Integral Yoga is an irreversible call that make you drop everything

From Paulette paulette@auroville.org.in to "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 29 September 2010 15:17 subject Re: Sri Aurobindo Ashram: “Paradise on Earth” mailed-by auroville.org.in

Tusar, Can you kindly post the following, also attached, in the Savitri Era Open Forum? Thanks
Paulette

Sri Aurobindo Ashram: “Paradise on Earth”

Dry argumentations leaving no space for the heart, for the soul, for one’s cry for the Mother. I feel a chill reading the insentient comment of someone, in Auroville since only a few years, exhorting us not to bother about the fratricidal war raging at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Someone who does not have the history we old Aurovilians have – eventually, commenced at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, decades ago, as in my case. As if our past, our memories, our longings, our feelings could be chopped off, and by this act our wings as well. Our models too, predestined souls who had joined the Masters long time ago and whose sadhana was fashioned directly by Them… If I could never quit Auroville it is because I carry forever in my heart the presence of self-effaced sadhaks of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, of whom often I did not even know the name… What name and fame are to the adoring soul who works unassumingly, unpretentiously, having gathered in oneself the four varnas? What power is? And prestige?

There is no need to speak: everything is within. Who can define the Eternal, give classes about the Ineffable? We are, the One. The yearning and ecstasy of pure psychic beings is all one needs, the fragrance of flowers growing by humbly serving the Mother, tenderly attended by her. There is but she, and one’s daily offering, year in and year out, bowing at her feet. This was for me the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, which Nolini Kanta Gupta had called “paradise on earth”. As long as I bathed in the atmosphere of the early, great sadhaks this was my language too, the abode of my soul, my home.

Nolini, who was to be hanged along with Aurobindo and Barin Ghose and the nationalist youth… Read the first hundred pages of “Reminiscences” and you’ll know who Nolini Kanta Gupta is! Nolini, whom Sri Aurobindo saw as his most advanced disciple, the third one to follow on the supramental path! When the Mother left the body the entire Ashram gathered around him, Nolini-da!

1973, I had just arrived at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. An unknown woman of a regal beauty (Purna, I did not know she was the Mother’s granddaughter) walks straight to me and two hours later I end up in Nolini’s room, escorted by her. He asks what I have read of Sri Aurobindo, The Doctrine of Passive Resistance I reply; one article was made an exhibit in the Alipore Conspiracy Case, I go on talking… I cross Nolini’s eyes… and see the Infinite… Enwrapped by his majestic silence, never again was I able to speak to Nolini. At five in the afternoon he used to do pradakshina around the samadhi. I waited there, with a flower for him, daily; we looked into each other’s eyes without exchanging a word, and I knew that their Path is real, Their Ashram is real, Their people are real. Never did I feel as an orphaned child, never did I look for surrogate gurus, spiritual chaperons or others. As in the Scriptures, initiation without touching… The highest satsang is silence, as in the teaching of Dakshinamurti, the guru of gurus… In the utmost silence of one’s soul the psychic threads the Path: the one and only guide, progressively merging into the Mother!

Nor was Nolini the only honey bee. Other great sadhaks were still alive and they too were my teachers, in the subtlest way: by their silent example. In their luminous presence I could tangibly feel Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Indra Sen, professor of psychology at the University of Delhi… When he started visiting the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, in the thirties, Sen was the foremost Jungian in India. He is the one who, even before joining the Ashram, introduced the concept of integral psychology, with Sri Aurobindo’s blessings. The Master had asked Nolini-da to read him every single page the professor wrote; but when finally Sen settled in Pondy, in the forties, for the first ten years the Mother made him water plants, and afterwards look after the Ashram Press and its machines… And there was Birendra, freshly graduated at Calcutta University and proud of it, whom the Mother made sweep and count bananas for the next sixteen years… Kishor Gandhi, whom the Mother had appointed as the sole editor of Sri Aurobindo’s Letters on Yoga: he lived in a tiny room that he never gave up for a better one, because from there he could glimpse the Mother’s room… Fiery-eyes Parichan, in charge of the Ashram gardens; weeds grew all around the yard outside his house and at the end of the day his elegant white clothes were stained with earth: he had no time for his person or the place where he lived… How could Parichan-da be my Sanskrit teacher, when in front of him I was unable to utter a word, feeling like an ant in front of the Himalayas? In all those years only once he addressed me directly, “To be a mother you must be a yogini” he told me.

On the Mother’s request Rishabchand had written a biography on Sri Aurobindo nationalist; also on request he wrote a fantastic compendium on Integral yoga for the purpose of introducing the Path to the American reader. The quality of his books is such that decades later still they are being reprinted, but… his day-to-day job was to look after the carpentry department! By the way, isn’t this the place where Nirod the doctor commenced his yogic career and where, when doubting himself, he wished to return? Rishabchand had given up his family and most successful business in Calcutta to live in a few square meters room whose walls were padded with books. I entered that room every afternoon to type on Rishabchand’s typewriter notes from his biography on Sri Aurobindo. The great one was no more but I felt his towering presence in every object… Rishabchand had a friend, Purod-da, a small man with a child face and enchanting smiling eyes; he too was a sweeper. Both men used to meet every evening for their daily reading of Savitri; when this reached a peak Rishabchand looked at his sweeper friend: he was gloriously asleep, after a full day work for the Mother…

Integral Yoga is an irreversible call that make you drop everything, wherever you are, whatever you own, whatever you have achieved, to come and serve the Mother: watering plants, working with machines, counting bananas, sweeping the Ashram compound or elsewhere, looking after the carpentry workshop, just anything she tells you to do. The Italian countess Marta Avogadro joined the Ashram to live in one room and work at the binding section of the Ashram Press. Gluing had become her daylong occupation. “After wasting all my life playing bridge and canasta, only now I am learning to live” the grand lady told me. This is what a sadhak of Integral Yoga is. And there is no amount of books or classes, no external ‘teachers’ or ‘counselors’, no lecturers and no priests who can make of you one. No one can give you clothes if you can’t make your own, warned the Mother.

My only reading, those years, were Sri Aurobindo’s “Last Poems”, the Mother’s “Prayers and Meditations”, and what I read on the face of those sadhaks: loyalty, humility, surrender, joy, love, empathy, compassion, ineffable peace. Has the split from that world grown irreversible? More than anything else it is our vacuum that is responsible for the no-man-land we are, in Auroville, and for the suicidal war uprooting all that the Sri Aurobindo Ashram stands for. The great sadhaks and scholars are no more, there is no one to replace them. When the few of us, initiated into that world, will be gone as well, who will tell our children and grandchildren what the Sri Aurobindo Ashram was, and the Auroville of the pioneers? How real they were? And that this is the future?

Everything is within, without any need for external crutches. Utterly alone: the Divine – and oneself. Eternal, immortal, Jivatman!

Long live the Sri Aurobindo Ashram!

Paulette

Cosmic mischief

From Jitendra Sharma aurofrance@gmail.com to "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 29 September 2010 00:22 subject It's not my post! [Written vs. oral history]

Dear Tusar-bhai, 

                  Obviously, there is some mischief here in my name. This post does not interest me. Moreover, I always publish my posts directly in my name, not through any X, Y, Z. Jitendra Sharma

From cosmic human to "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 29 September 2010 16:44 subject Re: It's not my post!

Dear Tusar-ji, 

Before anything else, thank you for posting my message on your website. 

About Jitendra Sharma's message, I honestly don't see any mischief if he forwarded this message to some other people and nor do I see any mischief whatsoever if I in turn forward it to you. 

I occasionally receive some e-mail or the other with Jitendra Sharma's name appearing on it from many of the e-mailing lists that are devoted and dedicated at the Service of Our Masters. Jitendra Sharma also directly posts on your website regularly, so I don't see any mischief or any reason for suspecting some thing like this at all. 

I suppose that the message that I have indirectly received from the SAICE list might have contained Jitendra Sharma's name as a proof of authenticity of the source. I do not see any foul play at all. I can imagine that in these times of tension everybody is very suspicious of one another. And that is why I prefer remaining anonymous. 

I hope that this clarifies my stand point and pov. Best Regards, CH

From Jitendra Sharma aurofrance@gmail.com to "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 29 September 2010 17:59 subject Re: It's not my post!

Dear CH,

             I had never forwarded this message to any person. Even a serious investigation by the crime branch will prove it. How has my name figured in it? Jitendra Sharma

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust bows to the public dema...": 

Raghu please take YOUR medication REGULARLY. You forgot to take the morning dose. You have admitted yourself the asininities you are capable of when you miss the dose. Do you know when you make the most sense: when you are silent. You have as much alma-mater in your brain as you have hair on your head.
You might have to be confined to a mental asylum. And stop posting as anonymous. Posted by Anonymous to Savitri Era Open Forum at 11:21 PM, September 28, 2010

Dirty Minds have right to vote

From dr raghu to tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 28 September 2010 14:15 subject Re: Pl. Post

Dear Mr. Mohapatra,

Pl. post without displaying my e-mail address. Thanks!

Dr. Raghu

Dirty Minds Make Dirty Projections!

The anti-Heehs gang suffers from severe challenges in reading comprehension in English. One of their claims is Peter engages in a “cardinal slur” and makes “lurid” sexual suggestions about the relationship between Aurobindo and Mirra. I will show that this is false and a classic case of "dirty minds" making dirty projections on Peter’s account. 

The passage these "dirty minds" like to quote as evidence of Peter’s “cardinal slur” and “lurid” suggestions occurs in the context of his account of dinner meetings and talks held at the house of Paul Richard (ex-husband of Mirra, assuming that their marriage was formally or legally dissolved) and other meetings between Aurobindo and Mirra in Pondicherry around 1920-21.

The "dirty minds" allege that Peter describes, or suggests, or insinuates that there was something stealthy and sexually improper going on between Aurobindo and Mirra when they were sometimes alone together during this period. Is this true?

Here is a part of the passage on p. 326 of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo:

“At some of those meetings, people noticed a surprising development. After dinner those present tended to cluster in two groups: Aurobindo and Mirra on one side, Paul and the others on another. Sometimes when they were alone, Mirra took Aurobindo’s hand in hers. One evening when Nolini found them thus together, Mirra quickly drew her hand away.”

The "dirty minds" seize on the last two sentences of this passage as proof of Peter’s “mischievous intent”, “cardinal slur”, and “lurid suggestions” on sexual impropriety between Mirra and Aurobindo. But this is silly, asinine, and a product of sexually repressed minds culturally conditioned to read something sexual into the most innocuous behavior of men and women toward each other.

Mirra could have taken Aurobindo’s hand in hers to emphasize something, or to seek assurance, and/or to express affection. Note that, if the description is true, it was Mirra, and not Aurobindo, who quickly withdrew her hand when Nolini found them together. This suggests that Aurobindo did not see anything improper in the fact that Mirra held his hands. Mirra may have withdrawn her hand out of consideration for the Victorian puritanical sensibilities of Indians concerning women and men in those times and which still persists at large in India to this day.

Peter goes on to write on p.326 that:

“On another occasion, Suresh entered Aurobindo’s room and found Mirra kneeling before him in an attitude of surrender. Sensing the visitor, she at once stood up. There was nothing furtive about these encounters, but they did strike observers as unusual. Neither Mirra nor Aurobindo were in the habit of expressing their emotions openly.”

Again, only a dirty and sexually repressed mind would read something "lurid" into this description of the behavior of a fully-clothed disciple paying respect to her fully-clothed master.The key sentences which dispel the malicious allegations of “mischievous intent”, “cardinal slur”, and “lurid suggestions” in Peter's account are the ones which follow:

“There was nothing furtive about these encounters, but they did strike observers as unusual. Neither Mirra nor Aurobindo were in the habit of expressing their emotions openly.”

The key word in the first sentence is “furtive”. The word means “Characterized by stealth; surreptitious. 2. Expressive of hidden motives or purposes; shifty”. Peter is clearly denying that any of these elements characterized the meetings of Mirra and Aurobindo! He also explains what made those behaviors unusual for those observers: “Neither Mirra nor Aurobindo were in the habit of expressing their emotions openly.” 

And these are simply the ordinary and healthy emotions of devotion and affection and not the stealthy sexual ones the dirty minds are projecting on Peter’s account of some innocuous features of the early meetings between Aurobindo and Mirra! 

So much for Peter's infamous "cardinal slur", "mischievous intent", and "lurid suggestions" on the relation between Aurobindo and Mirra! 

Tusar N Mohapatra has left a new comment on your post "Das Gupta is a captive of Heehs camp":

Manoj Das Gupta is the latest to join the anti-book bandwagon, and you may address your request to him for an authorized explanation. [TNM] Posted to Savitri Era at 12:54 PM, September 27, 2010

Slice of life of SAICE teachers

From Jitendra Sharma aurofrance@gmail.com to "Tusar N. Mohapatra" tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date 24 September 2010 11:00 subject

SAICE Teachers

While all U.G.C. Professors of Colleges earn around Rs.70,000 per month and all service benefits including a good pension for all life, senior Teachers of SAICE are neither given any remuneration nor are properly respected. Many of these sincere devotees continue to suffer silently. Should things continue like this? Dr. Jitendra Sharma

Peter's book faithfully reflects Sri Aurobindo's view of Savitri

Dear Mr. Mohapatra,

Pl. post without displaying my e-mail address. Thanks! Dr. Raghu

Falsehood Comes Braying With Claims of Truth!

A memorable line in Aurobindo's Savitri suggests that  falsehood comes laughing with the (apparent) eyes of truth. I suppose that it sometimes also comes braying with claims of truth!

Here are Peter's remarks on Savitri in his Lives of Sri Aurobindo:

"Savitri...would become his most extensive literary creation." (p. 299)

"The brief narrative based upon the Satyavan-Savitri story became, through successive revisions, a vast symbolic account of his yoga. But the poem was not just a record of his experiences; it was also a ladder that helped him reach higher levels of poetic expression." (p. 377-378)

"...the epic Savitri which he considered his most important literary project." (p. 389)

One would have to take leave of one's precious Buddhi, on the precarious assumption that one possessed it to start with, to set up a false opposition between the literary and the spiritual. 

Savitri is both a literary and a spiritual project or creation. That was Aurobindo's view of it. And Peter's book faithfully reflects Aurobindo's view of Savitri. 

20 September 2010 14:46 re: Pl. Post

I feel a movement of integration descending

Richard Lipschutz Posted September 11, 2010 at 12:49 pm | Permalink

The fundamental goal of Integral Yoga, our global fundamentalism as it were, is Saccidananda assuming its true form in another mode: our bodies, lives, minds, souls evolving, right in this good red physical world, a delightful conscious existence inner and outer, individual, global. The opposite of what we now see! We all have a supramental friend, “the human aspiration” (which is also the name of the first chapter in The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo). Somewhere in our depths we all share this aspiration toward God, Light, Freedom, Bliss, Immortality, to which however every facet of our human life seems richly opposed in striking polar fashion. And this friend tells us: “The greater the apparent disparateness of the materials offered or the apparent disorder, even to irreconcilable opposition, of the elements that have to be utilised, the stronger is the spur, and it drives towards a more subtle and puissant order than can normally be the result of a less difficult endeavor.”

Our friend goes on: “Not only, then, is the upward impulse of man towards the accordance of yet higher opposites rational in itself, but it is the only logical completion of a rule and an effort that seem to be a fundamental method of Nature and the very sense of her universal strivings.” We know we are all impossibilities needing to be solved and even in our personal lives we have to face and incorporate our own opposition to our deepest strivings; so if I want to be courageous I must face down that shrinking coward in my own self, and moreover I have all the present direct intervention and guidance I need to do so.

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry is a collection of disparate representative types, some more apparently disparate than others; they are all there for a reason, to be reconciled in a fundamental way with themselves and each other and the greater movement of evolution. It’s in no way a religious institution or a place where all are cut in single mold to peacefully agree one with the others; it is, instead, a furnace for transformation. Peter Heehs is from what I see and most inwardly feel a sadhak, a spiritual practitioner, one of these impossibilities to be solved that we all are, who has in his outward work deeply researched Sri Aurobindo as one biographer, producing one of the several biographies available so far. Others are free and if so moved then even bound to produce what they feel in themselves are truer representations. Meanwhile if in outward physical consciousness we can’t understand we can begin to look a few fractions of an inch deeper within and at least try to tolerate each other.

To attempt to change the order and structure of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry based on the religious persecution of this man is itself a sacrilege in any true sense of the word. To drag the internal affairs of the Ashram, its constitution and the substance of its structure, before a politicized public court constitutes the most exemplary unbelief in the fundamental basis of the practice of transformation that is the only reason the Sri Aurobindo Ashram exists.

Due perhaps to a call for a dynamic collective meditation that has taken place this morning of September 11, 2010, I feel a movement of integration descending and spreading out to manage this situation whatever outward form it goes on take. I’ve never been to the Ashram but say all this from the perspective of innermost identification. I don’t know about you, but the way I see it this anniversary of the birth of global fundamentalism is an interior flute-call to return to the revolutionary fundamentals that roundly promise to reconcile even the deepest oppositions within ourselves. Rick Lipschutz

Comment posted by RY Deshpande:  Re: An Open Letter...The Jhumur Episode and The Registrar’s Non-Performance

This is what Jhumur the she-frog presently is, living in a she-well named self-importance, narcissism, hauteur, pride, vanity, or by whatever similar name one may like to call it. She is afflicted with a pretty familiar complex, something which should not have happened having grown up in the Ashram since her childhood, for having had personal contact with the Mother during the tremendous 1950s. But hard is it to change human nature. One can come in physical contact with the Mother for long years and yet remain stupid in several ways. …
The supercilious manner in which she handled or was prompted to handle the present issue is only indicative of immaturity, if not childishness; or else, and most probably, it simply was ugly contrivance. A nobler approach would have been to advise the student to leave the class, and inform the teacher that the student was leaving his class. The matter would have rested there, a thing which routinely happens in the Centre of Education. But the mischief was played by the predictable devil that is there in The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. The test for remaining in contact with the Mother lies in it. That is also the fight. The real malaise is present in it, and many of those “early students” have lent themselves to it—a most unfortunate thing. ~ RYD 20 September 2010

Online research on the lives and works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

from     overman foundation overmanfoundation@gmail.com date     8 September 2010 11:29 subject   From Overman Foundation: Inauguration of the Online Research Facility at Overman Foundation

Dear Friends,

         On Saturday, 4^th September 2010, Overman Foundation has launched its online research facility for researchers and scholars who are desirous to work on the lives and works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The inauguration was done by Mrs. Sanghamitra Banerjee, eminent film actress of Bengali film industry. 

        For a detailed report of the event, please click on the following link: https://overmanfoundation.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/inauguration-of-the-online-research-facility-at-overman-foundation/ 

        A catalogue containing the details of the research materials available at Overman Foundation would be provided to the interested researchers upon request and according to their requirements, the materials (documents or photographs) would be dispatched to them either through e-mail or by courier. In return a nominal sum of money would be charged as fees. With best regards, 

Kushal Sinha, Secretary, Overman Foundation.

Barun Subudhi, New York or Bhubaneshwar?

On 26 August 2010 23:41, Barun Subudhi barun.subudhi@gmail.com wrote: To:

Mr. Tusar N. Mohapatra, Esteemed President, Savitri Era Party

From: Mr. Barun Subudhi, Bhima Tanki Housing Colony, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha

Respected Sir,

I see you are very active on Internet, and great upholder of Sri Aurobindo and Ashram. […] Soldier of Light and India, Barun Subudhi

P.S.: I am new to EMAIL, so I aksed my friend to type draft and send earlier. Now have got new EMAIL address. Please acknowledge this EMAIL and post on your blog please. Because otherwise your credibility will become questionable. Trusting and thanks to you.

From Barun Subudhi jesuisbarun@gmail.com to tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date           8 September 2010 17:38 subject      Second request: Please remove my IP information from your site

Please acknowledge receipt of the e-mail below and kindly remove my location, IP address and carrier info from the post. 

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 15:36 PM, Barun Subudhi jesuisbarun@gmail.com  wrote:

Hello Tusar,

Kindly remove the following reference "Optimum Online (69.118.250.219) White Plains, New York, United States, 50 returning visits" from the post that you have created. I had chosen to post anonymously in response to other anonymous comments and a fabricated posting. I hope you will respect my choice of doing so since you are clearly not doing the same thing in the case of other anonymous posters. I hope to keep participating on your site once you extend this courtesy to me.
Thanking you in advance

from     Barun Subudhi jesuisbarun@gmail.com to    tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date           8 September 2010 18:08

subject Re: Second request: Please remove my IP information from your site

I am not sure why you are publicly posting these private e-mails that I am sending you, unless this is your idea of some kind of a practical joke. Well, at the very least I can rely upon you to be completely unreliable. 

from     Barun Subudhi jesuisbarun@gmail.com to    tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date           8 September 2010 18:34

You do realize of course that by playing these little games you are detracting from the seriousness of your own site. In any case I am happy to add masala to your sizzle. So here is some more for your posting pleasure :-)

from     Barun Subudhi jesuisbarun@gmail.com to    tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date           8 September 2010 18:52

I don't see my last e-mail on the public forum yet. I hope I did not scare you with my last message. ;-)

from     Barun Subudhi jesuisbarun@gmail.com to   tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com date           8 September 2010 19:20

It seems I may have. I hereby take leave of your majesty, Lord Director and President of the Savitri Era Public. Thank you for the loving embarrass. 

Barun quack vs. Barun whack

Optimum Online (69.118.250.219) White Plains, New York, United States, 50 returning visits - Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (1925-2009)":

On the one hand you write...

"as a student who interacted with him from close quarters it became quite apparent that this mental ability was rather limited to some mental gymnastics and acrobatics"

and on the other...

"This comment is not an attempt to denigrate Jugal-da, particularly when he has deceased and is no more. But it is an attempt to put Mr. Anurag Banerjee’s remarks in the proper perspective."

Well you have managed to denigrate him quite effectively. And as if to add salt to the wounds, you follow up your naked hypocrisy with unbridled arrogance by claiming that YOUR perspective is the "proper" perspective. What are you, the certified gossip columnist of the Ashram? It is really shameful of you to attempt this kind of character-assassination of someone who is no more physically, just because he happens to be one of the earliest opponents of PH and his folks. The pro-PH crowd continues to prove that for it nothing is sacred particularly when indulging in mud-slinging of the "petty personal talk" kind, whether about the living or the departed. This is not surprising in the least. If the Master Himself is not to be spared his disciples cannot expect to be treated any better. Posted by Anonymous to Savitri Era Open Forum at 7:12 AM, September 07, 2010

Barun has left a new comment on your post "Office bearers of the Sri Aurobindo Society must r...": 

This fellow is supposedly new to e-mail and is yet an avid reader of blogs?? Give me a break. It looks like we need to whack some rationalists over the head with a hammer in order to get their reason to sputter back to life, so that they can exercise it to distinguish between fact and fiction. It is clear that the mischief-mongers behind the Barun persona want, in their own words, to make sure that the "credibility will not become questionable" and therefore they send this piece of misleading propoganda from a newly minted e-mail address with the pseudonym conveniently contained in it. What a joke! But as is evident from the responses criticizing this fictitious scarecrow, the tactic will work with those who want to cling to their blind-belief that they are fighting mindless fundamentalists. But there is no reason for the mischief to stop with the post. Some of the anonymous criticisms of Barun here are probably from the true Baruns themselves. What Mephistophelian craftiness! Posted by Barun to Savitri Era Open Forum at 5:56 AM, September 07, 2010

Man is not the pinnacle of Nature's evolutionary cycle

Inception and the subconscious Times of India Jui Pagedar, Sep 6, 2010

Hollywood director Christopher Nolan has stirred the creative world and enthralled fantasy-loving cine buffs by mixing the psychologists' old muse —dream reading — with a high-tech, special effects bonanza called ` Inception.' 

He has understandably made some compromises with the plot — car-chase, shootouts, killing et al — to keep the audience engaged while dealing with a complex subject and a mental game which could otherwise have easily gotten swallowed in psycho-technical mumbo-jumbo. While western audiences marvel at this " James Bond meets Matrix" tale, very few are perhaps aware that Sri Aurobindo, the renowned mystic and spiritual master had spent considerable years through his Integral Yoga, probing what he called the `subconscient' human mind and came up with some interesting insights on universal consciousness as a whole. 

Sri Aurobindo discovered, for example, that there are several realms of consciousness beyond the physical world we live in, and that these planes of consciousness are in fact the other worlds that are as real as we take our own world to be. When one sleeps, he said, the subconscient mind is freed from the shackles of the mind that operates in the physical world, travelling across those other worlds soaking in experiences, both good and bad, that are needed for further consciousness evolution of the individual in the dream state. Our skepticism or ignorance notwithstanding, these "other worlds" not only coexist with our physical world but they also impinge on it in myriad ways.

According to Sri Aurobindo these other worlds are stacked in a spiral of lower and higher levels of consciousness. We have good dreams or nightmares, depending on where our subconscient mind chooses to travel in the labyrinthine spiral, with each level having several sublevels. Without our being aware, we draw upon these worlds for some of the vilest, crudest or most noble and sublime ideas that eventually shape our known world. It isn't surprising therefore that for a Jesus who comes to redeem our world we are also visited by others who wish to subvert and destroy it.

Sri Aurobindo believed -- through his own experience of yoga spanning over 40 years -- that through regular practice one can raise one's consciousness to various higher levels until one reaches what he called the supra-mental level, the pinnacle of evolution. (He never took others' word for any kind of truth, and insisted on testing it through self-experience). Sri Aurobindo made another profound revelation that unlike what scientists tell us, man is not the pinnacle of Nature's evolutionary cycle. Human beings are transitional beings. We will undergo transformation and reach our ultimate evolution level when we reach the highest plane of consciousness. However, we will have to delve deep into our subconscient mind and begin rising through the spiral consciousness to reach the pinnacle.

Sri Aurobindo's spiritual endeavor was not, however, aimed at his own personal salvation. He wanted to share his experience with others and inspire them to follow this path so that it would lead to a spiritual revolution in us and usher in lasting peace. He didn't accept the old spiritual belief that one could reach moksha only if one quit this so-called wretched world and ascend to a heaven above.
"It is here on this earth that we can create heaven and find release in our own lifetime," he said. The writer follows Guru Siyag Siddha Yoga system. juipagedar@gmail.com website: www.the-comforter.org Read more: Inception and the subconscious - Speaking Tree - Spirituality - Life & Style - The Times of India

Tao Te Ching from Larval Subjects

The conclusion that follows is thus that Tao is strictly immanent to world or nature. Tao is not something outside of, beyond, above, or transcendent to world, but rather is indwelling in world. Consequently, if Tao is strictly immanent to the world, if it is not outside the world, we cannot think of Tao as the mother of all things as something from which things emanate as in the case of the relationship between God and his creatures in many theologies. Rather, Tao would have to be being itself producing beings through beings. Tao would not be other than those beings, but rather would be indwelling within those beings themselves.

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (1925-2009)

                                             Jugal-da: In Memoriam 

                                                       By Anurag  Banerjee

                                                       (I)

With the passing of Jugal Kishore Mukherjee whom we lovingly and respectfully addressed as Jugal-da on Tuesday, 15 December 2009, the Aurobindonian community has lost one of its most learned scholars. An intellectual par excellence, he was one of those few who not only studied the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother but also lived in them. He had achieved a rare distinction among the Aurobindonian scholars of his generation so much so that the emptiness created by his demise can never be filled up. He was like a mobile encyclopaedia who could point out most effortlessly which sentence was taken from which volume of the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother including the page number and paragraph. I’ve experienced it myself and therefore I know.

      Jugal-da was one of those few sadhaks who never uttered a single word about his inner spiritual realizations and experiences. He was one of the most sincere practitioners of the Integral Yoga; he had the least interest to display the vast ocean knowledge he possessed but even a very brief interaction with him could prove what a brilliant brain he had. But what was even more interesting and impressive was his style of answering the queries of the seekers of the Path and explaining to them the concept of the Integral Yoga and its various features. I had the good fortune—rather a privilege—of interacting with him two and half years ago and till date I’ve not been able to come out of that mesmerizing spell. I will come to it a little later.

      About Jugal-da’s early life I knew nothing before I met him and that knowledge too was quite limited. All I knew that he, after completing his post-graduation studies in Science (his special paper was Nuclear Physics) from Calcutta University, joined the Ashram in August 1949 at the age of twenty-four (his year of birth being 1925) and that he was given the charge of organizing the Higher Course in the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education by the Mother herself. He was the head of the Higher Course section which is located at ‘Knowledge’, a beautiful sea-facing building situated next to the main office of Sri Aurobindo Society. My regular visits to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram enabled me to learn more about him. Recently I came across an article on Jugal-da’s life written by R. Ranganath and published in the journal Śraddhā. I am taking the liberty of quoting at length from this article.

      ‘Jugal Kishore Mukherjee… was born in a remote village in Bengal. His father passed away when he was only an infant in his mother’s arms. His mother, reduced to very difficult circumstances, somehow managed to raise Jugalda to boyhood with often one sparse meal a day. Jugalda’s brilliant intellect was noticed by the village school teacher and he was helped and referred to a better school some distance away from his own village. His mother, ever willing to sacrifice her all for the sake of her son, somehow managed to support him in order to enable him to pursue his studies. He landed in Calcutta for his college education and came in contact with the Sri Aurobindo Pathamandir in College Street, an important centre for the dissemination of Sri Aurobindo’s teachings. Studying often under street lights, he managed to complete college. He was lucky enough to have the great Meghnath Saha as his professor.

       ‘He never forgot his mother’s advice, dinned into his ears from infancy: “Remember, my son, for those who have no one in this harsh world, there is always God, the Universal ever-present Friend, who never fails.” Guided by his mother and beaten into tough mettle by the vicissitudes of a life of extreme poverty, he developed an irreversible inner life, and it was only natural that when only 24 years old, without pursuing further studies, Jugalda came and settled in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1949. Hence he was blessed with the Grace of having had Sri Aurobindo’s Darshan for two years.’ (Śraddhā, February 2010, pp. 182-183)

      Here I must pause and narrate an incident about Jugal-da’s mother which I had heard from Krishna-di (Krishna Chakravarty of the Central Office, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry). Bairam-da, who is associated with the cremation service, had once gone to Jugal-da’s house. Jugal-da’s aged mother was living at that time. Seeing Bairam-da and being aware of the nature of service he normally rendered, she said: “Ektu taratari ele!” (meaning, “you’ve come a bit early!” implying she is yet to die.)

      In the initial days of his arrival, Jugal-da was assigned work in the Publication Department of the Ashram which was then headed by Prithwi Singh Nahar. The nature of work assigned to him had no relation with the academic education he had received. This was, in fact, the Mother’s way of making her children learn how to work without developing ego. Sisir Kumar Mitra, who was a professor at Santiniketan and later became the Headmaster of the Ashram School, was given the work of washing plates in the Dining Room when he joined the Ashram. Jugal-da was later shifted to the Ashram School where he taught Physics to his students. When the Ashram Laboratory was inaugurated by the Mother in 1956, he became, along with Pavitra, Mrityunjoy Mukherjee, Sunil Bhattacharya and Joshi-bhai, a teacher of science. ‘But on any given day, rather than teaching Physics he would be more inclined to be discussing Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy or Yoga. Such was his love for Mother and Sri Aurobindo around whom his life was centred!’ (Śraddhā, February 2010, p. 183)

        But little does anyone know that Jugal-da had also acted in Sri Aurobindo’s drama Perseus the Deliverer where he had played the hero. I’ve heard an anecdote about this drama from Richard-da (Pearson). Though Jugal-da was selected to play the role of Perseus, the other actors were not too impressed with his dialogue-delivery in Bengali accent. On the day the Dress Rehearsal was held before the Mother, there was rainfall which made the dialogues uttered by the actors less audible. After the play ended, the Mother remarked to Jugal-da: “I could hear every single word.”

      Not only was Jugal-da a remarkable scholar but he was an author whose books compelled the reader to ponder on the subject on which he dealt. His books—though based mainly on the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—were unique in nature and in a way they made the theory of Integral Yoga and its various aspects understandable to even the non-intellectuals. We could find in his books the answers to several queries which were capable of changing one’s outlook towards life. His first book The Destiny of the body was published after twenty-five years of his study of the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. From the scientific point of view he has discussed about the possibility of transforming a human body into a supramentalized one. His scholarly analysis and interpretation was praised by K.D. Sethna who contributed a Foreword to this book in which he remarked: ‘Reading the series of studies contributed by Jugal Kishore Mukherjee I could not help being exhilarated not only by the scholarly thoroughness of its knowledge but also by the wide-ranging vitality of its insight… His exposition is a reminder to the champions of the spiritual life that the inner divinity is meant not to tear away from the outer form but to awaken that form to a natural kinship with it. It is also a reminder to the champions of the physical life that the ultimate source of this life’s full flowering lies in that inner divinity and its awakening touch on matter.’[1] His next book—Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry and Sanskrit Rhetoric—illustrated Sri Aurobindo’s poetic compositions from the angle of Sanskrit Alankara-Shastra. It was a delight and matter of immense astonishment to observe how he had traced and identified the ‘rhetorical embellishments’ of the Alankara-Shastra in Sri Aurobindo’s poems including Savitri. His From Man Human to Man Divine which was the sequel to The Destiny of the Body threw light on the concept of physical transformation and the evolutionary destiny of mankind.  His The Wonder that is K.D. Sethna alias Amal Kiran published on the occasion of the 90^th birth anniversary of the great poet and scholar in 1994 was a ‘peep’ into the various literary aspects of Amal Kiran as a poet, critic, prose-writer, correspondent, journalist, teacher, humorist etc. Amal Kiran congratulated him in the following words:

       ‘It is a splendid piece of work—wide-sweeping yet minutely attentive and penned with vividness and verve. I marvel at the range of your references and the apt way you have chosen your quotations. I could not help reading the whole thing at one stretch. You made that familiar old fellow KDS stunningly new even to himself!’[2]

      In 2003, in his 78^th year, The Practice of Integral Yoga—a comprehensive exposition of the practice of the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—took birth from Jugal-da’s pen. A year before his 80^th birthday his book Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth was published in which he delved into the aforesaid mysteries and brought out the answers—the treasures of Wisdom—from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I have not read his other books like Sri Aurobindo: The Smiling Master, Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny, The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri etc., but it can be claimed without the slightest doubt that his was the voice which echoed the true message of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Their works have been read by many but understood by only a handful but even that understanding is limited. And at times the acclaimed scholars tend to misinterpret their teachings and cause irreparable damage innocently. But Jugal-da was not one of those pseudo-intellectuals. Instead of mere understanding, he realized the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and implemented their advice in his day-to-day life. It won’t be an exaggeration if it is claimed that he was the ideal example of ‘plain living and high thinking.’