Page 15 - NAMAH-Oct-2023

Namah Editorial

leaders have to be genuinely and inwardly Sri Aurobindo affirms:
spiritual rather than merely believers in a
doctrine enforced by the sword and the “For the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga it is
law. necessary to remember that no written Shastra,
however great its authority or however large its
The Divine Law that the aspirant for Yoga spirit, can be more than a partial expression of
is called upon to follow is not a rigid the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never
narrow dogma, for that would be contrary bind himself even by the greatest Scripture.
to the vastness and freedom of the Spirit. It is Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic,
rather a wide and supple leading, a guidance it may exercise upon him an influence for the
that takes into account the entirety of things highest good and of incalculable importance.
including the individual variations of It may be associated in his experience with
nature, the stage of development, the real his awakening to crowning verities and his
motive of saadhanaa, the past formations and realisation of the highest experiences. His
present personalities, the inner complexity, Yoga may be governed for a long time by
the future destiny, above all God’s secret Intent one Scripture or by several successively, —
working itself out in the cosmos through the if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by
individual. No book or religious injunction can the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda.
provide this, least of all human interpretation Or it may be a good part of his development to
of the Divine Law as revealed in ‘a sacred text’. include in its material a richly varied experience
Since very few minds are supple and vast and of the truths of many Scriptures and make the
discerning enough to feel the true inspiration future opulent with all that is best in the past.
leading from Above or awakened to the But in the end he must take his station, or
promptings of the secret psychic being rising better still, if he can, always and from the
from within, the safe rule is to follow the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond
guidance of the living Guru. In his absence the limitations of the word that he uses. The
the priest is supposed to substitute. Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his
progress must pass beyond the written Truth,
But to be a priest in the true sense means to — ´sabdabrahmaativartate’ — beyond all that
be fully awake in the soul and be identified he has heard and all that he has yet to hear,
with it. But a priest who is simply echoing — ´ssrotavyasya ´ssrutasya ca. For he is not the
scholarly interpretation of ‘a sacred text’ or sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a
is caught up in sophisticated dialectics and sadhaka of the Infinite (6).”
opinions because the eye of wisdom has not
opened is, as the Upanissad puts it, like the
blind leading the blind towards the abyss
via the heavenly route. It is for this reason
that the Gıitaa asks the disciple to go beyond
the word of the scripture, sabdabrahma ati
vartate. One could equally say to go behind
the word and reach out to the inner truth
embedded in the body of sound symbols.

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