Page 50 - NAMAH-Jan-2023

Namah Vol. 30, Issue 4, 15th January 2022

that it was difficult to reconcile liberty or until one can experience the eternal
freedom with equality, for an emphasis of Friend!
one at the cost of the other would lead
either to an anarchy or State-sponsored Sri Aurobindo explains:
robotic hegemony. The only way to break
the impasse was to replace the base of “Friendship or affection is not excluded from
fraternity from a mechanical comradeship the yoga. Friendship with the Divine is a
to a soul-comradeship. In his treatise, The Ideal recognised relation in the sadhana. Friendships
of Human Unity he painstakingly explains between the sadhaks exist and are encouraged
how a soul-based fraternity could alone by The Mother. Only, we seek to found them
lead to a harmony of liberty and equality on a surer basis than that on which the bulk
that would in turn lead to a reconciliation of human friendships are insecurely founded.
of the individual and the collectivity It is precisely because we hold friendship,
paving the way to global unity — a feat brotherhood, love to be sacred things that we
that has hitherto been a Utopian dream. want this change — because we do not want
to see them broken at every moment by the
movements of the ego, soiled and spoiled
and destroyed by the passions, jealousies,
treacheries to which the vital is prone — it is
to make them truly sacred and secure that we
want them rooted in the soul, founded on the
rock of the Divine (3).”

“In yoga friendship can remain but attachment
has to fall away or any such engrossing
Friendship in spiritual pursuit affection as would keep one tied to the
ordinary life and consciousness (4).“
As it is the soul which is the basis of genuine
friendship, it is not surprising that a seeker of Mystic love
the Truth has to wade his or her way through
the vicissitudes of relationships until one In meta-psychological parlance, the most
realises that there is an inner gap that cannot significant friend that one has to abandon is
be filled up by anything else than the divine one’s ego, one’s dying false self when one
Presence. Once that poise is consolidated, yearns to be a true lover of the Lord! If one’s
new friendships, that are in consonance ego turns against that, it would signal the
with one’s spiritual growth, manifest. For beginning of the true bond of love. Rumi
that one may have to forego friendships expresses it poignantly:
cherished so far with detachment and
equipoise and even harbouring no ill-will “In that moment you are drunk on yourself,
towards those who displayed undesirable The friend seems a thorn,
behaviour. One realises that it is the Divine In that moment you leap free of yourself,
who sanctions and breaks relationships what use is the friend?

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