4 Oct- In popular parlance: “doing nothing” versus doing something.Our social, common, moral & human mores treat the idea of “doing nothing” with disdain. Quietus is weakness; passivity is the worst kind of flaw: it is perceived as cowardice, laziness 1/10 pragyata.com/mag/the-silent…
Vedanta tells us that the Triune yoga of perfection: Knowledge, Work & Devotion, can only be fulfilled when we surrender to the divine influence & become its instrument. To return to the passive personality; the observer of the divine Will. Here, silence is the crux of being.2/10
Action and activity is seen as Illusion, as Mayavada; and its reality the great Ignorance. Life, which supports this Ignorance, is bested by its own limitation, conditioned causality, predicated by its separative egoism, reason, and desire. 3/10
The solution, to transform our Ignorance would be to yield activity to master Truth. The solution expands, into a division of life. In this divided state, we have the 2 conditions:the ascetic way of life that determines silence to be the One Reality, the other- materialistic 4/10
Within, these two divisions, either one flees to a mountain cave, joins an ashram or monastery; or submits to the swadharma of their nature, and becomes part of its flow and activity. 5/10
What of those who listen to call of both: the silence of the inner self, and the outward rhythms of the world’s activity? What about those who feel an impassioned pull to contribute in society and in humanity, in material terms? 6/10
Those, who relish engagement with the creative mind and muse; and take, delight in expression. Or just simply, those souls, who wish to reach a little deeper, and live through inner meaning-outer activity, a spiritualised life. 7/10
If we can these days have dual passports, can we not have dual realities? Is unity a choice between one way of living, against the other? Will participation and creation through activity be dismissed as a purposeless altruism, unworthy of our divine destiny? 8/10
Will choosing a spiritual destiny, force us to apathy, so as to be dismissed again as an ineffectual category in humanity’s progress? In social & economic terms we have a middle class, so we must as well have a middle category in spiritual terms. 9/10
We do, and we may call it an Integral class. This new category and condition comes through the informing vision of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga. We can live in the world, engage with life, be involved in activity; realise action through yoga. 10/10
