Are you kidding me? Is this Peter Heehs stuff still going on?

You have only seen the beginning.

that was funny.....

had a hearty laugh....

I retract from saying anything on this most serious and sensitive subject of this year and scared of heavenly and earthly retribution.

just kidding!!!

Rakesh: It's not exactly a laughing matter, nor was my comment meant to be threatening. (What could I possibly threaten with?) I was merely drawing conclusions from the realities on the ground.

Ned: It's seriously misleading to call it "Peter Heehs stuff." His biography is used partly as a convenient excuse for playing out old jealousies and rivalries, partly it is threatening to those who have come to be seen as spokespersons for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Suddenly there is someone who will be seen as a greater authority than they, except in a narrow circle of "devotees." You have to realize that hagiographies of Eastern gurus are a dime a dozen in the West. Sri Aurobindo now stands out because Peter's biography stands out.

Ulrich, point taken. I think I left my comment too hastily. Disappointing that there would be this sort of Pharseeism in the IY comm. Yes, I feel the same way as the Mother on this ... if you haven't figured out that yoga is not the same thing as morality, you aren't ready for it.

I'm also reminded of Sri Aurobindo's statement that what we humans typically consider "virtue" is nothing but a "pretentious impurity". Phariseeism and self-righteousness attract asuric forces like nothing else in my own experience. We should all be very, very careful when accusing others of faults and be certain that we ourselves don't have the same faults or that in our self-righteousness we ourselves don't become precisely the evil "Other" that we're criticizing.

I even remember Sri Aurobindo or the Mother saying something to the effect that we see in others only our own faults. I we were free of them, we wouldn't notice them in others.

Found it: The Mother, On Thoughts and Aphorisms, pp 21–22:

It is rather remarkable that when we have a weakness—for example a ridiculous habit, a defect or an imperfection—since it is more or less part of our nature, we consider it to be very natural, it does not shock us. But as soon as we see this same weakness, this same imperfection, this same ridiculous habit in someone else, it seems quite shocking to us and we say, “What! He’s like that?”—without noticing that we ourselves are “like that”. And so to the weakness and imperfection we add the absurdity of not even noticing them. There is a lesson to be drawn from this. When something in a person seems to you completely unacceptable or ridiculous —“What! He is like that, he behaves like that, he says things like that, he does things like that”—you should say to yourself, “Well, well, but perhaps I do the same thing without being aware of it. I would do better to look into myself first before criticising him, so as to make sure that I am not doing the very same thing in a slightly different way.” If you have the good sense and intelligence to do this each time you are shocked by another person’s behaviour, you will realise that in life your relations with others are like a mirror which is presented to you so that you can see more easily and clearly the weaknesses you carry within you.

In a general and almost absolute way anything that shocks you in other people is the very thing you carry in yourself in a more or less veiled, more or less hidden form, though perhaps in a slightly different guise which allows you to delude yourself. And what in yourself seems inoffensive enough, becomes monstrous as soon as you see it in others.

Try to experience this; it will greatly help you to change yourselves. At the same time it will bring a sunny tolerance to your relationships with others, the goodwill which comes from understanding, and it will very often put an end to these completely useless quarrels.

One can live without quarrelling. It seems strange to say this because as things are, it would seem, on the contrary, that life is made for quarrelling in the sense that the main occupation of people who are together is to quarrel, overtly or covertly. You do not always come to words, you do not always come to blows —fortunately—but you are in a state of perpetual irritation within because you do not find around you the perfection that you would yourself wish to realise, and which you find rather difficult to realise—but you find it entirely natural that others should realise it.

“How can they be like that?...” You forget how difficult you find it in yourself not to be “like that”!

Koantum,

My comment was not directed towards you. I thought there is some space for humor in IY too.

Peace

Rakesh, you are right.

A God who cannot smile, could not have created this
humorous universe. – Sri Aurobindo

Happy New Year!

"Social habits are something terrible; your consciousness is stuffed with them from the time you are quite small; when a baby you are already told: “This should be done, that should not be done, you must do this in this way, you must not do it in that way”, and all that; these are ideas which usually parents or teachers have received in the same way when they were very young and to which they are accustomed and submit by habit; these are the most dangerous influences because they are subtle, they are not expressed outwardly by words; your head was stuffed with them and your feelings and reactions, when you were very small, and it is only later, much later, when you begin to reflect and try to know what the truth is... as soon as you understand that there is something which must be put above all the rest, that there is something which can truly teach you to live, which must form your character, rule your movements... when you understand that, you can look at yourself doing, objectivise yourself, laugh a little at all those multiple small bondages of habit, traditions, the education you have received, and then put the light, consciousness, aspiration for surrender to the Divine on these things, and try to receive the divine inspiration to do things as it’s necessary, not according to habits, not according to one’s vital impulses, not according to all the vital impulses and personal wills which one receives from others and which push him to do things which perhaps he would not have done without all that."
(The Mother, Questions and Answers 1955, pp 241–242)