After reading the introduction to “The Conditions of the Synthesis of Yoga,” by Sri Aurobindo
I have the following quick thoughts:
Aurobindo writes well and I would recommend him to anyone wanting to be apply themselves to Yoga, but you will not be surprised to find that I also find the highest possible anthropomorphism involved in his finding the highest evolved being possible in Man, by man identifying Godhood with the God Within, which all the schools of Yoga of the East do, and which pure Christianity does as well, with the Father Within preached by Jesus Christ. The material world must be ascetically cast aside or blocked (or “surpassed” in Yogic terms) to see the God Within. This is a very old tradition.
But real Godhood is evolved to materially and super-materially, and Man must be surpassed, far surpassed. The God Within as seen by the Yogis is not the Godhood of evolution but is “only” the ascetically derived hedonistic condition of internal bliss, however profound, defined anthropomorphically as “God” by the Yogis---this can be an arrogant assumption and even dangerous if it blocks (as it has done) mankind’s actual path to real Godhood through material-supermaterial evolution.
We need to move beyond such anthropomorphism of God. The way we can retain the blissful Father Within, and not cast it out as a wasteful game of hedonism, is to identify the God Within, and its bliss, as an involutionary, not evolutionary, symbolic-experience of what real Godhood will be like when, and if, we evolve to real Godhood in the cosmos. This is the Twofold Path, which doesn't reject the involutionary inward path of Yoga but applies it in the evolutionary outward path to supermaterial Godhood.
Posts
I'm surprised you didn't see Sri Aurobindo's agreement with your view regarding "beyond man" - the title of one of the biographies of Sri Aurobindo is "Beyond Man", in fact. His whole life was very much about rejecting the traditional ascetic path of the yogis, from his early days as a political activist and beyond.
ReplyDeleteYou might look at the last several chapters of Synthesis to get a sense of this .I think you'll enjoy it.
Thanks for your civilized comment.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that Sri Aurobindo 's idea of God Beyond Man is beyond materialism, and so his Godhood is not my Godhood. Evolution for him seems to be really involution to the God within, which I think is symbolic, or an experience of bliss that present man can achieve through Aurobindo's idea of “evolution” (he seems to have acheieved it) But that is not the same as biological evolution to supermaterial Godhood.
I think we can keep both the inward and outward God, but I consider real Godhood to be reached through material and supermaterial evolution, and the God man can see now as only symbolic of the Godhood reached beyond man by way of evolution. Godhood this way is seen as a living object, or objects, of material/supermaterial evolution.
I don't want to downplay the great difficult of ascetically experiencing the God within, but that is still a God of man and not Godhood beyond man in the way I see it.
Let me add this:
DeleteSri Aurobindo sees evolution primarily as an ongoing evolution of consciousness, a path away from “gross” materialism. But that is the same non-material God of old, not really involved in material evolution. One does nor evolve materially to the non-material, one blocks materiality which most ascetics think is gross and useless and ungodly. But I do not think that, I speak of supermateriality, not spiritualism.
Hi Ken - there is nothing in Sri Aurobindo that involves rejecting matter, nor is God understood as non-material. The Mother, his colleague, always said, "Salvation is physical." In fact, Her later teaching is often referred to as "Divine Materialism."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you've actually read Sri Aurobindo? your descriptions of him sound like they've come from secondary sources. You might try reading The Life Divine, but be careful about bringing in assumptions about matter without opening your mind to the possibility he is using words very differently from what you're used to (one suggestion I often make is to read his writing without putting too much attention on the conventional meaning of words, but to read it as music - material music, you might say!)
I think Aurobindo's God is non-material but nevertheless is in the usual ascetic material mind. My Godhood is supermaterial, a higher evolved version of life in general, which is the main goal of life and evolution. But your good comments make me want to reexamine Aurobindo, and I will at some point.
Delete