Page 50 - NAMAH-Oct-2020

Namah Vol. 28, Issue 3, 15th October 2020

lapse into laziness or inertia but can discover because you worked for someone else. Are
the wholeness and beauty of life behind we not to work for ourselves too? For our
all externalities. This is needed both for aesthetic mind, for our inner being and for
adults and children. The pandemic can be our soul deep inside that carries the Truth
seen to provide an excellent opportunity for of our being?” They did not reply. Some of
introspection, self-development, creativity them hung their heads in shame.
and personal growth.
Epilogue
What is work?
We can now understand Sri Aurobindo’s
I was invited to speak to a group of highly recommendation that one must know not
placed officers who had retired from a famous only to work but also not to work. And he
industrial plant. These were people who had tells that the ability of not to work must be
run the plant and they had been allotted huge cultivated in our personality. This means that
bungalows with spacious gardens during we are not called to lapse into inertia. We
their service tenure. Now after retirement are called upon to develop a poise of inner
they felt impoverished. They told me that being where peace and silence and inaction
they were proud to be occupied with work can support a life of dynamism and action.
during their service and they now felt that Strength that emanates from such an inner
life was meaningless in retirement. I asked poise is more powerful than the strength in
them, “Have you only worked and worked?” the outer being. It is the soul-strength that
They told that their commitment to work rules an eventful life. It is the impersonality
was paramount. I asked them, “You have that allows the personality to act effortlessly.
lived in bungalows with big gardens and had
gardeners who worked for you, all supported References
by your company. Have any of you woken
up at 3 am to stand and observe how a bud 1. Sri Aurobindo. The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo,
in your own garden blooms into a flower? Volume 29. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
At least once in the 20 or 30 years you have Trust; 2013, p. 274.
lived there? Why were you given houses with
gardens and gardeners? You never had time 2. Ibid., p. 285
to see the beauty of a flower blooming in your
own garden? Is not that also a work? You 3. The Mother. The Collected Works of the Mother,
have worked for your company, that was Volume 3. Cent ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo
great but at the end that was a compromise Ashram Trust; 1977, pp. 66-68.

Dr. Soumitra Basu, a practising psychiatrist and member of SAIIIHR, is the Director of a school of
psychology, Integral Yoga Psychology. He is also one of the editors of NAMAH.

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