Freedom and Discipline in the Ashram

The establishment of overall harmony and concord in our Ashram community and the building up of an ideal group life here is surely a realisation that would require sustained

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effort of long duration. This cannot be expected in a few years' time or even in a few decades'. So let us not be overhasty in trying to "achieve" this concord by any means proper or improper, for that is bound to lead to failure and frustration. In our ignorant enthusiasm we may be tempted to adopt some mental and external measures to establish conformity in our Ashram life by unduly curtailing the freedom of the constituent individuals. But this attempt cannot succeed by the very nature of things. It will lead sooner or later to some moribund uniformity and stagnation or to some authoritarian steam-rollering whose end-result will be a lifeless mechanisation. And surely that is not what we have set out to achieve. If we hope to build here an ideal group-life in conformity with the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's Vision, we have to be very clear in our mind about the respective places freedom and discipline should occupy in the ordering of our Ashram community.

It is necessary to remember at the very outset that any attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is always liable to be vitiated by the imperfections of the individual seekers, also by the intrusion of the unregenerate mental, vital and physical consciousness into the higher truth that is seeking to manifest in the community. The question is, how to neutralise this danger? An increasing standardisation, a fixing of all into a common mould in order to ensure harmony and concord is the mental method of solving the problem. But does it adequately and satisfactorily solve the problem? Let us listen to what Sri Aurobindo has to say on this point:

"... the method that is being employed is... a forced compression and imposed unanimity of mind and life and a mechanical organisation of the communal existence. A unanimity of this kind can only be maintained by a compression of all freedom of thought and life, and that

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must bring about either the efficient stability of a termite civilisation or a drying up of the springs of life and a swift or slow decadence. It is through the growth of consciousness that the collective soul and its life can become aware of itself and develop; the free play of mind and life is essential for the growth of consciousness: for mind and life are the soul's only instrumentation until a higher instrumentation develops; they must not be inhibited in their action or rendered rigid, unplastic and unprogressive. The difficulties or disorders engendered by the growth of the individual mind and life cannot be healthily removed by the suppression of the individual; the true cure can only be achieved by his progression to a greater consciousness in which he is fulfilled and perfected." (The Life Divine, p. 1057)

Luckily for our Ashram as it is constituted and as it functions, there is not much fear of any standardisation or mechanisation of its life, or of any undue restriction being placed on the spontaneous growth of its members. And this should be its mode of functioning even in the future. Adapting some words of Sri Aurobindo as occuring in The Synthesis of Yoga (p. 184), we may say that the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, representing as far as possible the individual Ashramites' best self and helping them to realise it, would respect the freedom of each of its members and maintain itself not by rules and coercion but by the free and spontaneous consent of its constituent members.

And this is perfectly all right so far as the majority of its members are concerned. But what about the others, however few they be in number, who have not developed any capacity for self-discipline and hence become a destabilising factor for the whole collectivity? There should no doubt be in the Ashram for all its members total freedom to grow in consciousness and realise their spiritual destiny in their own way. But that does not mean that there should

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be licence for any member to injure the interests of the group, to disturb others in their effort at self-perfection or to corrupt, pollute and lower the Ashram atmosphere by his or her unspirirual example. And there may be some in whom the lower part of their being is "random, wayward, self-assertive" and unwilling to accept any discipline other than its own idea or impulse. Speaking of this part, Sri Aurobindo writes:

"Its defects even from the beginning stand in the way of the efforts of the higher vital to impose on the nature a truly regenerating tapasya. This habit of disobedience and disregard of discipline is so strong that it does not always need to be deliberate; the response to it seems to be immediate, irresistible and instinctive." (Letters on Yoga, p. 1308)

Sri Aurobindo remarks that this constant indiscipline is a radical obstacle to sadhana and "the worst possible example to others." (Ibid.) Sri Aurobindo has reminded us that "perfection does not consist in everybody being a law to himself" (Ibid., p. 863); and discipline is absolutely essential in "the exceedingly difficult work" the Ashram represents. (The Mother, p. 228)

Sri Aurobindo has explained in detail in one of his most significant letters entitled "The Mother and the Ashram's Discipline" why order and discipline should form an integral element in the Ashram group-life which aspires to embody his life-work in one of its important applied aspects. Here are some excerpts from that letter:

"You seem to say that people should be allowed complete freedom with only such discipline as they choose to impose upon themselves; that might do if the only thing to be done were for each individual to get some inner realisation and life did not matter or if there were no collective life or work or none that had any importance.

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But this is not the case here. We have undertaken a work which includes life and action and the physical world. In what I am trying to do, the spiritual realisation is the first necessity, but it cannot be complete without an outer realisation also in life, in men, in this world. Spiritual consciousness within but also spiritual life without. ... Discipline is necessary for the overcoming of the ego and the mental preferences and the rajasic vital nature, as a help to it at any rate. ... While the present state of things exists, by the abandonment or the leaving out of discipline except such as people choose or not choose to impose upon themselves, the result would be failure and disaster." (The Mother, p. 229)

Sri Aurobindo remarked in 1945: "I do not agree myself with him in the idea that there is perfect discipline in the Ashram; on the contrary, there is a great lack of it, much indiscipline, quarreling and self-assertion. ... it is only the Mother's authority, the frame of work she has given and her skill in getting incompatibilities to act together that has kept things going." (The Mother, pp. 228, 229)

This was in 1945. And what is the state of affairs now in the year 1995, especially when both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have withdrawn from the physical plane and when new unprepared people who have had no acquaintance with the Mother's way of working are joining the Ashram in large numbers?

The Mother herself has said: "As long as I was physically present among you all, my presence was helping you to achieve this mastery over the ego and so it was not necessary for me to speak to you about it individually. But now this effort must become the basis of each individual's existence, more especially for those of you who have a responsible position and have to take care of others. The leaders must always set the example, the leaders must

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always practise the virtues they demand from those who are in their care..." (On Education, CWM Vol. 12, pp. 357-58)

There is no harm admitting that lately there has grown in the Ashram a tendency to confuse freedom with permissiveness. Some inmates, old and new, do not feel any compunction in breaking the healthy discipline of the collective life or even in introducing injurious innovations. How to check this trend? If allowed a free course, this tendency is bound to grow more and more with the passage of time and infect more and more people here. Compromise and dilution will then set in and the Ashram may end up by losing its essential spiritual character.

A great responsibility devolves upon the Ashram authorities and various Departmental Heads in the matter of striking a happy synthesis of freedom and discipline. There should be in our Ashram no attempt at standardisation and establishing comformity all around. But at the same time any attempt by some wayward persons to injure the central spirit of this unique spiritual institution will have to be discouraged.

We Ashramites should never forget that enlightened self-discipline is the precondition for asserting one's right to enjoy and exercise freedom. Let us be guided at all times by the following words of Sri Aurobindo if we would aspire to be deserving members of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram:

"We must feel and obey the compulsion of the Spirit if we would establish our inner right to escape other compulsion; we must make our lower nature the willing slave, the conscious and illumined instrument or the ennobled but still self-subjected portion, consort or partner of the divine Being within us, for it is that subjection which is the condition of our freedom, since spiritual freedom is not the egoistic assertion of our separate mind and life but obedience

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to the Divine truth in ourself and our members and in all around us." (The Human Cycle, p. 242)