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An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by RY Deshpande on Tue 22 Nov 2011 03:30 AM IST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

This is an essay aimed at clarification and is written in the form of a letter, dated 28 June 1988, addressed to Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran. It arose out of Jugal Kishore Mukherjee’s deep concerns apropos of certain kinds of assertions made in the Ashram’s Archives and Research biennial. He wondered whether controversial statements made in it were seen and approved by them, they constituting the two-member supervisory committee looking into these publications. The letter was written solely with the intention of rectifying the inadvertent slips and restoring the right perspective in the matter of publications in an official periodical. Did it happen? It is a big question but the answer is short: it didn’t. We could discuss this aspect separately, but first in the following is the full essay Jugal Kishore Mukherjee had drafted in the interest of the Ashram, in terms of values to which one must adhere. Retrospectively, it may be pointed out that had a due note of his well-studied and well-documented concerns taken seriously by the advisory and official members, the present imbroglio regarding The Lives of Sri Aurobindo would have been avoided. That could also be true in the case of Savitri-editing. ~ RYD

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee

Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Pondicherry

28 June 1988

Our respected seniors

Amal-da (KDS) & Nirod-da,

An essay at clarification

We had heard at one time that a sort of screening committee had been formed to go through all the archival writings before these were to be approved for publication in the pages of any future issue of the journal Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research. All of us felt greatly reassured when we came to learn that the 2-member Committee had for its constituent members you two (Amal-da and Nirod-da).

But certain subjective views and observations given expression to in the latest issue (April 1988, Vol. 12, No.1) of the aforementioned journal have somewhat jolted us. We are wondering whether these controversial judgments are equally shared by the respected members of the screening committee or perhaps these have somehow escaped their notice in the busy schedule of their other occupations.

Taking the second of the two alternative hypotheses as a more plausible explanation for the ‘misjudgments’ we have been referring to, we venture to pen the following lines with ‘charity towards all and malice towards none’, solely with the intention of rectifying the inadvertent slips and restoring the right perspective in the matter. Please excuse us if we on our part are found to be mistaken in our views.

We would have kept quiet if the Archives-assessments we consider erroneous would have been merely personal views privately articulated. But as these views concerning some of the fundamentals of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga and writings have been given printed publicity in the pages of one of our own Ashram journals—and that too edited by one of our venerable Trustees, these are sure to attain some sort of authoritativeness and create confusion in the minds of the sadhaks; hence, after deep deliberation, we felt it our duty to place before you two our own considered views in the matter for all they are worth.

But in order that we may not do any injustice to the writer concerned by quoting only isolated sentences shorn from their natural context, we begin our present paper by quoting in extenso all that the writer of the “Archival Notes” has had to say concerning the points we have been objecting to. Here is what he writes in the April 1988 issue of the Archives:

The yoga of self-perfection is of course not the whole yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Indeed, all four parts of the Synthesis—Works, Knowledge, Love and Perfection—do not fully describe it. Between 1921, when the last issue of the Arya was published, and the mid-1930s, when Sri Aurobindo revised the Synthesis, certain aspects of sadhana that till then had been given a subordinate role took on primary importance. Chief among these is the psychic being, a term that does not occur (in its developed sense) in the Arya, but which is given considerable stress in many letters written after the Mother settled in Pondicherry in 1920. In the Arya version of the Synthesis, Sri Aurobindo spoke, as we have seen, of the mental being as man’s ‘highest present status’, and as the instrument by which yoga is done. When he revised the first part of the Synthesis he devalued the role played by the mental being and brought out the fundamental importance of the psyche.

Another central term in the integral yoga as it took shape after the coming of the Mother is ‘surrender’. This is by no means neglected in the Synthesis. In chapter I of ‘The Yoga of Self-Perfection’, Sri Aurobindo states: ‘The principle in view is delight of the Divine’ (SY 586-7l; of. 593, 695). In the Record surrender is referred to as dasya, a term of sudra-sakti, which is an element of the first member of the second chatusthaya. But only in Letters on Yoga, and in The Mother, does surrender emerge as the fundamental principle it is.

All of Sri Aurobindo’s published formulations of his yoga, whether in books like the Synthesis, or in the Letters, lack the immediacy of experience that is present in Record of Yoga. (p. 83, last 3 paragraphs)

The above lengthy citation from the Archival Notes makes it abundantly clear that the writer undesirably mixes up certain things and draws some invalid conclusions. Thus, for example, he confuses ‘aspect of sadhana’ with ‘term’, and ‘mentality’ with ‘mental being’. For he quotes Sri Aurobindo as having written: ‘mentality is his highest present status’ (See Archives, April 1988, p. 79, line 7) and then passes on to affirm that Sri Aurobindo spoke, ‘as we have seen’, of the mental being as man’s ‘highest present status’. The writer confuses ‘being’ too in the simple ordinary sense of ‘creature’ with the technical ‘being’, the Purusha of the Upanishads. Even Mind and Mental Purusha are not, we fear, kept separate as regards their roles and functions. The writer at times flings expressions like “devalued” and “lack of immediacy of experience” without having thoughtfully weighed the implications of such expressions which he should have done as he is employing these expressions in the case of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga and writings. But more about these points later on when we come to discuss these one by one.

The Archival Notes declare that “certain aspects of sadhana that till then had been given a subordinate role took on primary importance” between “1921, when the last issue of the Arya was published and the mid-1930s, when Sri Aurobindo revised the Synthesis.” (p. 83, para 2). And in this connection the writer of the Notes twice brings in the Mother’s name to state (1) “after the Mother settled in Pondicherry in 1920” and (2) “after the coming of the Mother”,—the intended implication of this introduction of a reference to the ‘Mother’s settling down in Pondicherry in 1920’ being too obvious to miss on the part of the readers. But is the implication justified in fact?

All of us know from Sri Aurobindo’s own writing that “their lines of Sadhana independently followed the same course. When they (Sri Aurobindo and the Mother) met, they helped each other in perfecting the Sadhana. What is known as Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is the joint creation of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother...” (On Himself, Cent. Ed., p. 459)

This too we know that “There is no difference between the Mother’s path and mine; we have and always had the same path, the path that leads to the supramental change and the divine realisation; not only at the end, but from the beginning they have been the same.” (Sri Aurobindo On Himself, Cent. Ed., p. 456)

Please mark the underlined phrases which we have emphasised to bring their meaning into focus. “We have and always had the same path” and “not only at the end, but from the beginning”: Do such categorical statements leave any scope for surmising that a key-concept like “surrender” did not emerge in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga as ‘a fundamental principle’ till 1921—till ‘after the coming of the Mother’?

We are quite aware of the other statement of Sri Aurobindo wherein he declares: “The detail or method of the later stages of the Yoga which go into little known or untrodden regions, I have not made public and I do not at present intend to do so.” (A letter of 5-10-35 printed in On Himself, p. 108)

Surely this statement does not indicate that the importance of the principle of “surrender” or of the role of the ‘psychic being’ is something that is recognised only in the ‘later stages of the Yoga’ and gained in ascendancy only after 1921. “Surrender” has been with Sri Aurobindo from 1908 itself if not earlier. Why we say so will be made clear from what follows. Let us then in the first instance take up for discussion this question of when “surrender” received the necessary importance in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana and teaching.

I: First Archival assertion we object to...

The Archival Notes emphatically assert:

Another central term in the integral yoga as it took shape after the coming of the Mother in 1920, as the context indicates is ‘surrender’. ... Only in Letters on Yoga, and in The Mother, does surrender emerge as the fundamental principle it is. (p. 83, para 3)

We would like to show that the principle of unreserved self-offering to the Divine has been from the very beginning the key-factor in Sri Aurobindo’s own practice and teaching. He had not to wait till after the abrupt interruption of the Arya series in 1921 to make the idea of “surrender emerge as the fundamental principle it is.”

(1) First let us see what Sri Aurobindo wrote to the Maharani of Baroda:

There are many ways of opening to this Divine Consciousness or entering into it. My way which I show to others by a constant practice is to go inward into oneself, to open by aspiration to the Divine and once one is conscious of it and its action, to give oneself to it entirely. This self-giving means not to ask for anything but the constant contact or union with the Divine Consciousness, to aspire for its peace, power, light and felicity, but to ask nothing else and in life and action to be its instrument only for whatever work it gives one to do in the world. (SABC Volume 27, Supplement, p. 416)

Here we would like to make 2 comments. (a) The expression used by Sri Aurobindo in the above citation is “self-giving” and “self-surrender”. But does any one seriously claim that “self-giving” and “surrender” are different in connotations? We hope not. (b) This letter to the Maharani was presumably penned after the Ashram came into being. For Sri Aurobindo writes inter alia:

My aim is to create a centre of spiritual life which shall serve as a means of bringing down the higher consciousness and making it a power not merely for ‘salvation’ but for a divine life upon earth. It is with this object that I have withdrawn from public life and founded this Ashram in Pondicherry (so called for want of a better word, for it is not an Ashram of Sannyasins, but of those who want to leave all else and prepare for this rule.” (op. cit., 416).

Here are mentioned all the essential elements of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga-darshan. But, as I indicated, this particular letter might have been written after the founding of the Ashram in 1926. But will someone be justified to claim, on the basis of this fact of date, that Sri Aurobindo started practising and preaching “self-giving” only after “the Mother settled in Pondicherry in 1920”? That can’t surely be. For, examine what Sri Aurobindo had to say to Dilip-da (DK Roy) on the subject of “surrender”:

(2) Sri Aurobindo defines the sadhana of surrender in this way:

The core of the inner surrender is trust and confidence in the Divine. One takes the attitude: ‘I want the Divine and nothing else. I want to give myself entirely to him and since my soul wants that, it cannot be but that I shall meet and realise him. I ask nothing but that and his action in me to bring me to him, his action secret or open, veiled or manifest. I do not insist on my own time and way; let him do all in his own time and way; I shall believe in him, accept his will, aspire steadily for his light and presence and joy, go through all difficulties and delays, relying on him and never giving up. ... All for him and myself for him. Whatever happens, I will keep to this aspiration and self-giving and go on in perfect reliance that it will be done.’ That is the attitude into which one must grow; for certainly it cannot be made perfect at once—mental and vital movements come across—But if one keeps the will to it, it will grow in the being. The rest is a matter of obedience to the guidance when it makes itself manifest, not allowing one’s mental and vital movements to interfere.”

(Sri Aurobindo Came to Me; Letters on Yoga, pp. 387-88)

Then Sri Aurobindo goes on to delineate the essential difference between other ways of doing sadhana and a sadhana based on surrender:

It is not my intention to say that this way is the only way and sadhana cannot be done otherwise—there are so many others by which one can approach the Divine. But this is the only one I know by which the taking up of sadhana by the Divine become a sensible fact before the preparation of the nature is done. ... The idea and experience of the Divine doing all belong to the yoga based on surrender. (Letters, p. 388)

Sri Aurobindo further adds:

All can be done by the Divine,—the heart and nature purified, the inner consciousness awakened, the veils removed,—if one gives oneself to the Divine with trust and confidence... If the questioning mind becomes less active and humility and the will to surrender grow, this ought to be perfectly possible. No other strength and tapasya are then needed, but this alone. (p. 388)

All the quotations which we have just now given are only a necessary prelude to what we are going to quote now. For here comes the crucial and most significant declaration by Sri Aurobindo:

(3) “It is in fact the principle of sadhana that I myself followed and it is the central process if yoga as I envisage it.” (Sri Aurobindo Came to Me)

“The principle of sadhana that I myself followed”!—Would anyone in his senses claim that Sri Aurobindo is referring here to his post-1921 period of sadhana after the Mother “settled down in Pondicherry in 1920”? Surely that can’t be. But if more evidences are needed, here are some.

(4) Please note what Sri Aurobindo writes about Lele’s advice to him:

The final upshot was that he was made by a Voice within him to hand me over to the Divine within me enjoining an absolute surrender to its will—a principle or rather a seed force to which I kept unswerving and increasing till it led me through all the mazes of an incalculable yogic development bound by no single rule or style or dogma or Shastra to where and what I am now and towards what shall be hereafter. (On Himself, p. 79)

Surely all this started before 1920. Indeed, it was in the far pastm in 1908 to be precise; for, Sri Aurobindo met Lele in that year.

What is still more interesting is the fact that even before Lele enjoined on Sri Aurobindo “an absolute surrender to the Divine’s will”, Sri Aurobindo on his own “gave himself entirely into his (Lele’s) hands. Thus Sri Aurobindo writes:

(5) “In my own case I owe the first decisive turn of my inner life to one who was infinitely inferior to me in intellect education and capacity and by no means spiritually perfect or supreme; but, having seen a Power behind him and decided to turn there for help, I gave myself entirely into his hands and followed with an automatic passivity the guidance. He himself was astonished and said to others that he had never met anyone before who could surrender himself so absolutely and without reserve or question to the guidance of the helper.” (On Himself, p. 80)

So, Sri Aurobindo’s very ‘first decisive turn of... inner life’ started with surrender, and what was the result thereof? Sri Aurobindo continues:

(6) “The result was a series of transmuting experience of such a radical character that he was unable to follow and had to tell me to give myself up in future to the Guide within with the same completeness of surrender as I had shown to the human channel.” (On Himself, p. 80)

And did not Sri Aurobindo follow this principle of unreserved surrender unswervingly on every important occasion later on? Only 3 examples will suffice to show that he indeed did.

First, let us see what he wrote to his wife Mrinalini in a letter of 1908:

(7) “Come here, and I shall tell you what is to be told. But there is only one thing which must be said now, and that is that from now on I no longer am the master of my own will. Like a puppet I must go wherever God takes me; like a puppet I must do whatever He makes me do. ... I am no longer free. From now on you have to understand that all I do depends not on my will but is done at the command of God. When you come here, you will understand the meaning of my words.” (A.B. Purani: The Life of Sri Aurobindo, 1987 ed., pp. 105-06)

The second instance we would like to mention is when Sri Aurobindo handed over to CR Das the entire charge of his defense at the Alipore Bomb Case trial. Here is what he writes himself:

(8) “When I saw him [Chittaranjan Das], I was satisfied, but I still thought it necessary to write instructions. Then all that was put from me and I had the message from within, ‘This is the man who will save you from snares put around your feet. Put aside these papers. It is not you who will instruct him. I will instruct him. ‘From that time I did not of myself speak a word to my Counsel about the case or give a single instruction, and if ever I was asked a question. I always found that my answer did not help the case.” (Uttarpara Speech, 1968 ed., pp. 10-11)

Now we come to our third instance: Sri Aurobindo’s leaving Calcutta for Chandernagore in February 1910. Let us listen to what Sri Aurobindo himself has to say in the matter—although the words are put in the 3rd person:

(9) “Sri Aurobindo one night at the Karmayogin office received information about the Government’s intention to search the office and arrest him. While considering what should be his attitude, he received a sudden command from above to go to Chandernagore in French India. He obeyed the command at once, for it was now his rule to move only as he was moved by the divine guidance and never to resist and depart from it; he did not stay to consult with anyone, but in ten minutes was at the river ghat and in a beat plying on the Ganges.” (On Himself, p. 36)

The above 9 or so extracts culled from Sri Aurobindo’s own writings will, let us hope, make it abundantly clear that so far as his own sadhana is concerned Sri Aurobindo was fully aware of the cardinal importance of the principle of surrender ever since he started his sadhana: for that he had not to wait till after 1921. But did he refrain from expounding this capital importance of the principle of self-offering while writing to or for others? That also is not true to facts. Here is a representative collection of his views on surrender, as expressed in his writings prior to 1921.

First a citation from one of his private letters to Motilal Roy:

(10) “Remember what is the whole basis of the Yoga. It is not founded upon the vehement emotionalism of the Bhaktimarga to which the temperament of Bengal is most prone, though it has different kind of Bhakti, but on samata (equality) and atma-samarpana (self-surrender). Obedience to the divine Will, not assertion of sefl-will, is the very first mantra.” (SABCL Vol. 27, Supplement, p. 478)

Sri Aurobindo continues:

You say that there is complete utsarga (consecration), but it cannot be complete, if there is any kind of revolt or vehement impatience. The revolt and impatience mean always that there is a part of the being or something in the being which does not submit, has not given itself to God, but insists in God going out of his way to obey it. That may be very well in the Bhaktimarga, but it will not do on this Way.

“It will not do on this Way”... “samata and atma-samarpana the whole basis of the Yoga”... “Obedience to the divine Will ... is the very first mantra”: Do such statements not indicate that surrender occupied a pivotal place in Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga even in these pre-1921 days?

Let us now turn to Sri Aurobindo’s book The Yoga and its Objects which, according to a note from Sri Aurobindo written in 1934, “represents an early stage of Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana and only a part of it is applicable to the Yoga as it has at present taken form after a lapse of more than twenty years.”

Sri Aurobindo’s Note makes it clear that The Yoga and its Objects must have been first written before 1914. Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter 1919 addressed to Motilal Roy:

Do not print Yoga and its Objects unless and until I give you positive directions. It cannot be printed in its form and I may decide to complete the work before it is printed. In any case parts of it would have to be omitted or modified. (SABCL Vol.27, Supplement, p. 431)

A few months later on, possibly in the same year 1919, Sri Aurobindo wrote again to Motilal on the same subject:

You speak of printing Yoga and its Objects. But remember that what I have sent you is only the first part which gives the path, not the objects or the circumstances. If you print it, print it as the first of a series, with the subtitle, The Path. (op. cit., p. 434)

The point we are seeking to make through all these discussions is the fact that even in that “early stage” of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga-sadhana, surrender occupied a position of prime importance: it had not to wait to “take shape after the coming of the Mother” (Archival Notes, p. 83 of Archives, April 1988)

Here is a relevant extract from The Yoga and its Objects; let it speak for itself:

(11) “The whole heart and action and mind of man must be changed, but from within, not from without, not by political or social institutions, not even by creeds and philosophies, but by realisation of God in ourselves and the world and a remoulding of life by that realisation.

“This can only be effected by Purnayoga, a yoga not devoted to a particular purpose, even though that purpose be Mukti or Ananda, but to the fulfilment of divine humanity in ourselves and others. For this purpose the practices of Hatha and Raja Yoga are not sufficient and even the Trimarga will not serve; we must go higher and resort to Adhyatmayoga. The principle of Adhyatmayoga is, in knowledge, the realisation of all things that we see or do not see but are aware of,—men, things, ourselves, events, gods, titans, angels,—as one divine Brahman, and in action and attitude, an absolute self-surrender to the Paratpara Purusha, the transcendant, infinite and universal Personality who is at once personal and impersonal, finite and infinite, self-limiting and illimitable, one and many, and informs with his being not only the Gods above, but man and the worm and the clod below.

“The surrender must be complete. Nothing must be reserved, no desire, no demand, no opinion, no idea that this must be, that cannot be, that this should be and that should not be;—all must be given.... the entire being must be given up, as an engine is passive in the hands of the driver, for the divine Love, Might and perfect Intelligence to do its work and fulfil its divine Lila. Ahankara must be blotted out in order that we may have, as God intends us ultimately to have, the perfect bliss, the perfect calm and knowledge and the perfect activity of the divine existence.

“If this attitude of perfect sefl-surrender can be even imperfectly established all necessity of Yogic kriya inevitably ceases. For then God himself in us becomes the sadhaka and the siddha and his divine power works in us, not by our artificial processes, but by a working a Nature which is perfectly informed, all-searching and infallibly efficient. Even the most powerful Rajayogic samyama, the most developed pranayama, the most strenuous meditation, the most ecstatic Bhakti, the most self-denying action, mighty as they are and efficacious, are comparatively weak in their results when set beside this supreme working.” (The Yoga and Its Objects as printed in SABCL Vol. 16, pp. 413-14)

Sri Aurobindo continues with his elaboration of yoga based on surrender:

(12) “The first process of the yoga is to make the samkalpa of atmasamarpana (the resolution of self-surrender). Put yourself with all your heart and all your strength into God’s hands. Make no conditions, ask for nothing, not even for siddhi in the yoga, for nothing at all except that in you and through you his will may be directly performed. To those who demand from him, God gives what they demand, but to those who give themselves and demand nothing, he gives everything that they might otherwise have asked or needed and in addition he gives himself and the spontaneous boons of his love.” (op. cit. , p. 414)

A little further on Sri Aurobindo advises the sadhaks “to hold fast to the principle of the yoga, self-surrender.” (Ibid. p. 414)

So, self-surrender is the principle of his yoga and we have to hold fast to it under all circumstances: such is the message of The Yoga and Its Objects which was first published in book-form in 1921 although written much earlier. Surely this can be nobody’s contention that Sri Aurobindo introduced the theme of self-surrender in his book Yoga and Its Objects only after learning of its full importance in the year 1921?

And this is not all. If we divert our attention from printed books to the pages of monthly journal Arya, what do we find there? Let me give only two examples.

First we open at pages 342-44 of Arya, 15th January 1919. There we come across the following eulogistic account of ‘self-offering and surrender’:

(13) “This absolute and one-minded self-giving is the devotion which the Gita makes the crown of its synthesis. All action and effort are by this devotion turned into an offering to the supreme and universal Divine. ... By and absolute self-giving all egoistic desire disappears from the heart and there is a perfect union between the Divine and the individual soul through an inner renunciation of its separate living. ... The finite nature thus surrendered becomes a free channel of the Infinite; and the soul in its spiritual being returns uplifted out of the ignorance and the limitation to its oneness with the Eternal. ... Love of the Highest and a total self-surrender are the straight and swift way to this divine oneness. ...

“In other words a will of entire self-giving opens wide at once all the gates of the spirit and brings in response an entire self-giving of the Divine to the human soul that at once reshapes to the law of the divine by a rapid transformation of the lower into the spiritual nature. The will of self-giving by its power forces away the veil between God and man. Those who aspire in their human strength by effort of knowledge or effort of laborious self-discipline, grow with much anxious difficulty towards the Divine; but when the soul gives up its ego and its works to the Divine, God himself comes to them and takes up their burden.”

The above passage on self-surrender is from the chapter “Works, Devotion and Knowledge” of Essays on the Gita, as it appeared in the pages of Arya. The interested reader may compare this passage with its final mildly revised version as printed on pages 318 (last line)—320 of the Centenary Edition of the same book.

Here is a second passage picked up from the pages of Arya; this one occurs on p. 721 of its July 1919 issue. Sri Aurobindo writes there:

(14) “The way proposed for the integral Yoga is a lifting up and surrender of the whole being to him (to the Divine), by which not only do we become one with him in our spiritual existence, but dwell too in him and he in us, so that the whole nature is full of presence and changed into the divine nature.”

This second passage is from The Synthesis of Yoga. As Sri Aurobindo had no chance to revise it, it occurs in exactly the same form on p. 651 of the Cent Ed of the same book.

Sorry to have taxed your patience but can’t help. We had to make a rapid survey of the whole gamut of Sri Aurobindo’s writings covering the period 1908 to 1919 in order to show that both in his personal practice and in his instructions to his followers Sri Aurobindo always kept surrender in the central position even from the very beginning. Let us conclude this discussion on surrender by stating that in our humble opinion it is difficult to accept without protest the following assertion of the Archival Notes:

Another central term in the integral yoga as it took shape after the coming of the Mother is surrender. ... Only in Letters on Yoga and in The Mother does surrender emerger as the fundamental principle it is. (Archives, April 1988, p. 83)

The Archives assertion is totally off the mark. This type of ill-founded statement should not have found place in the pages of the research journal.

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Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Sandeep on Tue 22 Nov 2011 06:12 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

Another central term in the integral yoga as it took shape after the coming of the Mother in 1920, as the context indicates is ‘surrender’. ... Only in Letters on Yoga, and in The Mother, does surrender emerge as the fundamental principle it is. (p. 83, para 3)

Reminds me of Sri Aurobindo's statement

To understand Scripture, it is not enough to be a scholar; one must be a soul.

(Sri Aurobindo, SABCL vol 3, Harmony of Virtue, p 118)

Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by RY Deshpande on Wed 23 Nov 2011 05:22 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

To put it facetiously—for a modernist poet “surrender” rhymes with “coriander”.

~ RYD

Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Tusar N. Mohapatra on Tue 22 Nov 2011 01:31 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

Factional scholastic debates of the past and the Theosophical grandstanding can be said to have dictated the tone of the Arya expositions. Understandably, Sri Aurobindo is cautious and seems to be a conservative as the motivational motive is also in play... It is also important to note how Sri Aurobindo has introduced several variations after The Mother's arrival in 1920. His letters compiled in the booklets like Bases of Yoga and The Mother stand testimony of this. [TNM55-301011]

Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by RY Deshpande on Wed 23 Nov 2011 08:59 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

It would be very educative for us if we can have the pre-1920 The Mother to compare with what came out in 1927, seven years after the Mother's final arrival. Can Mr Mohapatra give it to us, that early version for posting on the Mirror? This might specifically bring out the Mother's contribution to the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Please consider, and thanks.

~ RYD

Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Tusar N. Mohapatra on Wed 23 Nov 2011 09:42 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

Jugal's list of references to self-surrender or surrender to the divine seems to be slightly off the mark as surrender to The Mother is something else. I hinted about this thematic variation and not any textual revision, and obviously, no pre-1920 version of The Mother exists. [TNM55]

Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Sandeep on Thu 24 Nov 2011 12:11 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

List of references are of secondary importance in such cases. Anyone who has practised Yoga would know that "surrender" is sine qua non for any success. The claim that surrender became a fundamental principle after the coming of the Mother is totally IDIOTIC under the circumstances and contravenes ancient wisdom.

Passages like these can only emerge from the chaotic labyrinths of dry analytical intellects.

Another central term in the integral yoga as it took shape after the coming of the Mother is ‘surrender’. This is by no means neglected in the Synthesis. In chapter I of ‘The Yoga of Self-Perfection’, Sri Aurobindo states: ‘The principle in view is delight of the Divine’ (SY 586-7l; of. 593, 695). In the Record surrender is referred to as dasya, a term of sudra-sakti, which is an element of the first member of the second chatusthaya. But only in Letters on Yoga, and in The Mother, does surrender emerge as the fundamental principle it is.

To engage in microscopic chronological analysis of obvious Yogic concepts without any sort of exegetical flexibility is called "literalism", and those who pursue such an analysis are also Fundamentalists !

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by RY Deshpande on Sat 26 Nov 2011 10:03 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

The Mother narrates the story how Jesus ran away when an idiot was brought to him. Here it is.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Vikas on Sun 27 Nov 2011 01:21 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

"..."surrender" is sine qua non for any success".
Interestingly, you have echoed what according to the Master is the gist and secret of the Gita. He writes
"And this Yoga can only arrive at its success by devoting, by consecrating, by giving up the whole self to the Divine, “to Me”, says Krishna; for the Liberator is within us, but it is not our mind, nor our intelligence, nor our personal will, – they are only instruments. It is the Lord in whom, as we are told in the end, we have utterly to take refuge".

The intelligence - which man often prides himself on - is itself a construct of nature (Prakriti) and cannot sever the ego that binds the soul to nature.
A refreshing reminder that one does not get to read often enough.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Sandeep on Mon 28 Nov 2011 01:55 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

If we trace the chronology, we can see that these seemingly innocuous remarks made in 1988 on "surrender to the Mother" have morphed into quite caustic remarks regarding the Mother and devotion in TLOSA in 2008.

This Masala Doxa has been in preparation for the past few decades :-)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by RY Deshpande on Mon 28 Nov 2011 09:20 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

>>This Masala Doxa has been in preparation for the past few decades>>

Certainly it started some thirty years ago, and the Archives journals are a witness to it. In the second week of September 2008 I’d a long talk with Pranab Bhattacharya (Dada) when he said that he’d forewarned about these matters 22 years ago, in the mid-1980s. I’d given to him earlier copies of two articles of mine to bring to his notice the gross misrepresentations that are perpetrated in The Lives of Sri Aurobindo . These papers were entirely technical in nature, discussing issues purely at an academic level. I wanted them to be published in the Ashram’s periodical, Mother India; but both the editor and the publisher sat in "dignified silence" on it. Pranab-Dada had gone through the articles and, contextually, made some forthright comments. He was very critical in that respect and wanted the working of the Archives to be handled it in a different way, or else closed down. He had told to that effect to the people concerned also. Well, all this is now history but the questions is: Do we ever learn a lesson from history? Let me quote from the Internet:

The matter of learning lessons from history has been a prodigious source of aphorism and free advice. George Santayana famously warned that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Aldous Huxley quipped that the most important thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history. Oliver Wendell Holmes defined history as one damned thing after another (and George Shultz, following Holmes, defined foreign policy as the same damned thing after another). But what do we really know about how to learn from history, and how not to?

We know, first and foremost, that how we may learn from history is a function of the purpose to which the exercise is put. One attitude toward the purpose of learning from history is that one does it as a form of aesthetics, not as a means to more practical ends. A.J.P. Taylor, one of the most prominent and best respected historians of the 20th century, believed that the writing of history is “an art just like painting or architecture and is designed like them only to give intellectual and artistic pleasure.”

But most of those who seek knowledge from history have more purposeful ends in mind, particularly policymakers and policy analysts who discern a moral responsibility to protect their nations and their fellows from gratuitous harm. Trying to learn from history for such purposes is both necessary and very difficult. It is necessary because the past is the only data we have from which to gleen patterns of behavior whose endurance as features of human nature, presumably, make them relevant to our own times and problems. The method is first inductive—sifting historical evidence to produce general truths—and then deductive—applying those truths to other, present circumstances taken to be more or less analogous. ...

Do we have “purposeful ends in mind” to learn anything from history? It is there where now our question about learning from history gets shifted.

~ RYD

Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Sandeep on Thu 24 Nov 2011 03:53 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

Another reason why chronological analysis can be flawed is that a sage like Sri Aurobindo may not write down everything he experienced immediately.

Things may be committed to writing only if

1) the experiences have concretized within and understood completely.

2)there is an inner impulsion to communicate to the world or to others who need guidance.

Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Vikas on Sat 26 Nov 2011 09:28 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

"Jugal's list of references to self-surrender or surrender to the divine seems to be slightly off the mark as surrender to The Mother is something else".
I doubt you mean that Jugal is slightly off because he is referring to "surrender" or "self-surrender", while the Archival publication is referring to "surrender to The Mother".
The extract from the publication as given to us by Jugal reads
"Another central term in the integral yoga as it took shape after the coming of the Mother is ‘surrender’. This is by no means neglected in the Synthesis."
It is clear that the “surrender” in the preceding line refers to “surrender” as a general yogic principle and not to "surrender to the Mother" since there is no question of "surrender to the Mother" before the coming of the Mother, nor of it’s being “neglected in the synthesis” .
If you meant that after Mother’s arrival Sri Aurobindo emphatically enjoined upon all who consented to follow Him to make “surrender to the Mother” the central element of their sadhana , your point is certainly well made. Indeed, She is the “magnet of all our difficult ascent” and “the Sun from which we kindle all our suns”.
To return to the article in the journal. Upon reading it, one can easily infer that surrender had been given a subordinate role by Sri Aurobindo prior to Mother’s coming. The article makes a grievous error in this implication, and Jugal’s objections and concerns are not unfounded. The article states that after the Mother settled in Pondicherry in 1920 “certain aspects of sadhana that till then had been given a subordinate role took on primary importance. Chief among these is the psychic being”. The other, “as it took shape after the coming of the Mother is ‘surrender’”, and though it is “by no means neglected in the Synthesis…”, only in “Letters on Yoga, and in The Mother, does surrender emerge as the fundamental principle it is”.
The question whether surrender was the fundamental principle in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana before 1920 does not even merit discussion. Refer to the interview that Sri Aurobindo gave to a Tamil weekly in 1909 ( http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2011/6/5/4819833.html ) , if only to draw inspiration from it once more. It gives us a poignant glimpse into the heart of one who has totally given himself to God.
One could argue that the article does not question that surrender was the fundamental principle in Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana prior to Mother’s coming, but only posits that this principle of surrender emerged after Her arrival. That would ofcourse be playing upon words.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Tusar N. Mohapatra on Sat 26 Nov 2011 11:19 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

Thanks Vikas for saying "point is certainly well made" which made my day. Without holding any brief for the journal article, I get the sense that it also meant something akin, but Jugal didn't weigh both sides as you have done so admirably here.

It was after The Mother's arrival that the Four Powers appeared in the Synthesis (which remain neglected to this day). Surrender to The Mother, thus, takes precedence over all other formulations and technicalities (including the Records). It is so simple and uncluttered that it can well be equated with serendipity. Sandeep, of course, comes from a different tradition. [TNM55]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by Sandeep on Sat 26 Nov 2011 11:54 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

> Sandeep, of course, comes from a different tradition.

thank you for recognizing my quirky uniqueness

Chaleureusement

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An essay at clarification regarding Archival publications: Jugal Kishore Mukherjee (A)

by RY Deshpande on Sat 26 Nov 2011 03:28 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

>> The question whether surrender was the fundamental principle >>

Indeed this question should never arise, even as we have in the Gita the great promise to the one who takes refuge in the Lord himself.

All must be given as material of that transmutation. An omniscient consciousness will take up our knowledge and our ignorance, our truth and our error, cast away their forms of insufficiency, sarva-dharmān parityajya, and transform all into its infinite light. An almighty Power will take up our virtue and sin, our right and wrong, our strength and our weakness, cast away their tangled figures, sarva-dharmān parityajya, and transform all into its transcendent purity and universal good and infallible force. An ineffable Ananda will take up our petty joy and sorrow, our struggling pleasure and pain, cast away their discordances and imperfect rhythms, sarva-dharmān parityajya, and transform all into its transcendent and universal unimaginable delight. All that all the Yogas can do will be done and more; but it will be done in a greater seeing way, with a greater wisdom and truth than any human teacher, saint or sage can give us. The inner spiritual state to which this supreme Yoga will take us, will be above all that is here and yet comprehensive of all things in this and other worlds, but with a spiritual transformation of all, without limitation, without bondage, sarva-dharmān parityajya. The infinite existence, consciousness and delight of the Godhead in its calm silence and bright boundless activity will be there, will be its essential, fundamental, universal stuff, mould and character. And in that mould of infinity the Divine made manifest will overtly dwell, no longer concealed by his Yogamaya, and whenever and as he wills build in us whatever shapes of the Infinite, translucent forms of knowledge, thought, love, spiritual joy, power and action according to his self-fulfilling will and immortal pleasure. And there will be no binding effect on the free soul and the unaffected nature, no unescapable crystallising into this or that inferior formula. For all the action will be executed by the power of the Spirit in a divine freedom, sarva-dharmān parityajya. An unfallen abiding in the transcendent Spirit, param dhāma, will be the foundation and the assurance of this spiritual state. An intimate understanding oneness with universal being and all creatures, released from the evil and suffering of the separative mind but wisely regardful of true distinctions, will be the conditioning power. A constant delight, oneness and harmony of the eternal individual here with the Divine and all that he is will be the effect of this integral liberation. The baffling problems of our human existence of which Arjuna's difficulty stands as an acute example, are created by our separative personality in the Ignorance. This Yoga because it puts the soul of man into its right relation with God and world-existence and makes our action God's, the knowledge and will shaping and moving it his and our life the harmony of a divine self-expression, is the way to their total disappearance.

In it the whole Yoga is revealed. This is some five thousand years old.

Even on 29 March 1914 Sri Aurobindo at once saw that complete surrender right down to the physical was possible,—that is what he had written to Barin—that in which was the promise of its transformation. To say that Sri Aurobindo knew it later is not to enter into the spirit of the Integral Yoga. This Yoga was given to him by the Master of the Yoga himself, Yogeshwar.

~ RYD

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