Dealing with Modern Times Through Spirit

...(continued)...This integral perfection is again an extension of the Hindu tradition. As the Bhagavad Gita inspires its followers to relinquish the fruits of action, so to does Aurobindo urge us to leave behind our selfish action because it hinders action in union with the Divine. As in the Gita, our actions are no longer our own. For Aurobindo they are Divine. When Aurobindo speaks of bringing the divine down into the mundane realm, it is more of an allowing of spirit, as opposed to ego, become the actor. It is this allowing, allowing the connection to a higher mind, through dispersing the veil of a separate ego identity, to become the source of our all our action, the source which we can embody in the mundane. This spirit in action will naturally breed recognition of the spirit inherent in all things and naturally help allow for greater reception of spirit in all aspects of the self. Aurobindo thus succeeds in expanding, and making central this primary concern of associating spirit with the mundane life, of connecting and uniting the two. This concern which weaves in and out of the Indian tradition becomes foremost for Aurobindo in the true spirit of Tantrism. Because of the social and political climate in Aurobindo’s life, however, he expands Tantrism to become wider in its relation to modern concerns.

In his relation to modernity Aurobindo is a powerful thinker. He shows the many of the same tendencies that historically permeate the traditions of Hinduism: diligent commitment to the highest realms of human existence, a supreme all pervading Divinity within all creation, discipline in uniting with the Divinity, furthering the relationship of others to the Divinity through sympathy, and intense inner concentration upon the various realms of consciousness, these among many other similarities. However, Aurobindo becomes the exemplar of the Hindu tradition, an ambassador to modernity by expanding its ideas, refocusing the emphasis, while adhering to the tradition of welcoming new ideas innovations. Aurobindo incorporates evolution, secular materialism, social and political concern into the vast tradition. Perhaps any talented Hindu, throughout history, would have pursued the same innovations if faced with the same crisis, such is Aurobindo’s embodiment of the tradition. For Aurobindo, because social and political concerns came to the forefront he faced them with intense introspection and found that in the end, the ultimate answer was actually to adhere to the same fundamental precepts that had helped shepard India through the centuries. Remaining true to the commitment to Divinity, elucidating how the Divinity can manifest itself through humanity and thus allowing humanity to harmonize the concerns of modernity was the natural conclusion a natural progression. For Aurobindo, face to face with the seemingly insurmountable social and political difficulties, the answer remained the same as it always had been, the One answer, the One truth, the One harmonizing Divinity had to enter into these new arenas, new frontiers through its perpetual facilitators, ever evolving humanity. For Aurobindo the ultimate act of social concern was immersion in spirit and the manifestation of spirit in all realms. In union with spirit, guided by spirit, one would naturally find the best course to take when confronted with strange and difficult modernization. For Aurobindo, the ultimate social agency remained Spirit, and the propagation of Spirit in others. This union with Spirit, Spiritual teaching and its manifestation was the One ultimate, incorruptible answer to all social concerns past, present and future.

Integral Yoga and Social Concern

...(continued)...Just as Aurobindo shows us the social-political ramifications, outer ramifications, Western necessity, for pursuing the divine for the sake of fulfilling a sort of divine evolution, he also examines the inner tradition in terms of Yoga. Aurobindo refers to the various Indian traditions in which we find inner experience such as the Kundalini experience. He examines the various yogas as separate and distinct paths that must become synthesized. He explains that as we advance in one arena of spirit its effects manifest themselves in the other arenas. If we advance in the mental we will see the fruits of our relation to spirit manifest in action and devotion as well. Aurobindo ties these together with the additional benefit seen in Tantric yoga, the benefit of enjoying the outer universe as an extended experience of the Divine. Again we see the pattern of Aurobindo to synthesize the ancient tradition, and again we see him take it to its logical conclusion. If the yoga benefits the practitioner in all arenas of experience then would not, from the modern, global perspective, the yoga benefit humanity as a whole? Wouldn't Tantric yoga have implications in the broader social and political realms of experience. Aurobindo asks the practitioner of any yoga to, upon the growth in relation to spirit in the realm of the personal exercise, begin to seek the growth of the spiritual relation in all realms of life. Yoga for Aurobindo is the discipline by which the individual may free the self from the many egoic veils that obscure the manifestation of spirit.

SOCIAL CONCERN

Again, if this is the possibility for the individual why then is it not also the possibility for the group? In this sense Aurobindo believes that Integral Yoga is the ultimate of social activism. To lower the veils obscuring our relation to the Divine through discipline, to begin to see those veils being lowered in integral life, and to begin to see the possibility of lowering those veils through sympathetic, or better, empathetic action, is the beginning of the next stage in evolution. Again this is where Aurobindo simply extends the spirit of the Hindu tradition into realms that were not as widely understood in the 'smaller' ancient world. Aurobindo simply applies the spirit of the tradition to suit his experience with the modern world, a world in which social, global questions are increasingly significant. Many efforts are made by many people for social justice, Aurobindo’s own philosophy arose partly out of grave concern for changing India. But his answers come in the form of intense spiritual practice, a synthesizing practice that plays within the outer world but always remains rooted in its relationship to Divinity. The cultivation of spirit in oneself and in the larger social sphere is for Aurobindo the ultimate act of social concern. If, as the Gita illustrates, each human no matter their transgressions has the capacity for spiritual achievement then the logical extension of this would be the capacity for large scale group achievement...(conclusion to follow)...

The Bhagavad Gita and Aurobindo

...continued...This imbuing of spirit into the physical is rooted, for Aurobindo, in the Bhagavad Gita, while his adherence to evolution still distinguishes him from the Gita. Upon analyzing the Gita Aurobindo finds that it recognizes the significance of physical life but dissuades from its exclusive pursuit at the expense of moral, intellectual, aesthetic values. Aurobindo find that the Gita acknowledges the significance of established moral and aesthetic principles as significant in the growth of spiritual understanding but that ultimate truth is beyond such rigid standards. Organized religion and spiritual traditions, for Aurobindo, hold rays of light, glimpses of beauty and perfection, but, ultimately, one must find these truths in a personal manifest reality. Sri Aurobindo also saw in the Gita a respect for the path of the ascetic, the one compelled away from social life to live in sole union with the Divine. However, this also falls short of the steepest pinnacles of spiritual perfection in which the divine enters into all the realms of humanity including social and political. The life of the ascetic, in the Gita, fails the ultimate task of embedding all human action in the will of Divinity. The Gita, like Aurobindo , elucidates the divine human who has the ability to perform the work of God, like the soldier Arjuna, firm in transcendent worldly action. From here Aurobindo extends the Gita into evolutionary possibilities for the liberation of all humanity, for as the Gita brings hope to the individual for liberation why not also the collective?

Here again we see a slight expansion from Hindu tradition. Aurobindo is inspiring in his ability to take the tradition into modernity adapting for the purpose. Aurobindo remains true to the heart of the tradition and it seems that he succeeds in carrying out the spirit of Hinduism to its simple, logical, spiritual heights. If, according to the Gita, there is hope for every human no matter how wretched in their transgressions against the will of Spirit, why not also provide hope for humanity as a whole. Just as Aurobindo succeeded in offering the spirit of acceptance, inclusion and adaptation from the tradition to modernity, he succeeds in transmitting the message of the Gita and further the spirit of its cause by adapting it to the global community and the modern subject. Aurobindo seems to have the vast tradition, the yogis, the gurus of the past cheering him on into modernity. Aurobindo, at the same time, exemplifies the spirit of the Western exploration by pioneering new territory for the Indian tradition...(to be continued)...

Spiritual Evolution Continued: Inward and Outward

...(continued)...If, in his synthesis of the modern West with ancient Hinduism, Aurobindo succeeds in embodying the spirit of Hindu inclusion, he does so in contrast to one of its central concepts. This concept, the idea of the outer world as illusory, hindering our spiritual recognition, is common in many forms, in many Hindu traditions. It was a powerful tool to show the seeker that the finite world of sense pleasures and material acquisitions is a perilous place to expend one’s life force. In other words, concepts like 'Maya' helped the seeker to understand that the material world should not be the sole and primary arena for one’s action. For one, we will inevitably be torn from this material world by death. This tool helped prevent many thinkers from falling ill to the Western disease of spiritual, inner atrophy. Because so many people are easily entangled in the illusion of the permanence of material success, concepts liked Samsara act as warning signs against such entanglement. These concepts inspired great spiritual accomplishment, great mystical achievements. However, Aurobindo challenged them.

Aurobindo challenged the notions that the physical world was somehow faulty by opening up a discussion on the nature of the physical Universe as a sort of Divine play. Aurobindo argued that the world should not be looked at as a distrustful illusion because that would render the ultimate God, within us and everywhere around us, as in the Upanishads, as a deluded hallucinator. Concepts such as Maya do help to discourage entanglement within the material world at the expense of the spiritual. However, as one begins to witness the growth of spirit within so should one begin to see that same spirit within the myriad material manifestations. If one can play in the world of materials, while simultaneously understanding the world’s inherent Spirit, then the inner and the outer merge as one, as manifest Spirit. More than this, the natural world, the world of external appearances, was forever evolving for Aurobindo. He succeeds in merging one of the basic tenets of Western scientific observation, with the life and spirit of Eastern mystical observation. Man’s place in this divine play is as the closest creature to realizing the inherent Self Divinity. Humanity is the current height of a sort of spiritual evolution and humanity must realize the full potential of spiritual Self realization for this evolution to continue.
Although Aurobindo seems on the surface to break from Eastern tradition by asserting claims that were rooted in concepts as such as evolution, linear time and the material world, he remains consistent with a central theme of the mystical tradition of India, that the inner Atman, God at the center of the Self, God as the truest sense of the Self, is united with the true physical world. In other words this world is permeated by Spirit. This universe, this Creation, has divinity within everything. Aurobindo asserts that we are indeed part of the one ultimate reality as in the ancient example of the salt in salt water, and that we just need to transcend the limits of our invented personalities in order to live in unity with divinity. Aurobindo believed that humanity as a whole moves ceaselessly toward greater and greater spiritual understanding, that involvement in the physical world can help facilitate that advance and that the natural world stimulates us to further growth. This idea is more than a superficial break from tradition. This idea is truly a synthesis of Eastern with Western, unique in the major traditions of Indian thought. This spiritual evolution, and its manifestation, working itself out in the physical universe, is where Aurobindo distinguishes himself from most of standard Hindu tradition. Imbuing spirit into the physical evolution is also where Aurobindo distinguishes himself from most of accepted modern Western scientific thought...(more to come)

Spiritual Evolution, East and West

...(continued)...Aurobindo’s ability to include such ‘Western’ values into his philosophy is true to the Indian tradition which throughout history has made possible the inclusion of widely varying ideas. Few places in the world have fostered such diversity of thought over time. Hinduism adopted many concepts from Buddhism even though the Buddha’s teaching were partly formulated in critical response to some of the Orthodox Hindu concepts of the era. Hinduism included much of Jain thought which may have helped to encourage the devoted vegetarianism even though vegetarianism is contradicted in many ceremonial passages from the Vedas. Christian missionaries found great tolerance and respect for their work in India. Indians thought that the concept of Christ as the one God was perfectly in harmony with their many other traditional ‘one Gods’. Historically even the tensions with Islam were often harmonized and Muslims were befriended into Hindu culture. Aurobindo’s work is (in harmony with his own evolutionary conceptions) a natural extension, evolution, innovation of Hindu thought to include Modernity into its varied systems. Even as Aurobindo is expounding a doctrine of evolution he himself is embodying the ultimate spirit of Hindu tradition by harmonizing Modernity in the West with the strength of the Hindu spiritual tradition. His work seems to graciously invite the strange outward seeking tradition of the West to make itself at home in the vast house of spiritual inward seeking that is Hinduism.

Ironically as Aurobindo acts as the gracious host inviting a stranger into his vast traditional home, he acts as pioneer and explorer for the West trying to make sense of the perplexing mystical traditions in India. He embodies the pioneer spirit of the West which seems to be forever seeking new places to conquer, and, in turn, new harvests to reap. In this case the frontier is India’s mystical tradition, and the harvest is the Spirit that, for Aurobindo, permeates all existence. The West has continuously approached the lands of the world and its peoples as places to explore, conquer, and ‘tame’. This led Western culture to explore even beyond the limitations of our own atmosphere with vast space exploration. The work of Aurobindo encourages the Western mind to continue it exploration, to conquer the realms of Spirit, the realms of inward seeking. To explore the inner, to understand and tame the forces that are the inner frontiers, the world represented by the tradition of Hinduism, is issuing a challenge that should be enticing to the expanding West.
In this great meeting of East and West, Aurobindo at once praises Hinduism’s greatest strength, the exploration of all things spiritual, while at the same time exposing its greatest weakness, the tendency to become stagnantly preoccupied with bodiless mysticism. The answer to this problem is the tradition of outer development in the material realm as embodied in the Western model which Aurobindo at once praises for its material development while exposing its great weakness in the realm of Spiritual Devotion. Most problems in the Western model expand out a lack of insight into the Spirit beyond the form, the lack of attention to the motives behind outward material exploration have brought us such physical monstrosities as the atomic bomb. The ability of Aurobindo to synthesize the two world views is an impressive feat. In hindsight this synthesis as a solution to the difficulties of the two cultures seems like an obvious one. Perhaps, according to Aurobindo, this is precisely why the two worlds are meeting in such a way: natural evolution has brought them to the point where they must synthesize through spiritual evolution, this evolution bringing about the manifestation of Divine consciousness...(to be continued)...

Sri Aurobindo: Hinduism and Modernity

Indian scholars during the days of the British empire’s Indian occupation were faced with many philosophical dilemmas. The root of these dilemmas was a reexamination of the role of philosophy and religion in growing modernity. Indian thinkers, who had long been at the forefront of inner expertise, were now faced with growing outer, social and political, upheaval. Most aspects of daily life were rapidly changing and thus the significance of the outer life in relation to spiritual pursuits was also rapidly changing and growing. A number of innovators responded to the cultural upheaval with new approaches to the thoughtful life. These approaches incorporated much of ancient wisdom, tailoring it to fit a new era. The prominent philosophy of Sri Aurobindo was especially responsive to the new intersection of old and new, East and West. His clear vision of the role of the spiritual scholar emerged from a synthesis of this massive cultural transformation. His ideas provide a distinct guideline for the role of the scholar in unfolding modernity and post modernity. As many ideas and systems became submerged in the growing tide of Western expansion Sri Aurobindo focused on Spirit as the unifying evolutionary force that could harmonize the cultural transformation.
The movement of Europe and subsequently America into the sphere of traditional cultures fascinated Aurobindo. In this he saw an evolutionary emergence of higher spiritual realities that could become manifest in tangible social and cultural realms. While some saw the need to overcome the hindrance of outdated systems, others felt compelled to protect tradition in isolation. Aurobindo, on the other hand, transcended the dualism to seek to establish a synthesis of the old with the new, the inner with the outer, East with West. He oriented his philosophical practice toward fusing the pursuit of spiritual experience with the pursuit of material advancement, ‘progress’. In this sense ‘scientific evolution’ became a ‘social-spiritual evolution’. Aurobindo focused on infusing the Life into the Western mode of growth, while simultaneously inspiring movement into the analysis of material growth, change, evolution in the Eastern models of spiritual, religious devotion. In this sense he was an Ambassador to both the traditional spiritual East as well as the materialistic scientific West.

To better act as Ambassador, Aurobindo accepted ideas such as linear, progressive time that had previously been quite rare in traditional Indian thought. Many traditional cultures perceived time in cycles; cycles of sunrise and sunset, summer and winter, full and new moon, birth and death. However, Aurobindo has become a modern exemplar of the inclusive values inherent in Hinduism by allowing linear, progressive time to co-exist with cyclical time. The concept that two ‘mutually exclusive ideas’, in Modern terms, can both be equally and harmoniously true is a signature of Hindu thought. For example, that there are many ‘one and only Gods’ poses no problem for traditional Hindu thought. Aurobindo can at once look at the world as cyclical, waxing and waning, as well as linear, evolutionary. It is obvious to anyone with eyes that time is cyclical. We see the sun rise and set, the seasons and moon wax and wane. It is also obvious to anyone who is born, grows into adolescence and decays with age that time is linear. It is equally obvious that trees, plants and animals also are born grow and die. The ancients emphasized the cyclical nature of reality because they were very closely related to the intricacies of natural, cyclical time. They intuited that memory, to the spiritual adept often feels like an illusory dream. Modern man emphasizes linear time because he is closely related to acquisition, growth, ‘progress’, and development of materials...more to come on this subject...check back in the coming days...

Spiritual Energy: 'Righteousness Ch'i' from True Understanding

When we cultivate the understanding of the superior person, we can observe the outside change with detachment. The comings and goings of outside change are just ripples on the surface of a spiritual ocean. When we can achieve this sort of spiritual objectivity we can see the world as it is, without being swayed by desire for pleasure or aversion to pain. It is then that we can feel the wind of the one ch’i blow through this world. From this perspective we can feel free and confident to do what we must do, to practice 'i', righteousness, without attaching to the results, achieving a spiritual energy that Mencius called 'righteousness ch'i'. Our Heaven’s destiny, our frame, is the field of our action. When we take what we cannot or should not change as fate and act on what can or should transform as our destiny, we need not be perturbed by the comings and goings of change. When we can clear away attachments and live accumulating 'righteousness ch'i', accomplishing our daily work, returning to our true life. We can continuously let go of all the aspects of life that we should not use and remain loyal to our destiny. We can let outside people and things go their own way, so that they will naturally move with the changes, moving towards what they are drawn towards without our obstructing them, moving towards what they have attracted into their own lives, leaving them freer, as well as ourselves. Superior people do this by allowing unwholesome influences to pass and moving closer to the good. This way they keep to the constancy of their true path.
Everyday people are coming and going, crossing paths. People are on the move. Different paths, different influences, different desires cross and re-cross each other. Superior people simply return their minds to the root of the principle of change, 'the same source' that is the origin of all paths. Superior people follow the simple and easy, concentrating on their own path as the Way to bring about transformation. When we understand the principle of change and our position in it, then we will understand the value of practicing virtue, as superior people to deal with change.

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