Page 13 - NAMAH-Apr-2021

Namah Viewing and treating others as the Divine

to do is to remain within, keep a detached “It depends on what you mean by philanthropy.
attitude and not allow yourself to be troubled Normally, we call philanthropists those who
by the difficulties that arise in work or the do charitable works. Here Sri Aurobindo does
movements of people, but keep yourself the not use the word philanthropy, for, as it is
true movement. Do not be caught by the desire usually understood, philanthropy is a social
to ‘help’ others — do and speak yourself the and conventional attitude, a kind of magnified
right thing from the inner poise and leave the egoism which is not love but a condescending
help to come to them from the Divine. Nobody pity which assumes a patronising air (10).”
can really help — only the Divine Grace (9).”
In this aphorism Sri Aurobindo refers to those
This last sentence seems to contradict what was who follow the ascetic path in solitary search
said in some of the Thoughts and Aphorisms, of a solitary God, by trying to cut themselves
including some of those that are mentioned off completely from the world and men.
earlier. Like with many issues, we must
be careful not to take one statement by “But for Sri Aurobindo men form part of the
Sri Aurobindo or the Mother and turn it Divine; and if you truly love the Divine, how
into a dogma or a rule. Always there are can you not love men, since they are an aspect
subtleties and differences in how we apply of Himself (11)?”
their statements to particular situations. This
is perhaps especially true in the context of The Mother here stresses the characteristics of
human relations, because here the people philanthropy which are particularly negative,
under consideration, both ourselves and “…a kind of magnified egoism which is not
the others to whom we relate, are especially love but a condescending pity which assumes
variable. Therefore, it may be useful to a patronising air (12).”
consider this question of ‘helping others’
more closely, because it is so important to the
theme of this talk.

Many of you may be familiar with some of the
negative statements made by Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother about ‘philanthropy’, which
is usually associated with an organised
activity of ‘helping others’. As an example,
we can consider the following aphorism and
the Mother’s comment on it:

“This is a miracle that men can love God, yet
fail to love humanity. With whom are they in
love then?”
But there are other aspects of helping others
that can be counter-productive both for one’s
Question: “Is it possible to reach the Divine through self and for the ones we are trying to help.
philanthropy?”

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