Problems Peculiar to Our Collectivity

Problems are sometimes accentuated in our Ashram community because our aim is to practise a 'collective yoga'; and this implies that individual sadhaks will not only have to contend against the difficulties of their own personal nature but fight many problems as representatives of the whole group. Because of the fact of inner solidarity with all, each member of the collectivity is at all times exposed to the influences coming from all others and if he is not vigilant and strong enough to detect and nullify any adverse influence trying to overpower him, he will surely be lowered down in his consciousness, and willy-nilly he will start copying others in their unspiritual tendencies, forgetting in the process his own original aspiration. And this has been the tragic fate of many promising sadhaks. Here we may recall some memorable lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri:

Page-45

"Heaven's call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds;

The doors of light are sealed to common mind,

And earth's needs nail to earth the human mass,

Only in an uplifting hour of stress

Men answer to the touch of greater things:

Or, raised by some strong hand to breathe heaven-air,

They slide back to the mud from which they climbed;

In the mud of which they are made, whose law they know

They joy in safe return to a friendly base,

And, though something in them weeps for the glory lost

And greatness murdered, they accept their fall.

To be the common man they think the best,

To live as others live is their delight."

(Savitri, Book XI Canto 1, p. 689)

This risk of progressive fall in consciousness over the years and the readiness to lead a routine existence confronts many a sadhak in the Ashram. And this is not the morbid imagination of a pessimist mind; it is very much true to fact and cannot escape the notice of any one who would keep his eyes open. And this risk arises because of the situation of many heterogeneous elements coming close together in the short space of our Ashram collectivity. Sri Aurobindo has alluded to this difficulty in a significant passage of The Life Divine:

"It might be that, in such a concentration of effort, all the difficulties of the change would present themselves with a concentrated force; for each seeker, carrying in himself the possibilities but also the imperfections of a world that has to be transformed, would bring in not only his capacities but his difficulties and the opposition of the old nature

Page-46

and, mixed together in the restricted circle of a small and close communal life, these might assume a considerably enhanced force of obstruction which would tend to counter-balance the enhanced power and concentration of the forces making for the evolution. This is a difficulty that has broken in the past all the efforts of mental man to evolve something better and more true and harmonious than the ordinary mental and vital life." (The Life Divine, p. 1062)

But whatever may have happened in the past, the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have undertaken this difficult task. For that they have brought down the Supramental Truth-Consciousness with its absolute potency into the earth nature and this will surely overcome the apparently insuperable difficulty of transformation and help to establish a perfect spiritual society here.

Yes, surely it will do so but it may not be in a few years' time, not even in a few decades'. For human nature will not admit of such a radical transformation so easily. Has not Sri Aurobindo reminded us? -

"It is the nature of the human being - whoever told you it was an easy job?" (Nirodbaran's Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, p. 272)

"If you want to change things, you will have to change humanity first and I can assure you you will find it a job. Yes, even to change 150 people in an Ashram and get them to surmount their instincts." (Ibid., pp. 564-65)

Sri Aurobindo found it difficult "to change 150 people" in the Ashram in 1936. And now we are more than 1200, almost approaching the number 1500 including the devotees permanently settled here. So, if we occasionally see some difficulty flaring up these days, should we get unduly disheartened and lose faith in the validity of our ideal? We should rather redouble our effort to become

Page-47

more sincere in our aspiration and more steadfast in our practice.