|
Bhawani Mandir
Bhawani Mandir
was written by Sri Aurobindo but it was more Barin’s idea than his. It was not
meant to train people for assassination but for revolutionary preparation of
the country. The idea was soon dropped as far as Sri Aurobindo
was concerned, but something of the kind was attempted by
Barin in the
Manicktala
Garden…
From
notes and letters 0f Sri
Aurobindo
Page-59
Bhawani Mandir
0M Namas Chandikayai
A TEMPLE is to be erected and consecrated to Bhawani, the
Mother, among the hills. To all the children of the Mother the call is sent
forth to help in the sacred work.
Who is Bhawani?
Who is Bhawani, the Mother, and why should we erect a
temple to her?
Bhawani is the Infinite Energy
In the unending revolutions of the world, as the wheel
of the Eternal turns mightily in its courses, the Infinite Energy, which streams
forth from the Eternal and sets the wheel to work, looms up in the vision of
man in various aspects and infinite forms. Each aspect creates and marks an
age. Sometimes She is Love, sometimes She is
Knowledge, sometimes She is Renunciation, sometimes She is Pity. This Infinite
Energy is Bhawani, She also is Durga,
She is Kali, She is Radha the Beloved, She is Lakshmi, She is our Mother and the
Creatress of us all.
Bhawani is Shakti
In the present age, the Mother is manifested as the
mother of Strength. She is pure Shakti.
The Whole World is Growing Full of the Mother as Shakti
Let us raise our eyes and cast them upon the world around us. Wherever we turn
our gaze, huge masses of strength rise before our
vision, tremendous, swift and inexorable forces, gigantic
Page-61
figures of energy, terrible sweeping columns of
force. All is growing large and strong. The Shakti of war, the Shakti of
wealth, the Shakti of Science are tenfold more mighty
and colossal, a hundredfold more fierce, rapid and busy in their activity, a
thousandfold more prolific in resources, weapons
and instruments than ever before in recorded history. Everywhere the Mother is
at work; from Her mighty and shaping hands enormous
forms of Rakshasas, Asuras,
Devas are leaping forth into the arena of the world.
We have seen the slow but mighty rise of great empires in the West, we have seen the swift, irresistible and impetuous bounding into life of Japan. Some are Mlechchha Shaktis clouded in their strength, black or blood-crimson
with Tamas or Rajas, others are Arya
Shaktis, bathed in a pure flame of renunciation and utter
self-sacrifice: but all are the Mother in Her new phase, remoulding,
creating. She is pouring Her spirit into the old; She
is whirling into life the new.
We in India Fail in All Things for Want of Shakti
But in India the breath moves slowly, the afflatus is long in
coming. India, the ancient Mother, is indeed striving to be reborn, striving with agony and tears, but she strives in vain.What ails her,
she who is after all so vast and might be so strong? There is
surely some enormous defect, something vital is wanting in us, nor is it
difficult to lay our finger on the spot. We have all things else, but we
are empty of strength, void of energy. We have abandoned Shakti
and are therefore abandoned by Shakti. The Mother is
not in our hearts, in our brains, in our arms.
The wish to be reborn we have in abundance, there is no deficiency there. How
many attempts have been made, how many movements have been begun, in religion,
in society, in politics! But the same fate has
overtaken or is preparing to overtake them all. They flourish for a moment,
then the impulse wanes, the fire dies out, and if they endure, it is only as
empty shells, forms from which the Brahma has gone or in which it lies
overpowered with Tamas and inert. Our beginnings are
mighty, but they have neither sequel nor fruit.
Now we are beginning in another direction; we have started
Page-62
a great industrial movement which is to enrich and regenerate an impoverished
land. Untaught by experience, we do not perceive that this movement must go the
way of all the others, unless we first seek the one essential thing, unless we
acquire strength.
Our Knowledge is a Dead Thing for Want of Shakti
Is it knowledge that is wanting? We Indians, born and
bred in a country where Jnana has been stored and
accumulated since the race began, bear about in us the inherited gains of many
thousands of years. Great giants of knowledge rise among us even today to add
to the store. Our capacity has not shrunk, the edge of our intellect has not
been dulled or blunted, its receptivity and flexibility are as varied as of old. But it
is a dead knowledge, a burden under which we are bowed, a poison which is corroding us, rather than as it
should be a staff to support our feet and a weapon in our hands; for this is
the nature of all great things that when they are not used or are ill used,
they turn upon the bearer and destroy
him.
Our knowledge then, weighed down with a
heavy load of Tamas, lies under the curse of
impotence and inertia. We choose to fancy indeed,
nowadays, that if we acquire Science, all will be well. Let us first ask
ourselves what we have done with the knowledge we already possess, or what have
those who have already acquired Science been able
to do for India. Imitative and incapable of initiative, we have
striven to copy the methods of England, and we had not the strength; we would now copy the
methods of the Japanese, a still more energetic people; are we likely to
succeed any better? The mighty force of knowledge which European Science
bestows is a weapon for the hands of a giant, it is the mace of Bheemsen; what can a weakling do with it but crush himself
in the attempt to wield it?
Our Bhakti cannot Live and Work for Want of Shakti
Is it love, enthusiasm, Bhakti
that is wanting? These are ingrained in the Indian
nature, but in the absence of Shakti we cannot
concentrate, we cannot direct, we cannot even preserve
Page-63
it. Bhakti is the leaping flame, Shakti
is the fuel. If the fuel is scanty how long can the fire endure?
When the strong nature, enlightened by knowledge, disciplined and given a giant’s strength by Karma, lifts
itself up in love and adoration to God, that is the Bhakti
which endures and keeps the soul for ever united with the Divine. But the weak nature is too feeble to bear the impetus of so
mighty a thing as perfect Bhakti; he is lifted up for
a moment, then the flame soars up to Heaven, leaving him behind exhausted and
even weaker than before. Every movement of any kind of which enthusiasm and
adoration are the life must fail and soon burn itself out so long as the human
material from which it proceeds is frail and light in substance.
India therefore Needs Shakti Alone
The deeper we look, the more we shall be convinced that the one thing wanting,
which we must strive to acquire before all others, is strength — strength
physical, strength mental, strength moral, but above all strength spiritual
which is the one inexhaustible
and imperishable source of all the others. If we have strength everything else
will be added to us easily and naturally. In the absence of strength we are
like men in a dream who have hands but cannot seize or strike, who have feet
but cannot run.
India, Grown Old and Decrepit in Will, has to be Reborn
Whenever we strive to do anything, after the first rush of
enthusiasm is spent a paralysing helplessness
seizes upon us. We often see in the cases of old men full of years and
experience that the very excess of knowledge seems to have frozen their powers
of action and their powers of will. When a great feeling or a great need
overtakes them and it is necessary to carry out its promptings in action, they
hesitate, ponder, discuss, make tentative efforts and abandon them or wait for
the safest and easiest way to suggest
itself, instead of taking the most direct; thus the time when it was possible and necessary to act passes away. Our race
has grown just such an old man with stores of know-
Page-64
ledge, with ability to feel and desire, but paralysed
by senile sluggishness, senile timidity, senile feebleness. If India is to survive, she must be made young again. Rushing
and billowing streams of energy must be poured into her; her soul must become,
as it was in the old times, like the surges, vast, puissant, calm or tur- bulent at will, an ocean of
action or of force.
India can be Reborn
Many of us, utterly overcome by Tamas,
the dark and heavy demon of inertia, are saying nowadays that it is impossible,
that India is decayed, bloodless and lifeless, too weak ever to
recover; that our race is doomed to extinction. It is a foolish and idle
saying. No man or nation need be weak unless he chooses,
no man or nation need perish unless he deliberately chooses extinction.
What is a Nation? The Shakti of Its Millions
For what is a nation? What is our mother-country? It
is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a
fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti, composed
of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make
up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha
Mardini sprang into being from the Shakti of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of
force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhawani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis
of three hundred million people; but she is inactive, imprisoned in the magic
circle of Tamas, the self-indulgent inertia and ignorance of her sons. To get rid of Tamas
we have but to wake the Brahma within.
It is Our Own Choice whether We Create
a Nation or Perish
What is it that so many thousands of holy men, Sadhus
and Sannyasis, have preached to us silently by their
lives? What was the message that radiated from the personality of Bhagawan Ramakrishna Paramhansa?
What was it that formed the kernel of the eloquence with which the lion-like
heart of Vivekananda
Page-65
sought to shake the world? It is this, that in everyone of these three hundred
millions of men, from the Raja on his throne to the coolie at his labour, from the Brahmin absorbed in his Sandhya to the Pariah walking shunned of men, GOD LIVETH. We
are all gods and creators, because the energy of God is
within us and all life is creation; not only the making of new forms is
creation, but preservation is creation, destruction itself is creation. It
rests with us what we shall create; for we are not, unless we choose, puppets
dominated by Fate and Maya; we are facets and manifestations of Almighty Power.
India must be Reborn, because her Rebirth is Demanded by the Future of the
World
India cannot perish, our race cannot become extinct, because among all the
divisions of mankind it is to India that is reserved the highest and the most
splendid destiny, the most essential
to the future of the human race. It is she who must send forth from herself the
future religion of the entire world, the Eternal Religion which is to harmonise all religion, science and philosophies and make mankind one soul. In the sphere of
morality, likewise, it is her mission to purge barbarism (Mlechchhahood)
out of humanity and to Aryanise
the world. In order to do this, she must first re-Aryanise
herself.
It was to initiate this great work, the greatest and most wonderful work ever
given to a race, that Bhagawan Ramakrishna came and Vivekananda
preached. If the work does not progress as it once promised to do it is because
we have once again allowed the terrible cloud of Tamas
to settle down on our souls — fear, doubt, hesitation, sluggishness. We have taken,
some of us, the Bhakti which poured forth from the
one and the Jnana given us by the other, but from
lack of Shakti, from the lack of Karma, we have not
been able to make our Bhakti a living thing. May we
yet remember that it was Kali, who is Bhawani, Mother
of strength whom Ramakrishna worshipped and with whom he became one.
But the destiny of India will not wait on the falterings
and failings of individuals; the Mother demands that men shall
Page-66
arise to institute Her worship and make it universal.
To Get Strength We must Adore the Mother of
Strength
Strength then and again strength and yet more strength is the need of our race.
But if it is strength we desire, how shall we gain it if we do not adore the
Mother of Strength? She demands worship not for Her
own sake, but in order that She may help us and give Herself to us. This is no
fantastic idea, no superstition but the ordinary law of the universe. The gods
cannot, if they would, give themselves unasked. Even the Eternal comes not
unawares upon men. Every devotee knows by experience that we must turn to Him
and desire and adore Him before the Divine Spirit pours in its ineffable beauty
and ecstasy upon the soul. What is true of the Eternal is true also of Her who goes forth from Him.
Religion, the True Path
Those who, possessed with Western ideas, look askance
at any return to the old sources of energy, may well consider a few fundamental
facts.
The Example of Japan
I.. There is no instance in history
of a more marvellous and sudden up-surging of
strength in a nation than modern Japan. All sorts of theories had been started to account
for the uprising, but now the intellectual Japanese are telling us what were the fountains of that mighty awakening, the sources of
that inexhaustible
strength. They were drawn from religion. It was the Vedantic
teachings of Oyomei and the recovery of Shintoism with its worship of the national Shakti of Japan in the image and person of the Mikado that
enabled the little island empire to wield the stupendous weapons of Western
knowledge and science as lightly and invincibly as Arjun
wielded the Gandiv.
India‘s Greater Need of Spiritual
Regeneration
II. India’s need of drawing from the fountains of religion
Page-67
is far greater than was ever
Japan’s; for the Japanese had only to revitalise
and perfect a strength that already existed. We have to create strength where
it did not exist before; we have to change our natures, and become new men with
new hearts, to be born again. There is no scientific process, no machinery for
that. Strength can only be created by drawing it from the internal and
inexhaustible reservoirs of the Spirit, from that Adya-Shakti
of the Eternal which is the fountain of all new existence. To be born again
means nothing but to revive the Brahma within us, and that is a spiritual
process — no effort of the body or the intellect can compass it.
Religion, the Path Natural to the National Mind
III. All great awakenings in India,
all her periods of mightiest and most varied vigour have
drawn their vitality from the fountain-heads of some deep religious awakening.
Wherever the religious awakening has been complete and grand, the national energy it has created
has been gigantic and puissant; wherever the
religious movement has been narrow or incomplete, the national movement has
been broken, imperfect or temporary. The persistence of this phenomenon is
proof that it is ingrained in the temperament of the race. If you try other and
foreign methods we shall either gain our end with tedious slowness, painfully
and imperfectly, or we shall not attain it at all. Why abandon the plain way
which God and the Mother have marked out for you, to choose faint and devious
paths of your own treading?
The Spirit within is the True Source of Strength
IV. The Brahma within, the one and indivisible ocean of
spiritual force is that from which all life, material and mental, is drawn.
This is beginning to be as much recognised by leading
Western thinkers as it was from the old days by the East. If it be so, then
spiritual energy is the source of all other strength. There are the fathomless fountain-heads, the deep and inexhaustible sources. The shallow
surface springs are easier to reach,
Page-68
but they soon run dry. Why not then go deep instead of scratching the surface? The result will repay the labour.
Three Things Needful
We need three things answering to three fundamental
laws.
I. Bhakti - the Temple of the Mother
We cannot get strength unless we adore the
Mother of Strength.
We will therefore build a temple to the white Bhawani,
the Mother of Strength, the Mother of India; and we will build it in a place
far from the contamination of modern cities and as yet little trodden by man,
in a high and pure air steeped in calm and energy. This temple will be the
centre from which Her worship is to flow over the
whole country; for there, worshipped among the hills, She will pass like fire
into the brains and hearts of Her worshippers. This also is what the Mother has
commanded.
II. Karma - A New Order of Brahmacharins
Adoration will be dead and ineffective unless it is transmuted into Karma.
We will therefore have a Math with a new Order of Karma Yogins
attached to the temple, men who have renounced all in order to work for the
Mother. Some may, if they choose, be complete Sannyasis,
most will be Brahmacharins who will return to the Grihasthashram when their allotted work is finished, but
all must accept renunciation.
. Why?
For Reasons:
1. Because it is only in proportion as we put from us the preoccupation of
bodily desires and interests, the sensual gratifications, lusts, longings, indolences
of the material world, that
Page-69
we can return to the ocean of spiritual force
within us.
2. Because for the development of Shakti, entire concentration is necessary; the
mind must be devoted entirely to its aim as a spear is hurled to its mark; if
other cares and longings distract the mind, the spear will be carried out from its straight course and miss
the target. We need a nucleus of men in whom the Shakti
is developed to its uttermost extent, in whom it fills every corner of the
personality and overflows to fertilise the earth. These,
having the fire of Bhawani in their hearts and
brains, will go forth and carry the flame to every nook and cranny of our land.
Ill. Jnana - the Great
Message
Bhakti and Karma cannot be perfect and enduring
unless
they are based upon Jnana.
The Brahmacharins of the Order will therefore be
taught to fill their souls with knowledge and base their work upon it as upon a
rock. What shall be the basis of their knowledge? What but the great so-aham, the mighty formula of the Vedanta, the ancient
gospel which has yet to reach the heart of the nation, the knowledge which when
vivified by Karma and Bhakti delivers man out of all
fear and all weakness.
The Message of the Mother
When, therefore, you ask who is Bhawani the Mother, She herself answers you, "I am the Infinite
Energy which streams forth from the Eternal in the world and the Eternal in
yourselves. I am the Mother of the Universe, the Mother of the Worlds, and for
you who are children of the Sacred
Land, Aryabhumi, made of her
clay and reared by her sun and winds, I am Bhawani Bharati, Mother of India."
Then if you ask why we should erect a temple to Bhawani,
the Mother, hear Her answer, "Because I have commanded it, and because by
making a centre for the future religion you will be furthering the immediate
will of the Eternal and storing up merit which will make you strong in this
life and great in another. You
Page-70
will be helping to create a nation, to consolidate an age, to Aryanise a world. And that nation is your own, that age is
the age of yourselves and your children, that world is
no fragment of land bounded by seas and hills, but the whole earth with her
teeming millions."
Come then, hearken to the call of the
Mother. She is already in our hearts waiting to manifest Herself, waiting to be
worshipped,
- inactive because the God in us is concealed by Tamas,
troubled by Her inactivity, sorrowful because Her children will not call on Her
to help them. You who feel Her stirring within you, fling off the black veil of
self, break down the imprisoning walls of indolence, help Her each as you feel
impelled, with your bodies or with your intellect or with your speech or with
your wealth or with your prayers and worship, each man according to his
capacity. Draw not back, for against those who were called and heard Her not She may well be wroth in the day of Her coming; but
to those who help Her advent even a little, how radiant with beauty and
kindness will be the face of their Mother.
Page-71
Appendix
THE
work and rules of the new Order of Sannyasis will be somewhat as follows:
I.
General Rules
1. All who undertake the life of
Brahmacharya for the Mother will have to vow themselves to Her service for four
years, after which they will be free to continue to work or return to family
life.
2. All money received by them in the Mother’s name will go to the
Mother’s service. For themselves they will be allowed to receive shelter and
their meals, when necessary, and nothing more.
3. Whatever they may earn for themselves, e.g., by the publication of
books, etc., they must give at least half of it to the service of the Mother.
4. They will observe entire obedience to the Head of the Order and his
one or two assistants in all things connected with the work or with their
religious life.
5. They will observe strictly the discipline and rules of Achar and
purity, bodily and mental, prescribed by the Heads of the Order.
6. They will be given periods for rest or for religious improvement
during which they will stop at the Math, but the greater part of the year they
will spend in work outside. This rule will apply to all except the few necessary
for the service of the
Temple
and those required for the central direction of
the work.
7. There will be no gradations of rank among the workers, and none must
seek for distinction or mere personal fame but practise strength and
self-effacement.
II.
Work for the People
8. Their chief work will be that of mass instruction and
Page-72
help
to the poor and ignorant.
9. This they will strive to effect in various ways:
1. Lectures and demonstrations suited to an uneducated intelligence.
2. Classes and nightly schools.
3. Religious teachings.
4. Nursing the sick.
5. Conducting works of charity.
6. Whatever other good work their hands may find to do and the Order
approves.
III.
Works for the Middle Class
10. They will undertake, according as
they may be directed, various works of public utility in the big towns and
elsewhere connected especially with the education and religious life and
instruction of the middle classes, as well as with other public needs.
IV.
Work with the Wealthy Classes
11. They will approach the zamindars,
landholders and rich men generally, and endeavour —
1. To promote sympathy between the zamindars and the peasants and heal
all discords.
2.
To create the link of a single and living religious spirit and a common passion
for one great ideal between all classes.
3.
To turn the minds of rich men to works of public beneficence and charity to
those in their neighbourhood independent of the hope of reward and official
distinction.
V.
General Work for the Country
12. As soon as funds permit,
some will be sent to foreign countries to study lucrative arts and manufactures.
13. They will be as Sannyasis during their period of study, never losing
hold of their habits of purity and self-abnegation.
Page-73
14.
On their return they will estabilish with the aid of the Order, factories and
workshops, still living the life of Sannyasis and devoting all their profits to
the sending of more and more such students to foreign countries.
15. Others will be sent to travel through various countries on foot,
inspiring by their lives, behaviour and conversation, sympathy and love for the
Indian people in the European nations and preparing the way for their acceptance
of Aryan ideals.
After the erection and consecration of the
Temple, the development of the work of the Order will be
pushed on as rapidly as possible or as the support and sympathy of the public
allows. With the blessing of the Mother this will not fail us.
Page-74
|