Equating intellectual totalism with political or capitalistic totalitarianism

The Religious, the Spiritual and the Secular - A Review by Debashish Banerji by Debashish on Thu 19 Oct 2006 01:21 AM PDT Permanent Link

Undoubtedly, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother believe that their teaching leads to the Truth, but they do not expect all human beings to believe this, nor do they encourage their disciples to convince others of it. Without being overt, Minor directs some rational skepticism at Sri Aurobindo's Truth-claim as being based on no authority other than personal experience and the disciples' consequent need to accept his word for it.

Though Sri Aurobindo's Truth-claim does proceed on the basis of his personal experience, it also justifies itself through a hermeneutic analysis based on Veda, Vedanta and Bhagavad Gita. This again, is nothing new in the Indian spiritual context, Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhavacharya, Chaitanya and numerous others establishing their claims for Truth based on these same double foundations of experience and textual interpretation.

As for Sri Aurobindo's inclusivism, it does not obliterate its "others", but as Minor himself notes, is not averse to criticize what it considers their failings and limitations as seen from its own standpoint. Thus, they are not erased in his realization, and are free to hold their self-identifying differences. At the same time, Sri Aurobindo does show how these alternate traditions may be extrapolated into his own integral Truth, not losing themselves or being pre-empted in the process as in Advaita. The absolutism of Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, encompassing Being and Becoming and all the historical approaches to a realization of Reality can undoubtedly be called a grand form of inclusivism.

Contemporary western thinking, operating in the wake of Hitler and Stalin and under the shadow of the Enlightenment's self-fulfilling prophecy of capitalistic globalization, is particularly fearful of and averse to grand narratives, equating intellectual totalism with political or capitalistic totalitarianism. But if the seeking for a total rational description of Reality characterizes the trajectory of western metaphysics, it is no less present in Indian philosophical systems either, with the difference, that the Indian systems rely not merely on the mind's plausible speculations on the nature of Reality, but on the power of a spiritual or supramental experience and its reproducibility. This is a critical distinction for two reasons:

(1) The Truth-claim of a mental model is not experientially fulfilling and is much more likely to seek its fulfillment in the "outside world" through a conversion or erasure of otherness, particularly if there is a teleology attached to it; while a "spiritual" or "supramental" Truth-claim directs its fulfillment "within", through individual practices aimed at reproducing universal subjective experiences.

(2) Whereas a mental rationality is constrained to view logical opposites as irreconcilable, a "supramental rationality" is under no compulsion to do so, appealing to an experience that transcends mind.

Thus, in a quotation of Minor from Sri Aurobindo, "... the Absolute, obviously, finds no difficulty in world-manifestation and no difficulty either in a simultaneous transcendence of world-manifestation; the difficulty exists only for our mental limitations which prevent us from grasping the supramental rationality of the co-existence of the infinite and finite or seizing the nodus of the unconditioned with the conditioned. For our intellectual rationality these are opposites; for the absolute reason they are interrelated and not essentially conflicting expressions of one and the same reality." [Minor, 26 quote from SABCL XVIII, 377]

Thus, Sri Aurobindo's "thought" and practice need to be located in an Indian philosophical tradition, whose epistemological bases are different from those of the West. It is a failure to recognize this or to give adequate credence to it that is the source of Minor's fear and skepticism and results in a perpetuation of a form of intellectual neo-colonialism.

Minor's consideration of the Mother and her founding of Auroville follows the same argument as that in the case of Neo-Advaita and Sri Aurobindo's claim for Truth. Minor points to the Mother's more trenchant distinction between "religion" and "spirituality" and her explicit disavowal of "religion" from Auroville. He goes on to document the formation of the township of Auroville, under the Mother's guidance and authority in 1968, and the important part played by the Sri Aurobindo Society in the fund-raising, organization and obtainment of Indian government and UNESCO support for the city.

Throughout this documentation, Minor brings to light the ambiguities relating to the categories of "religious", "spiritual" and "secular" that encircle all discussions relating to the city. He makes note of the Mother's claim for the basis of the township being "the Truth", by which she means the vision of Reality taught by Sri Aurobindo and herself. He explores the presentation of the idea to the Indian government and UNESCO and their resultant understandings. Here, he shows the strategic presentation of the project to the Government by the Sri Aurobindo Society, underplaying the specifics of Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's world-view and the location of Auroville within its teleology and amplifying the "secular" aspects of world harmony and environmental awareness. It also played on the "cultural hero" status of Sri Aurobindo in the "national" consciousness.

The Indian state, on its part, supported it for these reasons. It also satisfied its national agenda of playing an important role in UNESCO as a promoter of international understanding and cultural harmony, and hence, the government sought and obtained UNESCO support for the project. Minor points out that the Mother was well aware of the fact that the support of the Indian government and UNESCO had been given for the wrong reasons, promoting "tolerance", not "integration" [Minor, 107].

He quotes the Mother's message to UNESCO on February 1, 1972, as aimed at correcting this shortcoming by making a direct reference to the supramental: "Auroville is meant to hasten the advent of the supramental Reality upon earth. The help of all those who find the world not as it ought to be is welcome. Each one must know if he wants to associate with an old world ready for death, or to work for a new and better world preparing to be born." [Minor, 107 quoting from the Mother, Collected Works XIII, 221]