A. Frequent Absence from Ashram Life Many ashramites have taken to the habit of leaving their field of work in the Ashram and going away elsewhere in and out of season for a short or a long period of time and for reasons not at all connected with their avowed intention of building up a dedicated spiritual life. Their consciousness has become so insensitive that they feel no difference in them whether they are physically staying in the Ashram or dwelling elsewhere in an alien atmosphere. It is not a day too early that the Board of Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram has sounded a note of warning in this regard in the brochure they have brought out on 1.1.95

PUBLISHERS' NOTE We have already brought out four research publications coming from the pen of Jugal Kishore Mukherjee, one of the seniormost members of our teaching staff. They are as follows: (1) The Destiny of the Body (The Vision and the Realisation in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga); (2) From Man Human to Man Divine (Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Evolutionary Destiny of Man); (3) Sri Aurobindo: The Smiling Master (Humour in Sri Aurobindo's Writings); (4) Sri Aurobindo's Poetry and Sanskrit Rhetoric (Ideational Figures of Speech in Sri Aurobindo's Poetry). In this 125th year of Sri Aurobindo's birth we feel happy to bring to the readers' notice another publication fr

The Problem of Harmony in Our Ashram Life Complaint is at times murmured in some quarters, even among many sadhaks of the Ashram, that there is not much of harmony in our group life; what is there, they say, is that the individual inmates have some sort of vital attachment to some and an attitude of indifference towards the rest. Many recall the Upanishadic utterance - saṁ-gacchadhvaṁ saṁvadadhvaṁ saṁ vo manāṅsi jānatām: "Let us move in harmony, speak in harmony, be united in our heart to know together" - and feel aggrieved to find the supposed absence of this united feeling and thought amongst the Ashram inmates. But we must know that this la

FOREWORD Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, has attracted the attention of innumerable minds - saints', philosophers', thinkers', leaders', pilgrims', visitors', tourists', commoners' - in varied ways. Quite a good deal has also been written on it and about it in meaningful perspectives. And yet there arises now and then the necessity of turning to an intrinsic study of this Ashram which has a world-wide reputation for its uniqueness, particularly since it is clearly pronounced to be not simply a peace resort, though of course peace dwells here natively, but a place of concentrated endeavour for spiritual perfection in life, aiming not at liberation from phenome

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM: ITS ROLE, RESPONSIBILITY AND FUTURE DESTINY Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny (AN INSIDER'S PERSONAL VIEW) JUGAL KISHORE MUKHERJEE SRI AUROBINDO INTERNATIONAL CENTRE OF EDUCATION PONDICHERRY First Published: 15 August 1997 125th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo (Typeset in 11/14 Palatino) © Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1997 Published by Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Pondicherry 605002 Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press Pondicherry 605002 PRINTED IN INDIA The whole thing has take

B. Urge to Procure Personal Money Another timely reminder the Board of Trustees of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram has recently issued. It deals with some Page-75 sadhaks' urge to procure money by various means. This is what the Trust Board has said: "The inmates will employ all their time for Ashram Work. They will not take up any outside work or business. "Ashramites should not involve themselves in private or personal business transactions or taking up part-time jobs outside the Ashram. How can this be reconciled if one is living totally, entirely for Mother's work here? Naturally, also, one cannot use the Ashram's name and address for any

The Misgivings It is not that some danger signals are not there at all. Some unhealthy trends have lately set in in the Ashram in a Page-14 rather generalised way. Are they in the nature of a passing catharsis? Or pathological symptoms of the forthcoming decay and decline of our group as a spiritual institution? Only the Mother and Sri Aurobindo know the answer. But on our part we have to be on our guard so that the apparent lowering of values may not lead to an irreversible degeneration of the Ashram. We know there have already been sounded in some very responsible and respectable quarters some honest misgivings about the future destiny of the Sri Aurobindo

-009_Sri Aurobindo^s Yoga and Group-life.htm Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and Group-life To introduce in a succinct as well as authentic way the fundamentals of the Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, we cannot do better than quote in extenso from an article entitled "The Teaching of Sri Aurobindo" written by Sri Aurobindo himself in 1934. Here are some excerpts from that article germane to the question we have been discussing: "Behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. "All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain separativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and

Relationships in the Transitional Period What we have portrayed above is the ultimate goal to realise, a goal sure to be realised one day but - it is realistic to admit - not in the immediate future. In the meantime, what sort of relationships should the Ashramites seek to establish in their collective life? Now, what the sadhaks are expected to avoid and what to cultivate have been made abundantly clear by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in their various writings. If we become sincere in our effort to put into active practice all that they have prescribed, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram would be much nearer to its true destiny than what it is today. Here are

By Way of Explanation Death! Oh that ominous word and still more ominous fact of universal existence! And Fate and Karma! those two chilling ideas that fill the weak human heart with anxious thoughts! And finally Rebirth! and the trepidant query: Will I come back upon earth again in a new human body? Or, is all an eternal zero and silence after the dissolution of my present physical body? There is not a human being who never asks himself some such questions even for once in his lifetime. Death is a constant phenomenon facing man with its grim ruthlessness. Who is there amongst us who has not encountered death in his family or amongst his friends a