious.

I am on my Way, along with a few others, and the Truth shall prevail.

Barin Chaki
01-06-2008

Thoughts and Aphorisms 11A

11. Immortality is not the survival of the mental personality after death, though that also is true, but the waking possession of the unborn and deathless Self of which body is only an instrument and a shadow.
(Thoughts and Aphorisms: Sri Aurobindo)

The human being has a body and a vital being, to be mastered and governed by a mental being. The vital being animates the physical being, and is the source of all passions and emotions and sentiments. But the mental being is able to fully control and govern the body only in rare cases — where the mental being is formed, organized and individualized, having a personality.

Every human being, as he is now, does not necessarily have a personality. In this connection, The Mother says: “In the great mass of human beings the mind is something fluid which has no organization of its own, and therefore it is not a personality. And as long as the mind is like that, fluid, unorganized, with no cohesive of its own and without personality, it cannot survive. ”

A fluid and unorganized mind can not then survive the death of the physical body. The mental being then is dissolved in the mental region, and the physical body gets dissolved in the physical substance.

What our mind generally is?

We may see what Sri Aurobindo says:
Our mind is a house haunted by the slain past,
Ideas soon mummified, ghosts of old truths,
God's spontaneities tied with formal strings
And packed into drawers of reason's trim bureau,
A grave of great lost opportunities,
Or an office for misuse of soul and life
And all the waste man makes of heaven's gifts
And all his squanderings of Nature's store,
A stage for the comedy of Ignorance.
[Savitri : Book II: Canto XIII]

But when there is a mental being with a personality, it can survive the death of the physical body and it can continue life after life, birth after birth.

Let us keep in mind that here the word personality has been used in a special sense — to have a personality, the mental being must have to stand erect without depending on the body and the vital being, with a full control over them.

As The Mother says, in the mental atmosphere on earth, there are independent mental personalities, who have continued their existence, independently, even after the physical existence, the body, is no more there. When the soul re-incarnates, the mental personality also re-incarnates, “carrying with it the memories of the previous lives.”

However, as Sri Aurobindo has stated, the continuity of the mental personality is not really what Immortality is, though it is an effect and an accompaniment of Immortality.

Immortality relates to the essential being of each individual human being, which is not different from the universal Self. To realize and live the conscious existence of that essential individual being, which has no beginning and no end, is what Immortality is.

Let us listen to the Call from Sri Aurobindo :
"Why camest thou to this dumb deathbound earth,
This ignorant life beneath indifferent skies
Tied like a sacrifice on the altar of Time,
O spirit, O immortal energy,
If 'twas to nurse grief in a helpless heart
Or with hard tearless eyes await thy doom?
Arise, O soul, and vanquish Time and Death."
[Savitri: Book VII: Canto II]

[Continued]
Barin Chaki
11-05-2008

Thoughts and Aphorisms 10B

My soul knows that it is immortal. But you take a dead body to pieces and cry triumphantly, “Where is your soul and where is your immortality?”
(Thoughts and Aphorisms: Sri Aurobindo)
[From continuation]

When we perceive Death, we question about the existence of soul and immortality. Doubt darkens our mind, and disbelief sets in.

One cannot find the Soul by dissecting the dead body. One cannot find the Soul through the senses or through emotions or passions or through the deduction and induction of logic and reason. One has to rise above the senses and the emotions and reason and ascend to the higher range of Consciousness.

Even, as we know, life is not there in a dead body — but we can conclude that there is life in a living body. Similarly, when the Soul departs, the body is dead, and the soul cannot be found there.

Through the tenets of the physical sciences, through the use of a purely physical and “scientific” consciousness, you cannot reach the Soul.

The Mother says:

So when you imagine that you can know the secrets of Nature and still remain in a purely physical consciousness, you are entirely deceived. And this habit of demanding concrete material proofs before accepting the reality of something is one of the most glaring effects of ignorance.

One has to rise above doubt and disbelief. To rise above doubt and ignorance and the sense and the ordinary physical consciousness — that is the Way.

OOOOO

According to Sri Aurobindo, the eternal Origin is the Pure Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sat-Chit-Ananda, whom we may call the Divine, the Supreme, the All-Existence, or in any other suitable name. And the Divine All-Existence is also involved and omnipresent in the vast material cosmos, which is but the Manifestation of All-Existence Himself. The Divine has become the Manifestation, but has remained “hidden” behind the actual phenomenon of things. Substance or Matter is the initial Form of this Manifestation.

In this Manifestation, the Divine has become the Many. Or rather, All-Existence has also manifested His individual aspect and has expressed Himself as the Many, through the manifold expressions of Life and Mind. Each living being has a Soul — to express the matter in the ordinary human language. But in Reality, each soul has or may have a living body, and he soul has remained “hidden” and taken the masks of Matter and Life and Mind.

Soul is, however, independent of Life and Matter and Mind. It may not have a body, and it may not also have any participation in the Manifestation, though that is to be the ultimate aim for the ultimate fulfilment.

A formless spirit became the soul of form.
All there was soul or made of sheer soul-stuff;
A sky of soul covered a deep soul-ground.
All here was known by a spiritual sense:
Thought was not there but a knowledge near and one
Seized on all things by a moved identity,
A sympathy of self with other selves,
The touch of consciousness on consciousness
And being's look on being with inmost gaze
And heart laid bare to heart without walls of speech
And the unanimity of seeing minds
In myriad forms luminous with the one God.
Life was not there, but an impassioned force,
Finer than fineness, deeper than the deeps,
Felt as a subtle and spiritual power,
A quivering out from soul to answering soul,
A mystic movement, a close influence,
A free and happy and intense approach
Of being to being with no screen or check,
Without which life and love could never have been.
Body was not there, for bodies were needed not,
The soul itself was its own deathless form
And met at once the touch of other souls
Close, blissful, concrete, wonderfully true.
[Savitri : Book II: Canto XIV]

OOOOO

The Soul is eternally an individual expression of the Divine — the One is also the Many: the Many are also the One. The Manifestation of the living beings and the human beings has been a matter of Evolution on earth. And in course of Evolution, through the Supramental Manifestation, the inherent immortality of the Soul — of the Psychic Being, as Sri Aurobindo puts it — will be expressed through and in the Supramental Body also.

All earth shall be the Spirit's manifest home,
Hidden no more by the body and the life,
Hidden no more by the mind's ignorance;
An unerring Hand shall shape event and act.
The Spirit's eyes shall look through Nature's eyes,
The Spirit's force shall occupy Nature's force.
This world shall be God's visible garden-house,
The earth shall be a field and camp of God,
Man shall forget consent to mortality
And his embodied frail impermanence.
ooooo
All then shall change, a magic order come
Overtopping this mechanical universe.
A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal's world.
On Nature's luminous tops, on the Spirit's ground,
The superman shall reign as king of life,
Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven,
And lead towards God and truth man's ignorant heart
And lift towards godhead his mortality.
[Savitri : Book XI: Canto I]

Barin Chaki
09-05-2005
[Published in barin chaki's blog in Sulekha on 18-04-2008.]

Some Viewpoints

There has been some correspondence between "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com and Robert E. Wilkinson robtw@sprynet.com of which copies were sent to me by Tusar. The mails are several and I have gone though them all.

I also find a message from M Alan Kazlev in this regard, which I quote below:
hi Tusar
I do find the students of PNB (Thea) to be sincere and decent people. It is just that, like you, I cannot agree with their belief that PNB is an avatar.
best wishes
alan

I fully agree with Alan.

I am quoting below the latest message from Roberts to Tusar:
My Dear Tusar,
People such as who have come to Sri Aurobindo’s work without a direct understanding forged in the fires of a yogic tapasya believe only in the IDEA of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. You have not yet attained the lived experience of their message. And because of this limitation, you have unknowingly entombed this greatest spiritual work of the Age in a religious dogma which you and others preside over as the final authorities of their message. This is not a Supra-mental realization but a MENTAL one. When what I write challenges your dogmatic mental beliefs, you respond with an indignant snarl, arrogantly proclaiming my words to be “dishonest concoctions, spiritual distortions and contagious curios.” What unbelievable hypocrisy. You have not read the first word of any of Thea’s books yet you dismiss her as an irrelevant interloper. This is beyond arrogance, it is simply dishonest.
Everything you have written here about philosophy and ontology is an old mental view based on BEING and its correspondences. By this approach you attempt to FREEZE Sri and the Mother as the eternal symbols of Purusha and Prakriti, with no movement or continuity but this is NOT Sri Aurobindo’s message. He wrote:
"The significance of our existence here determines our destiny... If there is a Being that is becoming, a Reality of existence that is unrolling itself in Time, what that being, that reality secretly is what we have to become, and so to become is our life's significance." The Life Divine, Chapter 28. - Sri Aurobindo
In order to move beyond this frozen duality of BEING into a dynamic reality of existence and Destiny, a THIRD principle is required to add synthesis and Becoming. This is a fundamental principal of Vedic knowledge. It may be called “the Law of Three” for it expresses an irreducible truth that at the heart of the creation lies a tripartite harmony of energy or “seed” from which the entire cosmos evolves. The three principle gods of India, the “Trimurti” of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are representative of this essential truth and reflect its supreme importance. The ancient tradition of Ayurveda honors this essential harmony of Three as the “Tridoshas” (the three energies), the primary factors of the human body that govern our health. In the Bhagavad Gita this occult knowledge is described as the “Three Gunas” and is extolled by Krishna as the basis of an Ultimate Wisdom. In Christianity this eternal formula is simply known as the “Trinity of God.” In more modern times this sublime principle was appropriated by the philosopher Hegel to describe his dialectical process of Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis.
The ‘Law of Three’ permeates myth, legend and religious forms because it is an irreducible archetype. For this reason, among many others, I find it stunningly naive that you and many of the followers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have glibly dismissed Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet (Thea) and her prodigious body of Supramental knowledge as irrelevant to their epochal yoga. Was it not Sri Aurobindo himself who wrote?
“While the Divine is One, it is also manifold... It is at once Transcendental, Cosmic and Individual. By knowing the eternal unity of these three powers of the eternal manifestation, God, the Cosmos and the Individual self, and their intimate necessity to each other, we come to understand existence itself.…” Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga
Until this error is corrected, we will continue the religious worship of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother with no real understanding of their message and this work will languish for another forty years.
Perhaps you will remember Tusar, that the Mother herself said that the leadership of this work would be based upon REALIZATION, and KNOWLEDGE. And how is this leadership to arise if people who have been given the sacred responsibility of broadcasting Sri Aurobindo’s message to the world use it to indulge their own intellectual hypocrisy? The Hour of God is upon us now as never before,
“…woe to them whose ears are sealed to the call… and thrice woe to them who are strong and ready yet waste the force and misuse the moment, for them is irreparable loss or great destruction.”
Perhaps you should take this to heart.
In the service of Truth, Robert

OOOOO

On perusal of the message of Robert to Tusar, I find that there has been attack on Tusar that he arrogantly proclaimed the words of Robert to be “dishonest concoctions, spiritual distortions and contagious curios.” Robert declares that Tusar’s words are an indignant snarl and arrogant proclamation. So, Robert has tried to bat in the same fashion that he thinks to be the fashion of Tusar’s batting. If Tusar’s presentation does not seem to him to be Supramental, Robert’s claims are also not Supramental. The Supramental does not at all have the necessity of similar actions and reactions, of trying to prove Itself before others that It is present. When the Sun rises, darkness recedes. One does not search out the Sun by lighting a torch or a lamp.

Robert has rightly quoted the following :
"The significance of our existence here determines our destiny... If there is a Being that is becoming, a Reality of existence that is unrolling itself in Time, what that being, that reality secretly is what we have to become, and so to become is our life's significance." [Life Divine : Sri Aurobindo]

If there is a Being, there is a becoming. This is known by all who are in touch with the Truth Sri Aurobindo represents. This Becoming is an Involution and Evolution of the Being, from the Being.

There is a reference to a frozen duality of BEING : obviously, that is a reference to the dual godhead of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Are They frozen, without a third principle? To say that would really be too much of indignation and disdain. If The Mother and Sri Aurobindo are frozen, who else can be there to lead the onward becoming towards the New World? Has anyone the audacity to say that someone else is there to liberate Them from the frozenness?

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have never said anywhere that there would come a third Avatar, after Them, to complete Them. Of course, there will be others who will carry onward and complete The Work which They began. They will be Their instruments. Even there may be some Vibhutis, as described in the book The Mother.

To bring in and add the Idea of Trinity and Trimurty and the references to Triguna and Tridosha in order to activate the Frozen Force of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, does not simply fit in the Philosophy and Teaching of Sri Aurobindo. His Teaching is complete and the most synthetic — it excludes nothing. Nothing is left there so that someone else will fill up the gap.

The Idea of Trinity etc was not new or unknown to Sri Aurobindo. According to Him, the Trinity is the Transcendental, the Cosmic and the Individual Divine.

If one still presses the idea of Trinity, I would say that The Mother has already answered the question. She said to Huta:

Love. love and love as much as you can … the Lord, Sri Aurobindo and me. None of this love is wasted.

And one may still argue that The Mother referred to Sri Aurobindo by saying the words ‘the Lord’. But it is not so. There was a question asked to The Mother :

Mother, what is the difference between the Lord and Sri Aurobindo?

The Mother says:

There is no essential difference, but the Lord is All and Sri Aurobindo is a part but Conscious of the Supreme Lord of whom He is an emanation.

Thus, those were the Ideas of Trinity Sri Aurobindo and The Mother had.

Conclusively, I say that I have a great regard for Thea [PNB] as a great spiritual person and have read some of her writings, and all her followers and students have every right to regard her in the way as they think best, for she is a Guru for them. However, I do not regard her to be an Avatar.

And I have no intention to question the faith and conviction of Roberts, who is on his Way.

Barindranath Chaki
03-05-2008

Thoughts and Aphorisms 10A

10. My soul knows that it is immortal. But you take a dead body to pieces and cry triumphantly, “Where is your soul and where is your immortality?”

(Thoughts and Aphorisms: Sri Aurobindo)

The vision and experience of soul alone can lead us to Truth.
And we have seen earlier what the soul is. The Supreme is the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, as I have earlier told. He exists. He is eternal Existence, and seems even to go beyond and become Non-Existence, beyond the understanding of any manifested existence. As Sri Aurobindo has rendered from Taittiriyopanishad, “In the beginning all this was the Non-being. It was thence that Being was born.” He has further stated: “But, still, there is the absolute withdrawal, there is the Non-being. Out of the Non-Being, says the ancient Scripture, Being appeared.” [The Life Divine: Reality Omnipresent]

The possibility of Non-Being may lead one to reason that the ultimate reality is, therefore, a state where there is no manifestation, no universe, and ultimate truth leads one to Nihil, Nirvana. The question arises, as Sri Aurobindo puts it, “… does not the Non-Being, at least, as primal state and sole constant reality, negate and reject all possibility of a real universe?” And this may lead to the confirmation of the stand of certain schools of thought that Nirvana or a similar solution is the correct and only Way.

Sri Aurobindo has also answered this question. He says: “Non-being is only a word.” He says that the concepts of an absolute non-existence and of the infinite Self of Being are both the ideative formations of Mind. He says further: “We erect a fiction of nothingness, in order to overpass, by the method of total exclusion, all that we can know and consciously are.”
Thus, Existence is the Ultimate truth — Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

In the Universal mode, He is the Creator of the Universes, and is one with them and also above them. He is the Manifestation, and also He is the One who manifests. The entire Manifestation is He. It is His Leela, His Play. He is both beyond it, and within it, and in each atom, each living being.

And Individuality is also an aspect of the Manifestation that Existence-Consciousness has become. The Supreme Consciousness has manifested Himself in and through all the individual beings. The Existence-Consciousness became many, and each of the many is a Soul. The Soul is the individual aspect of Manifestation. A soul, which is termed the atman in Sanskrit, is a part and portion of the Supreme Consciousness, the Divine — a part who is one with the Whole, who can be the Whole also, who can unite with the Whole.

The Soul is originally and can become, through Realization, One with the Supreme Consciousness. It is thus, in truth, immortal and eternal, beyond Death. The body, which is subject to death, is an evolutionary condition and is subject to Transformation and change.

[Continued]
Barin Chaki
28-04-2008
Written earlier and published in Sulekha (http://www.barinchaki.sulekha.com/) on
04-04-2008.

Thoughts and Aphorisms 9

9. What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

(Thoughts and Aphorisms: SriAurobindo)

The vision and experience of soul is alone the true and real knowledge. Whatever is other than what the soul has seen and experienced is only an appearance. It is something that appears, a phenomenon, a semblance, a purely external and superficial aspect of a thing — as opposed to something as it is in itself, independent of the mental reasoning and judgment and discrimination. That which is not as per the vision or experience of soul is a prejudice, which may be an opinion, idea or judgment formed without sufficient knowledge or examination of the facts, a sort of a preconceived preference or idea .

Thus, according to Sri Aurobindo, whatever is seen or understood by the ordinary mind is not real knowledge. Truth is seen and experienced by soul alone. Soul alone knows Truth, the ordinary mind or the vital consciousness does not know.

What is soul, as defined by Sri Aurobindo?

The Ultimate Reality is the Infinite and One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, whom we name as the Brahman, the Divine, and God etc. He has three aspects, the Transcendental, the Universal and the Individual.

In the Transcendental mode, He is above all manifestation, above all the Universes, all the worlds. He is the Supreme Divine, the One, Indivisible, Infinite, Pure, and bears the eternal consciousness in Him, above all Time and Space.
The Supreme Divine is the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, as I have already told. He is, He is Existence, eternal existence, and can even become Non-Existence, beyond the apprehension of any manifested existence.

In the Universal mode, He is one with the Universes, though also above them and is their Creator. He is the Manifestation; He is the One who manifests. It is His Will that is manifested. The entire Manifestation is He, and it is His Leela, Play. He is both beyond it, and within it, and in each atom, each living being.

And He is also the Individual, Personal God. All the Avatars are but His Individual Manifestations. The Supreme is with His Creative Force, the Mahashakti, whom we call the Divine Mother. They are One and Indivisible, and yet They are Two in Manifestation and even above Manifestation. It is the Will of the Supreme that created the Manifestation. In words, it may be said that he thought, in the Upanishadic language: “Ekoham, bahu syama.” [I am alone, and shall become many.] The Existence-Consciousness became many, countlessly many, and each of the many is a Soul. A soul, or the atman in Sanskrit, is a part and portion of the Supreme Consciousness, the Divine — a part who is one with the Whole, who can be the Whole also, who can unite with the Whole.

In all living beings, there is a soul, who resides in the background, not easily known or realized. The soul presides over the living being, but somewhat inactively, in the background. The Soul does not generally participate in the Evolution. In the Evolution from the animals to the human beings there has been no active role of the Soul, though the Divine Will was ever active. However, in Man, there is an active part or aspect of the Soul, which is termed by Sri Aurobindo as the Psychic Being, which participates in the Evolution of Man, in the onward journey of the human being on the Path of Evolution into the higher beings, the supramental beings, towards the Manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness, the next phase of the Evolution. The Psychic is not present in any other living beings.

Sri Aurobindo adopted the term “psychic being” for the following reason: “The word soul is very vaguely used in English- as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That is why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.”

The Presence of the psychic being in man is the Promise that one day a new and higher Divine race shall emerge on earth and shall form the crown of the Evolution, shall be the apex of the Manifestation. The psychic being is a special term and it should not be confused with the other uses of the word in general. In spite of the Presence of the psychic being, human beings are in general not yet conscious of his Goal, of his higher possibilities, of the Higher Existence on earth. But there are persons, who are becoming conscious, maybe in an imperfect way, incomplete way, but they are being conscious, growing towards the New Becoming.

OOOOO

Truth is revealed, Knowledge is revealed, only when the Psychic is unveiled. Though Soul or the Psychic is the most essential element in Man, it is mostly veiled and closed and dormant in the majority of human beings. But it has to be unveiled. The Soul has to come to the front. And then only Truth will be seen and experienced.

The Mother was asked the question : ‘How do we know what the soul sees?’ She gave us the answer : “Obviously there is only one solution : to become conscious of one’s soul.” In other words, the psychic being has to be unveiled.

Prior to unveiling of the psychic being, whatever we think we know, whatever we have learnt and whatever has come to us through observation, reasoning or intellectual speculation or understanding, all that is but a relative knowledge. When we have the question in our mind as to whether we have known our soul, that very question indicates that we have not yet become conscious of our soul, we have not yet realized the soul. When we are conscious of our soul, as The Mother has said, we have no more any such question in our mind. When we have the realization of the soul, when we have the psychic experience, we positively know it and we do not ask any question about it.

The Mother says :
And that experience can neither be counterfeited nor imagined; you cannot pretend to be in contact with your soul — it is something which cannot be contrived or counterfeited. When the soul governs your life, you know it with absolute certainty and no longer ask any questions.

Until and unless we have known the soul, and until and unless the soul or the psychic being takes up the governance of our life and existence and consciousness, we cannot really proceed further in life, and we continue to grope in darkness or twilight, as the case may be.

We have seen what the vital being [life] and the mental being [mind] can give us : half-knowledge, uncertainties, constant debates, chaos and disorder and indiscipline, differences and conflicts and wars, enmities and jealousy and violence. We have so many theories and speculations and ways — but the Knowledge is not there, the Way is lost.

If the New Race has to be here, the first requirement is that some persons must have the psychic unveiling.

Barin Chaki
18-04-2008
Written earlier and published in Sulekha (http://www.barinchaki.sulekha.com/) on 1-11-2007.

Thoughts and Aphorisms 8

8. Either do not give the name of knowledge to your beliefs only and of error, ignorance or charlatanism to the beliefs of others; or do not rail at the dogmas of the sects and their intolerance.

(Thoughts and Aphorisms: Sri Aurobindo)

All that we believe in the name of our religions or sects, we regard that as Knowledge. What others believe, we think that to be an error or a dogma. Sri Aurobindo points out to us that this is wrong. We need not or should not criticize or find fault with others’ beliefs or religious faiths. This very act of ours, the human beings, the practice of mocking at and criticizing others’ beliefs, finding fault with others’ beliefs, have led to conflicts and wars between religions.
We should ever be in search of Truth, if we want to go beyond these conflicts and beyond these beliefs. We should be directly in touch of Truth, NOT by reason and logic and rational philosophy, NOT through beliefs only, but through direct spiritual knowledge, through spiritual wisdom, though Intuition and Identity, as we have discussed earlier.
As long as we are limited in the level of mind, of reason and beliefs, we shall have to stop being dogmatic and calling others dogmatic.
However, insofar as the religions are concerned, we shall have step beyond them, NOT by criticizing them, but simply by passing ahead in the Adventure of Consciousness. Our known continents are there. But we shall have to take up Adventures to find out new continents, within our inner Consciousness. We shall have to go beyond ourselves to reach and enter the Higher Planes of Consciousness, in search of Truth, to go beyond the mental and intellectual conflict and wars.

OOOOO

In Sri Aurobindo’s style of expression, one can say: Religion was the helper; religion is the bar. Religion helped men, in the earlier stages, in mastering the inborn beast in him, to channelize one’s physical, vital and even mental energy, one’s life-force towards a creative and constructive aim, the aim of knowing and reaching the Ultimate Truth, the Supreme and the Source and Origin of all beings and the Universe, to surpass the Ego and selfishness and all darkness and ignorance, to be in search of the Supreme.

Sri Aurobindo has said:
“Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer; Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult-egoism stand in the way.”

Evolution — to transcend beyond the narrow and limited religious ideas, practices and dogmas that stand against the Truth. Religions have helped us in raising ourselves beyond the animal consciousness, beyond the lower physical and vital consciousness and the limited and unenlightened consciousness of the cave-man. Religions, as we understand and practise them, the backgrounds they have with them, and the differences and battles that have originated from them, cannot lead us to the supramental manifestation and transformation. We need not stamp ourselves with the narrowness and limitations that we have given to these beliefs and creeds and dogmas that we have made of what we have termed as religions.

Sri Aurobindo has further said:
“All religions have saved a number of souls, but none yet has been able to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but a sustained all comprehending effort at spiritual self-evolution.”

Each sect and creed and religion regard their belief to be the only Truth, whereas other beliefs are stated to be errors and dogmas. The Mother has said :
“The dogmas of sects and intolerance of religions come from the fact that sects and religions consider their beliefs alone to be knowledge, and beliefs of others to be error, ignorance and charlatanism.”

The Mother has further said:
“In a general and almost absolute way anything that shocks you in other people is the very thing you carry in yourself in a more or less veiled, more or less hidden form, though perhaps in a slightly different guise which allows you to delude yourself. And what in you seems to be inoffensive enough, becomes monstrous as soon as you see it in yourself.”

OOOOO

The Mother said on April 29, 1953:
“Otherwise [if people sought for the truth], there would be no religion : there would be masters and disciples, people with a higher teaching and an exceptional experience. That would be fine. But as soon as the master is gone, what happens is that the knowledge he gave is turned into a religion. Rigid dogmas are established, religious rules are born, and all you can do is bow before the Table of the Law…. Luckily for all of you [children here], you have no religion. And I hope you will never have any, because that is closing the door on progress.”

Let us see what Sri Aurobindo has further told us in this connection :
“How much stupidity and hatred men succeed in packing up decorously and labeling ‘Religion’!
The quarrels or religious sects are like the disputing of pots, which shall be alone allowed to hold the immortalizing nectar. Let them dispute, but the thing for us is to get at the nectar in whatever pot and attain immortality.”

Sri Aurobindo said in connection with the Ashram : “The Ashram is not a religious association. Those who are here come from all religions and some are of no religion. There is no creed or set of dogmas, no governing religious body; there are only the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and certain psychological practices of concentration and meditation, etc. for the enlarging of the consciousness, receptivity to the Truth, mastery over the desires, the discovery of the divine self and consciousness concealed within each human being, a higher evolution of the nature.”

He has also said: “We are not a party or a church or religion.”

Sri Aurobindo has also stated : “I may say that it is far from my purpose to propagate any religion, new or old.”

He has stated further: “Churches and creeds have, for example, stood violently in the way of philosophy and science, burned a Giordano Bruno, imprisoned a Galileo, and so generally mis-conducted themselves in this matter that philosophy and science had in self-defense to turn upon Religion and rend her to pieces in order to get a free field for their legitimate development.”

The Mother stated, in connection with Ashram:“Here we do not have religion.”

OOOOO

The Mother’s had answered to a question related to religion:
“Q. Sweet Mother, what is the difference between Yoga and religion?
The Mother: Ah! My child. It is as though you were asking me the difference between a dog and cat.”

The Mother had further stated on religion:
( A note to a visiting Western woman who wanted to teach in a “religious school.”)
One must not confuse a religious teaching with a spiritual teaching. Religious teaching belongs to the past and arrests progress, while spiritual teaching is the teaching of the future. It enlightens the consciousness and prepares it for the future realization.
Spiritual teaching is above religions and strives towards a total truth. It teaches us to come into direct contact with the Divine.

OOOOO

The Mother has said that the Age of Religions is over. With reference to Auroville, She has specifically said that “Auroville is for those who want to live a life essentially divine but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.”

Placed below the oft-quoted declaration of the Mother relating to Auroville:

Auroville and the Religions

We want the Truth.
For most men, it is what they want that they label as truth.
The Aurovillians must want the Truth whatever it may be.
Auroville is for those who want to live a life essentially divine
but who renounce all religions whether they be ancient, modern, new or future.
It is only in experience that there can be knowledge of the Truth.
No one ought to speak of the Divine unless he has had experience of the Divine.
Get experience of the Divine, and then alone will you have the right to speak of it.
The objective study of religions will be a part of
the historical study of the development of human consciousness.
Religions make up part of the history of mankind and it is in this guise
that they will be studied at Auroville - not as beliefs to which one ought
or ought not to adhere, but as part of a process in the development
of human consciousness which should lead man towards his superior realization.

PROGRAMME

Research through experience of the
Supreme Truth
A life divine
But
NO RELIGIONS
Our research will not be a search effected by mystic means. It is in life.

OOOOO

Whatever is true of Auroville, in The Mother’s view, is true with relation to the whole world. The same Truth of ‘No Religions’ is applicable to all sincere followers of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Whatever may be the Religions theoretically, we the human beings have made them means of difference and hatred and violent conflicts and battles, instaed of being the means of reaching the Truth.

Barin Chaki
04-04-2008

[Published earlier in Sulekha on 11-10-2007.]

A Response

Dear friend,

One thing is certain here, we will conquer death and go beyond it in the New World, where the Supramental will be and is being manifested.

The hope is that the human consciousness, in the Next Evolution, will have the constant dwelling in the Divine Consciousness. The Divine will fulfill the Vedic prayer: Lead me from Untruth to Truth, Lead me from Darkness to Light, Lead me from Death to Immortality.

The Divine will fulfill the Vedic prayer: Lead me from Untruth to Truth, Lead me from Darkness to Light, Lead me from Death to Immortality.



[This was my humble response to my friend in Orkut, LIGHT CANDLES INSTEAD OF CURSING DARKNESS, quoted to me from Swami Sivananda, while giving some drops of light :

One thing is certain here, everybody dies;One thing is certain here, life is uncertain;One thing is certain here, God-realisationAlone will make you immortal and happy.Therefore attain God-realisation nowThrough purity, devotion and meditation.-Swami Sivananda ]

Barin Chaki
18-02-2008