{"id":2668,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2668"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:06","slug":"40-social-duties-and-the-divine-vol-28-letters-on-yoga-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/28-letters-on-yoga-i\/40-social-duties-and-the-divine-vol-28-letters-on-yoga-i","title":{"rendered":"-40_Social Duties and the Divine.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\tChapter Four <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tSocial Duties and the Divine
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tFamily, Society, Country and the Divine
\n\t<\/a> <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Family, society, country are a larger ego
\n\t\u2014they are not the
\nDivine. One can work for them and say that one is working for the Divine only if one is conscious of the Divine Adesh to
\nact for that purpose or of the Divine Force working within one. Otherwise it is only an idea of the mind identifying country etc.
\nwith the Divine. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I suppose each man makes or tries to make his own organisation of life out of the mass of possibilities the forces present to him.
\nSelf (physical self) and family are the building most make \u2014to earn, to create a family and maintain it, perhaps to get some
\nposition in the present means of life one chooses, in business, the profession etc., etc. Country or humanity are usually added
\nto that by a minority. A few take up some ideal and follow it as the mainstay of their life. It is only the very religious who try to
\nmake God the centre of their life \u2014that too rather imperfectly, except for a few. None of these things are secure or certain, even
\nthe last being certain only if it is followed with an absoluteness which only a few are willing to give. The life of the Ignorance
\nis a play of forces through which man seeks his way and all depends on his growth through experience to the point at which
\nhe can grow out of it into something else. That something else is in fact a new consciousness
\n\u2014whether a new consciousness
\nbeyond the earthly life or a new consciousness within it. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I don’t remember the context; but I suppose he [the writer of<\/i> Yogic Sadhan] means that when one has to escape from the
\nlower dharma, one has often to break it so as to arrive at a   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

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\n

larger one. E.g. social duties, paying debts, looking after family, helping to serve your country, etc. etc. The man who turns to
\nthe spiritual life, has to leave all that behind him often and he is reproached by lots of people for his Adharma. But if he does not
\ndo this Adharma, he is bound for ever to the lower life \u2014for there is always some duty there to be done
\n\u2014and cannot take
\nup the spiritual dharma or can do it only when he is old and his faculties impaired. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Idealising is a pastime of the mind
\n\t\u2014except for the few who
\nare passionately determined to make the ideal real. Buddha is in Nirvana and his wife and child are there too perhaps, so it
\nis easy to praise his spiritual greatness and courage \u2014but for living people with living relatives a similar action is monstrous.
\nThey ought to be satisfied with praising Buddha and take care not to follow his example. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

The tendency you speak of, to leave the family and social life for
\nthe spiritual life, has been traditional in India for the last 2000 years and more
\n\t\u2014chiefly among men, it touches only a very
\nsmall number of women. It must be remembered that Indian social life has subordinated almost entirely the individual to
\nthe family. Men and women do not marry according to their free will; their marriages are mostly arranged for them while
\nthey are still children. Not only so, but the mould of society has been long of an almost iron fixity putting each individual
\nin his place and expecting him to conform to it. You speak of issues and a courageous solution, but in this life there are no
\nproblems and issues and no call for a solution \u2014a courageous solution is only possible where there is freedom of the personal
\nwill; but where the only solution (if one remains in this life) is submission to the family will, there can be nothing of that kind.
\nIt is a secure life and can be happy if one accommodates oneself to it and has no unusual aspirations beyond it or is fortunate
\nin one’s environment; but it has no remedy for or escape from   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n

\n

incompatibilities or any kind of individual frustration; it leaves little room for initiative or free movement or any individual
\nism. The only outlet for the individual is his inner spiritual or religious life and the recognised escape is the abandonment of <\/i>  the samsara<\/i>, the family life, by some kind of Sannyasa. The
\nSannyasi, the Vaishnava Vairagi or the Brahmachari are free; they are dead to the family and can live according to the dictates
\nof the inner spirit. Only if they enter into an order or asram, they have to abide by the rules of the order, but that is their own
\nchoice, not a responsibility which has been laid on them without their choice. Society recognised this door of escape from itself;
\nreligion sanctioned the idea that distaste for the social or worldly life was a legitimate ground for taking up that of the recluse or
\nreligious wanderer. But this was mainly for men; women, except in old times among the Buddhists who had their convents and in
\nlater times among the Vaishnavas, had little chance of such an escape unless a very strong spiritual impulse drove them which
\nwould take no denial. As for the wife and children left behind by the Sannyasi, there was little difficulty, for the joint family
\nwas there to take up or rather to continue their maintenance. <\/p>\n

At present what has happened is that the old framework
\nremains, but modern ideas have brought a condition of inadaptation, of unrest, the old family system is breaking up and
\nwomen are seeking in more numbers the same freedom of escape as men have always had in the past. That would account for the
\ncases you have come across \u2014but I don’t think the number of such cases can be as yet at all considerable, it is quite a new phenomenon; the admission of women to Asrams is itself a novelty. The extreme unhappiness of a mental and vital growth which
\ndoes not fit in with the surroundings, of marriages imposed that are unsuitable and where there is no meeting-point between
\nhusband and wife, of an environment hostile and intolerant of one’s inner life and on the other hand the innate tendency of
\nthe Indian mind to seek a refuge in the spiritual or religious escape will sufficiently account for the new development. If society wants to prevent it, it must itself change. As to individuals, each case must be judged on its own merits; there is too much
\n  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n

 complexity in the problem and too much variation of nature, position, motives for a general rule. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tPhilanthropy <\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Whatever one does must be from the highest spontaneous inner
\nurge in oneself. So long as the urge is towards philanthropy, Gandhism etc., he has to follow that
\n\t\u2014to follow the way of
\nspiritual endeavour he must have the need, the distinct call in himself \u2014not merely a mental recognition but the soul’s call. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Perhaps you could write (in Bengali)1 something to him about
\nthe true object of the Yoga \u2014especially on two points: <\/p>\n

(1) The object is not philanthropy but to find the Divine,
\nto enter into the Divine Consciousness and find one’s true being (which is not the ego) in the Divine. (2) The
\nripus <\/i>cannot be
\nconquered by damana<\/i>; even if it succeeds to some extent, it only keeps them down but does not destroy them, often compression
\nonly increases their force. It is by purification through the Divine Consciousness entering into the egoistic nature and changing it
\nthat the thing can be done. <\/p>\n

As for accepting him, it depends on his capacity to open
\nhimself to the Influence and receive it. If he likes to try, he can, but he will not succeed unless he is entirely in earnest. There is
\nsomething in him that can turn to the Divine, but there is also much in his nature that may resist. It is only if he gives himself
\nfrom deep within and is absolutely persevering in the Way that he can succeed. <\/p>\n

Give him some idea of the central process of the Yoga, especially opening to the working of the Divine Power and rejection
\nof all that is of the lower nature. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tHumanitarianism
\n<\/a>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The idea of usefulness to humanity is the old confusion due <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

  
\n\t1 Sri Aurobindo wrote this reply to his secretary, Nolini Kanta Gupta, who replied to<\/i>
\nthe correspondent. \u2014Ed.<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\n

\n

to secondhand ideas imported from the West. Obviously, to be “useful” to humanity there is no need of Yoga; everyone who
\nleads the human life is useful to humanity in one way or another. <\/p>\n

Yoga is directed towards God, not towards man. If a divine
\nsupramental consciousness and power can be brought down and established in the material world, that obviously would mean an
\nimmense change for the earth including humanity and its life. But the effect on humanity would only be one result of the
\nchange; it cannot be the object of the sadhana. The object of the sadhana can only be to live in the divine consciousness and to
\nmanifest it in life. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

As
\nto the extract about Vivekananda, the point I make there\u00b2<\/font> does not seem to me humanitarian. You will see that I emphasise
\nthere the last sentences of the passage quoted from Vivekananda, not the words about God the poor and sinner and criminal. The point is about the Divine in the World, the All, sarva-bhū<\/font>tā<\/font>ni<\/i>
\nof the Gita. That is not merely humanity, still less only the poor or the wicked; surely even the rich or the good are part of the
\nAll and those also who are neither good nor bad nor rich nor poor. Nor is there any question (I mean in my own remarks) of
\n <\/i> philanthropic service; so neither daridra <\/i>nor sevā<\/font> <\/i>is the point.
\nI had formerly not the humanitarian but the humanity view \u2014and something of it may have stuck to my expressions in the
\nArya. <\/i>But I had already altered my viewpoint from the “Our Yoga for the sake of humanity” to “Our Yoga for the sake of
\nthe Divine”. The Divine includes not only the supracosmic but the cosmic and the individual
\n\u2014not only Nirvana or the Beyond
\nbut Life and the All. It is that I stress everywhere. But I shall keep the extracts for a day or two and see what there is, if anything,
\nthat smacks too much of a too narrow humanistic standpoint. I stop here for today. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\u00b2<\/font> In <\/i>The Synthesis of Yoga Sri Aurobindo wrote: “Often, we see this desire of personal<\/i>
\nsalvation overcome by another attraction which also belongs to the higher turn of our<\/i>
\nnature and which indicates the essential character of the action the liberated soul<\/i>
\n  
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

Today a Kanchenjunga of correspondence has fallen on my head, so I could not write about humanity and its progress. Were not
\nthe later views of Lowes Dickinson greyed over by the sickly cast of a disappointed idealism? I have not myself an exaggerated
\nrespect for humanity and what it is \u2014but to say that there has been no progress is as much an exaggerated pessimism as the
\nrapturous hallelujahs of the nineteenth century to a progressive humanity were an exaggerated optimism. <\/p>\n

I shall manage to read through the chapter you sent me, though how I manage to find time for these things is a standing
\nmiracle and a signal proof of a Divine Providence. <\/p>\n

Yes, the “progress” you are making is of the genuine kind
\n\t\u2014the signs are recognisable. And after all the best way to make humanity progress is to move on oneself
\n\t\u2014that may sound either individualistic or egoistic, but it isn’t; it is only common sense.
\n<\/p>\n

Yad
\n\tyad
\n\tā<\/font>carati ś<\/font>reṣ<\/font>ṭ<\/font>has tat tad evetaro janaḥ<\/font>..\u00b3<\/font><\/i> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

It is no use entertaining these feelings. One has to see what
\nthe world is without becoming bitter \u2014for the bitterness comes from one’s own ego and its disappointed expectations. If one
\nwants the victory of the Divine, one must achieve it in oneself first. <\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n

\n\tmust pursue. . . . It is that which inspires a remarkable passage in a letter of Swami<\/font><\/i>
\nVivekananda. `I have lost all wish for my salvation,’ wrote the great Vedantin, `may I<\/i>
\nbe born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the<\/i>
\nonly God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum-total of all souls,
\n\t\u2014and above<\/i>
\nall, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all<\/i>
\nspecies is the special object of my worship. He who is the high and low, the saint and<\/i>
\nthe sinner, the god and the worm, Him worship, the visible, the knowable, the real, the<\/i>
\nomnipresent; break all other idols. In whom there is neither past life nor future birth,<\/i>
\nnor death nor going nor coming, in whom we always have been and always will be one,<\/i>
\nHim worship; break all other idols.’<\/i> <\/font>
\n<\/p>\n

\n\t“The last two sentences contain indeed the whole gist of the matter.”
\n\t<\/font> <\/i>The Synthesis of Yoga,
\nvolume 23 of <\/i>THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, pp. 269 \u00ad 70.<\/i>
\n\t\u00b3<\/font> “Whatsoever the Best doeth, that the lower kind of man puts into practice.” Gita<\/i>
\n3.21. Sri Aurobindo’s translation. <\/i>Essays on the Gita, volume 19 of
\n<\/i>THE COMPLETE
\nWORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO, p. 135.<\/i>  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n


\nSocial and Political Activism
\n<\/a>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All this insistence upon action is absurd if one has not the light
\nby which to act. Yoga must include life and not exclude it does not mean that we are bound to accept life as it is with all its
\nstumbling ignorance and misery and the obscure confusion of human will and reason and impulse and instinct which it ex
\npresses. The advocates of action think that by human intellect and energy making an always new rush everything can be put
\nright; the present state of the world after a development of the intellect and a stupendous output of energy for which there is no
\nhistorical parallel is a signal proof of the illusion under which they labour. Yoga takes the stand that it is only by a change of
\nconsciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered; from within outward is indeed the rule. But within does not mean
\nsome quarter inch behind the surface. One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then
\ncan life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and
\nimperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some
\ndiscovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the godhead within and without us. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I had never a very great confidence in X<\/i>‘s yoga-turn getting the
\nbetter of his activism \u2014he has two strong ties that prevent it, ambition and need to act and lead in the vital and in the mind
\na mental idealism \u2014these two things are the great fosterers of illusion. The spiritual path needs a certain amount of realism
\n\t\u2014one has to see the real value of the things that are \u2014which is very little, except as steps in evolution. Then one can either
\nfollow the spiritual static path of rest and release or the spiritual dynamic path of a greater truth to be brought down into life.
\nBut otherwise \u2014  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

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Chapter Four   Social Duties and the Divine   Family, Society, Country and the Divine   Family, society, country are a larger ego \u2014they are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-28-letters-on-yoga-i","wpcat-53-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}