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One of the great proponents and teachers of Vedic knowledge in the 20th Century was Sri Aurobindo. As Aurobindo Ghose he was English educated--his father wanting him and his brother as removed from being 'Indian' as possible--a scholar, author, professor, philosopher, and Indian freedom fighter. He was the first political figure publicly to call for India's independence from England and he was arrested three times for sedition and conspiracy. Though he was eventually acquitted of all charges, he spent a year in jail during which time he meditated and studied Vedic texts and, in his words, received inner teachings on the finer points of yoga. When he emerged from jail, he no longer was interested in politics; rather, his revolutionary zeal had been translated to the realm of the spirit.
Sri Aurobindo's writing is dense and somewhat dated--his English so exacting and precise--but wise and brilliant and obviously the work of a man whose life was the laboratory for his exploration of consciousness. On my first trip to India, I spent hours poring over his main writings, sometimes spending an hour on one paragraph, reading and re-reading it until I was able to follow his thought process, at least seemingly so. And this reading was done in books printed nearly in miniature, their pages only three inches by five inches, my theory that spiritual work should be hard. This was my introduction to the ideas of the Veda. Given my sense of self at the time, or lack of it as the case may be, this was the only way I could approach the realm of the spirit: through the workings of the intellect. The only experience I had of life that made sense, that was other than painful, was my experience as a creative being during those times I was able to work, and in the realm of my mind. I was nowhere close to understanding what to Sri Aurobindo seemed like common sense, but I was able to follow, however slowly, like a kid brother, just beginning kindergarten, tagging along and trying to walk like his older brother until the door to the high school shuts in his face, but not before catching just a glimpse of the magical world that one day he may be able to enter.
Though my attraction to Sri Aurobindo began through his writings, my complete trust of him as a teacher was founded in those qualities that also helped me to begin to apply his ideas in my life.
- after prison he moved to and settled in the township of Pondicherry in South India, solely because, as a French protectorate, he would be safe from the British. As such it also was traditionally the home of pirates;
- there are several references to Sri Aurobindo's lack of patience with students who treated him as having been born enlightened, of not having had to work for his level of consciousness, to which he responded that, if he had not had to work for it, it would not be worth anything as a teaching. What would he have to give if he didn't know from first-hand experience the cost of his growth?
- he saw life as a series of opportunities to apply his theories and to work toward his goal of "The Life Divine"--the true and full expression of God in and through man, here on this plane; from this, and finally, and perhaps most importantly to a neophyte such as myself who really understood only the barest minimum of his ideas, his insistence that:
- "All life is Yoga." This is the epigraph of one of his major works, The Synthesis of Yoga, and is contained in its first chapters. I took it to mean, and continue to take it to mean, that no matter what we are doing, there is a spiritual aspect to it. There is a way to apply spiritual precepts to it. There is a way to use it as a part of our sadhana. The spiritual work of our life.
Today I will bring an idea of divine nature into each encounter, each experience of my day.
Study Session, outside Pondicherry, South India All material copyright Jeff Kober |
