You. Me. Today’s mystics?
The ascetic need no longer shun the world, but could find the true path even on the way home from the office, says Mohini Kent
In the 21st century, when religion has lost its meaning for many and science wants to map the mind of God, mysticism sounds a tad irrelevant. We dismiss miracles as mere myths and measure the quality of life with material possessions — homes, cars, private planes. In such an age, what possible role can there be for a seer? Our materialistic society seems to have marginalized the message of the mystic.
But then the world markets crashed and the “greed is good” ethos of bankers and hedge fund managers created a tidal backlash that submerged the global financial edifice. Money lost value, banks could no longer be trusted and there was little security anywhere. How does one survive such stress? Is it time to return to the mystics, for they can put our lives into perspective and hold up a mirror to the future?
None has done so more dramatically than Aurobindo, a thoroughly modern seer. A brilliant student, he won a scholarship to Cambridge and got top marks in the Classical Tripos exams. A polyglot, he mastered Latin, Greek, Italian, French and Spanish, as well as Sanskrit, Marathi, Bengali and Hindustani. After his return to India, he joined the freedom struggle but in 1910, he settled permanently in Pondicherry and began an intense spiritual exploration. The fruit of his spiritual labours is a blinding vision of the future of man.
His ideas put our lives into perspective. Nature has toiled for millions of years to create man but the story doesn’t end there. There will be another evolutionary leap. From man’s life today, will come a more universalized one – lived not in this body but in a body of light. A body without organs and without the base instincts of hunger and lust.
The mind of man may have reached its evolutionary end and we are now poised for the development of a higher mind and the higher supra-mental consciousness. Aurobindo undertook the onerous task of establishing a link between us and a loftier consciousness. We are privy to his extraordinary inner journey because he wrote about it in his epic Savitri. He made it possible for us to walk on the new road he built. A few of us may already be on our way.
How can you or I play a part in the next evolution? Modern life is busy but the modern mystic’s vision does not exclude the world. There’s no call to shun the world for asceticism, to shrink away making and spending money. We can go about our daily business, hold down jobs, earn, cope with the chaos of life and still prepare the future of the human race. We can do this by incorporating physical, mental and spiritual practices into our daily routine. All life is yoga, Aurobindo wrote.
The transformation has to be an integral one – of mind, soul and body. The body is to play a major role in the total perfection of man. There must be greater emphasis on physical exercise and a physical culture that will help us arrive at the ideal proportions of limbs. Physical harmony and balance is the first indispensable condition. One way is visualization, to see yourself in perfect health.
Mental culture is the other side of the coin. This includes transforming emotions that weaken us – fear, unhappiness, suspicion, envy, anger – into those that make us strong – courage, moral generosity and equanimity. Aurobindo does not call upon us to meditate for hours. Just half-an-hour a day will do, so long as it is set aside for meditation and self-observation. It is useful to fix a time to meditate and stick to it. Meditation must be dynamic and purposeful. It’s not easy at first because thoughts tug at us like fractious children as soon as we shut our eyes. Soon, we find that most of them are second-hand thoughts, garnered from TV, magazines and other people. Slowly and with practice, the inner chatter dies down.
Evolution is an adventure of consciousness. Consciousness is not something to be discovered outside – it is within us and just needs to be nurtured. Normally, we are so busy with our outer lives that we have little time for ourselves, but we need to take a step back and examine ourselves. Yoga is the science and art of becoming conscious.
First, we must evaluate our true worth and neither over-estimate nor underestimate ourselves. We cannot miss the truth of our being. We also need to recognize the worth of others and have moral generosity.
Individuals evolve constantly. What was considered ‘right’ many years ago, no longer holds. Aurobindo refers to seven sorts of ignorance and seven sorts of knowledge. In the ordinary consciousness, we meet life through desires. Desires cloud our judgement and obscure the soul. We need to differentiate between needs and desires. Instead of trying to eliminate desire, we can try to change its nature.
Today, man is a “mental being enslaved to life and matter, (and) to be the slave of the mind is to be slave of the false, the limited and the apparent. The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains. This is the paradox and inextricable knot of our nature”.
We have to grow into the next evolution of superman, into a more divine life. Each one of us can hasten the process of evolution by consciously cooperating to bring it about. This is our chance to collaborate in our own destiny. It can only happen if all of us realize that we can be modern-day mystics.
Source : 07 June 2009, Times of India
