Sri Aurobindo endorsed the secular tradition as the best course for contemporary polity

Re: Sri Aurobindo and the Future of Humanity--About Avatarhood
by Rich on Sun 24 Aug 2008 10:13 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

Deshpande, I want to thank you for providing support to demonstrate my thesis that in her patronizing insertion of religion into what was overtly declared to be a yoga which renounced religion, that Mother helped create the religion of integral yoga. In the entire train of these post I have not seen one word about the inner avatar or the inner guru but rather only a stream of incessant monologue about the outer avatar whose relationship to us is one of lessor beings venerating a distant Godhead.

Of course at the end of the day, like any other religion that asserts their gurus or founders to be divinity, there is not a shred of evidence you can offer to support your arguments that they were Gods. The best you can do is to supply texts which can only refer to themselves in endless tautology.

Like the poor deluded population in Auroville who at the time of her death where wholly perplexed as to what to do next, because they thought she would live forever, what remains are only dysfunctional Institutions which attempt to fan the flames of a sacred candle whose sacrificial smoke has already vanished in the heavens.

You are correct in your assertion that claims to Divinity can not be supported by a biographer or historian. Rather, these claims are best made by the pendantic Acolyte who scours every text from their papal source to locate those sections which reinforce their beliefs that they are indeed the “chosen ones” who are following the “true -evolutionary- path”. Unfortunately a closer inspection of this path, reveals it to be one not heading toward a new future, but rather one bound to the endless repetitions of the past.

Although I find my inspiration in the texts of Sri Aurobindo and have derived inexplicable revelations from them, I do so in honoring the secular tradition I have grown up in - and which Sri Aurobindo endorsed as the best course for contemporary polity - Thomas Paine one of the American founding fathers declared ones religious experience to be a revelation but the communication of that experience to others as mere “hearsay”.

As with all claims of folks who assert that their's is the true path and only their gurus are divine, all that has been conveyed here as Avataric revelation is at the end of the day merely gossiping about the Divine; and of course the most appropriate thing to do when one encounters gossip is to simply say no more. rc

Re: Sri Aurobindo and the Future of Humanity: Integral Yoga--a Religion?
by RY Deshpande on Sun 24 Aug 2008 10:24 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

• Has Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga become a Religion?

Perhaps this question is quite irrelevant for the spiritual practitioner and one could simply set it aside. However, this is exactly what some of the rationalist toilers and thinkers would tend to believe, believe rather than argue about it, that today’s Integral Yoga is just a religion. They consider that the regular Hindu rites and rituals have crept into it, that these have become an integral part of the Integral Yoga. They go even a step farther and maintain that these were allowed to become so by Sri Aurobindo himself!

Perhaps all that began with the Mother when she put the Master on a distant high and lonely pedestal. Prior to this, Sri Aurobindo’s early associates were not disciples but his colleagues and comrades who had come here along with him. In fact one of the group photos of the time (1914) has them all together, two seated in chairs on both side of him and three standing behind. The Mother made him the Guru and desired them to respect him so. In her very first meeting with him, on 29 March 1914, she prostrated full length at his feet and just sat in front him on a low stool.