Vol. VII, Issue 7
Author: Beloo Mehra
Heaven in its rapture dreams of perfect earth,
Earth in its sorrow dreams of perfect heaven.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, p. 684
Sri Aurobindo reveals the essential impulse working from behind the human civilisation’s progressive march toward its ultimate destiny. That destiny is to transform earthly life into a divine life, to bring down the kingdom of God on earth, to establish the true Ram-rajya, the true reign of dharma. All these are different conceptions we give to the same aspiration hidden deep in the heart of humanity – that of perfecting Life and World.
Why is this aspiration there in the human heart? Because it is in truth a Will of the Divine, to make the earth a heaven. Perfecting Life and World may sound presumptuous to our limited mind and reason. Especially when with our limited human consciousness all we see around is chaos, conflict and disharmony.
What we need is the capability to see beneath and behind the surface march of humanity. We need to acquire a vision that is free of mental preferences or ideological reasoning, that can perceive the larger forces at work.
In most of the old Yogas, the aim has been to draw back altogether from life and enter into a greater divine Truth where one lives no longer in the mind and the ego, and grows into the inmost truth of one’s being above mind, life and body.
But in Integral Yoga, “the aim is to transform mind, life and body into an expression of this divine Truth and to make the outward as well as the inward life embody it” (Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, 35: 728). This is definitely a new turn and an inevitable culmination of the gradual unfolding of Divine Truth in manifestation.
The Mother reminds us – “in the integral yoga it is in life that the Divine must be found, not outside life” (CWM, 8: 44). The emphasis is on a complete change and transformation of outer nature as the goal of Integral Yoga.
The Current Issue
Speaking of Sri Aurobindo as the greatest yogi of our age, Amal Kiran once wrote that the Integral Yoga as elaborated by Sri Aurobindo and set on a manifold practical basis promises the emergence of a new state of consciousness by which every one of our persisting problems, individual and collective, will be radically solved. As we come to the last issue of our exploration of The New Ideal given to us by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we feature another inspiring essay by Amal Kiran.
Many seekers when they come to Integral Yoga, after having been exposed to or having walked the paths of other Yogas or religio-spiritual traditions, wrongly understand that just because Sri Aurobindo spoke strongly against any kind of sectarianism it automatically means that Sri Aurobindo also considered his ideal to be realisable by means of the past religions and the old Yogas.
In this very important writing titled The Past Religions, the Old Yogas and Sri Aurobindo’s Ideal, presented in 2 parts, Amal Kiran helps us probe deeper and reflect carefully on Sri Aurobindo’s central stress on a new life, a transcendence of the spiritual past as well of the past in any other form, though in that spiritual past there are naturally some helpful hints for the new life.
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The New World is going to be the World of Truth. In a short but profound essay titled Cling to Truth, Nolini Kanta Gupta highlights the significance of clinging to truth – in every small or big movement within and without. We have excerpted this from Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta, Vol. 4, pp. 292-294.
This issue also includes a new offering in the Children’s Corner – visualisation of a tale told by the Mother on the significance of creating order in life. Readers will also find a few insights from the Mother on the deeper value of order.
We hope our readers will enjoy going through these offerings in this issue. As always, we offer this work at the lotus feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
In gratitude,
Beloo Mehra (for Renaissance Editorial Team)
~ Design: Beloo Mehra
