Thursday, May 10, 2007

Religion as a crutch to cover laziness or other inabilities

Dear Subscriber,

Welcome to our special anniversary issue of the Gnostic Centre on the 28th of March. On this occasion, I would like to thank you for your continued support to the journal. This anniversay is all the more special because it coincides with the auspicious event of the Enshrinement of Sri Aurobindo’s sacred Relics at the Gnostic Centre. I believe that the coming of the Relics marks the establishment of Sri Aurobindo’s Presence in the physical body of our Work.

It is in the fitness of things that the theme of this issue of the Ray is ‘In Search of Perfection’. I recall the Mother telling someone that the word Perfection could be used in place of the word Divine:
“For those who are afraid of a word:
This is what we mean by “Divine”: all the knowledge we have to acquire, all the power we have to obtain, all the love we have to become, all the perfection we have to achieve, all the harmonious and progressive poise we have to manifest in light and joy, all the new and unknown splendours that have to be realised.”
1
At another time she noted that it does not matter if one is a materialist or an agnostic, for aspiration for perfection in works is true spirituality. I find that there are people in everyday life, professed materialists, who exhibit a spiritual attitude in their lives, far more than the devout religious man who often uses God/religion as a crutch to cover his laziness or other inabilities.

Perhaps a new definition of spirituality is emerging in the 21st Century, and I believe that these two poles of perfect material creation and conscious spiritual aspiration will in this century coalesce to create out of their synthesis a New Creation.

- Ameeta Mehra

1 The Mother, Collected Works of The Mother, vol.14, p.17 (7 September 1952), Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
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