World Union
A Movement For Unity And Peace Through Spiritual And Scientific Development
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry-2, India
1st April, 1967
Dear Mr. Lewis,
Sri Surendra Mohan Ghose, a member of the Indian Parliament and a Deputy Leader of the Congress Party in Parliament, is the Chairman of World Union. The 2nd World Conference of World Union will commence at 9:00 a.m. on 12th August 1967 at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Theatre, Pondicherry. Its final session will be held at 4:00 p.m. on 16th august. The highlight of the conference will be the seminar for three days on “Education for One World.” The conference will be inaugurated by Dr. C.D. Deshmukh, President of the India International Centre, New Delhi, former Minister for Finance of the Government of India and until recently Vice-Chancellor of the Delhi University, and the seminar will be presided over by him.
I am directed to extend a special invitation to you to attend the conference and the seminar and to give advantage of your knowledge and experience in the deliberations and decisions of the seminar.
To give you some idea of the aims and ideals of World Union and the proposed conference and seminar I send you by a separate air mail book post cover a booklet which introduces World Union, December 1966 and March ‘67 World Union Focus and a basic statement on “Education for One World.”
You will be the guest of World Union and arrangements will be made for your accommodation from the 11th evening to 17th August morning or such shorter period as you may find it convenient to be with us.
I shall be grateful to know from you if it will be possible for you to accept our invitation in which case I shall send you the agenda of the conference and the seminar in due course.
With best wishes. and hoping to receive your early reply,
Yours sincerely,
A. B. Patel
General Secretary and Treasurer
World Union
A Movement For Unity And Peace Through Spiritual And Scientific Development
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry-2, India
16 March, 1968
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Thank you for your letter, article and $5. check which we have credited to your account; your receipt has been sent by airmail, though the first edition of our newly-revised journal and other literature are coming by sea. Since the annual fee is $4., your payment covers the period from 1-1-68 to 31 March, 1969. Please let us have your comments and/or suggestions about the Journal; we believe it is a real expression of World Union’s aims and ideals as envisioned by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Sri Manoj Das, our editor, is very eager to receive articles and other pertinent material for publication, so do not hesitate to send along any writings which strike you as apropos.
Has Julie Medlock sent you literature about Auroville and the impressive Inauguration Ceremony of February 28? Since it received wide press-coverage you may be aware of the giant step it represents in the evolution of a New Community as it will manifest here: serving as example for other endeavors throughout the world. So Sri Aurobindo’s prophecy in The Human Cycle, Ideal of Human Unity and other writings is manifesting as the result of the Supramental or Truth Consciousness as it has now become operative on earth. For those who have the subtle awareness and openness, this manifestation is quite evident among men and nations, though appearance (in Aristotle’s “spheres below the moon”) is one of injustice, hypocrisy, violence and vulgarity.
We are indeed glad to see that your lectures are so well attended and wish you all success; there is no doubt that the youth of today are sincerely seeking the means to be significant in their lives and society. Don’t you agree that leaders are the missing factor? Persons of experience like yourself, Dr. Chaudhuri, Dr. Tyberg and others have a splendid opportunity to serve as those “midwives” of whom Socrates counted himself one!
Please do not hesitate to keep in correspondence with this office. I shall ask Mrs. Maude Smith to forward your regards to Jay who has been working in New Delhi for the past two years.
Sincerely,
Marilyn Widman
Assistant
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, Calif.
May 9th, 1968
Marily Widman,
Assistant World Union.
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry, 2, India
Dear Ram:
Thank you for your letter 3rd May. One has received the materiel from our good friend, Julie Medlock and has written to her. Copy of that letter and of this go to Sri Haridas Chaudhuri in this City.
As to “Sri Aurobindo and Plato” it was sent for no other purpose than to give insight and evaluation into the personality. One has received a beautiful letter from Sri Surendra Mohan Ghose, this not yet answered.
This person has had severe training in the real Buddhism, in Indian and Sufi metaphysics and mysticism. The results of this are now becoming known afar, but not yet here. After a while one becomes totally indifferent. Many praise the Gita, few actualize it in their own consciousness.
In this matter we cannot have Integration and the emphasis of personality. But after years one has seen the utter folly of emotional appears—these have nothing to do with the Heart and Superconscient and one has to be careful of the level on which he wishes to operate.
Much attention has been given to movements around Rishikesh. There, there is no social consciousness. To me Sri Aurobindo had a magnificent outlook before he embarked on the path of the Rishi or Guru and I believe—but do not impose on others—values to be gained by integrating his efforts as if different parts of his life were contemporary or synchronous, and had to be enrolled in time.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
(Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti)
410 Precita Ave
March 3, 1969
Mr. A.B. Patel
General Secretary
World Union International Centre
Pondicherry 2, India
Dear Ram,
From what happened here in this house last night it is evident that one must write to you. There is yet a big gap between the full acceptance of the sublime quotation of Sri Aurobindo and putting this into practice in actuality. Too many people who claim to accept Sri Aurobindo reject the very words and teachings in practice. What will happen to them, what is happening to them, is strictly according to karma so I shall not mention names.
Some of them should have been of great help to you. Unfortunately the gap between their words and deeds is so great as to produce a scandal in those areas dedicated to real Asian-American cultural exchange and with them the acceptance of the very “spiritual consciousness” mentioned by Aurobindo but made empty by too many of his presumable representatives. It is quite evident that the American leaders in Asian studies, the Americans who have studied with Asians—not those who have studied?—with non-Asian “experts” will be very glad to join in common efforts to a goal.
Last night according to my program I was speaking on Julie Medlock when the telephone rang. The call was from Schatsie (Charlotte) Wallace. I had never met her but know the rest of her family. She came in later and we asked her both about The Temple of Understanding and Auroville. Her face lit up, beautifully lit up, when Julie’s name was mentioned. This must have had a deep impression on the audience—all young people. Most of them, perhaps of all of them, are interested in putting into practice “Discovering Oneness.”
One of my big undertakings at the moment has been the instituting of dances on the theme “Dance of Universal Peace.” This whole inspiration came from my “fairy godmother” the late Miss Ruth St. Denis. I am not going into details here. It seems that all younger people accept and more and more and more and more—never mind their seniors. We began with Sufi Dervish Dances, than Yoga Mantric dances, and are gradually adding mystery and ceremonial dances including Tantra. While this is only one area of my personal efforts it has now expanded to the limit of personal endeavor.
In discussing all the above subjects with the head of Asian Studies at the University of California we do deplore the bypassing of Fatehpur Sikri and its importance in world history and spiritual movements.
The one thing that is evident is the actual growth in spiritual consciousness among the young who are either attracted to this person or to whom this person is attracted; or in their own words “We are Sri Aurobindo’s people, they are not.” The hardest people to convince of the truth of Sri Aurobindo’s actual teaching and the manifestation on earth of more advanced souls are those that adhere to traditional dialectics and egocentric logistics.
I am being compelled through invitation to move into larger areas and arenas.
At this time there are many outbreaks on the campuses of the universities. One of the most prominent figures in the public limelight is a man half Asian who seems totally ashamed of his paternal ancestors. He has rejected in to the possibility that his specialty (General Semantics) was long anticipated in Asia by Asians.
I am enclosing herewith a quotation from “The Awakening of Faith” a Mahayana Buddhist scripture. There is such a gap in this country, and perhaps elsewhere, between the teachings found in both Pali and Sanskrit texts and the religious and institutional displays adhering to the same words, turning everything into ritual and nothing more. But there is a righteousness in the Universe not easily grasped by so-called intellectuals and so-called moralists. There is an article in last year’s Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society on Buddhist logic. The writer named Misra—evidently one of your countryman—has not only explained but has excellently demonstrated his teachings.
Personally I believe that until important and self-important persons and institutions can listen and learn from such a person (and others of the some kind) talk about “Unity in Spiritual Consciousness” remains on the verbal level. I agree entirely with “Discovering Oneness” but what about “Realms of Existence,” “Above and Raymond?” Next month there will be a seminar here on Mystical Consciousness and spiritual awakening. For once I shall be permitted to have the floor. One is tired of verbalisms, verbalisms which often prevent those with cosmic experience from even presenting themselves. Already Dr. Huston Smith has been here and he is helping bringing in an age, not necessary a New Age, with transcendental factors but an age of simple honesty and integrity. This is needed in scientific research. There it is requisite; elsewhere it is not only not requisite but sometimes even barred.
I used to say concerning the late President Wilson that his love for humanity was so great he had no time for man, women, and children. We are not going to have world parliament, we are not going to have world parliaments, we are not going to have brotherhoods, world or otherwise with exclusions. In most places money is welcome, thoughts and cosmic vision not so welcome. At this point I must interject that some of my cosmic visions of the past are now going to press. Dr. Huston Smith has been boosting Phillip Kapleau who dared to write on his Zen awakening. In previous generations this very sound situation would have resulted in his being castigated. We need, and before God we will have, the same honesty, the same sincerity, the same integrity, in “Realms of Existence Above and Beyond” as in mundane matters.
All of this is shadow-boxing. Our faces shone, our hearts were filled with joy and light when Schatsie spoke about Julie. The audience then joined in the mantric dances! These dances, though inspired by Ruth St. Denis, are dedicated to Sri Surendra Mohan Chose and others. I am no longer concerned with the refusal of so many pretentious “world organizations” to answer letters. God is acting. God is operative. The “Realms of Existence Above and Beyond” are here and now. The Sanatana Dharma is not affected any more than the sun is affected by clouds and fog. When hearts accept hearts “Discovering Oneness” will manifest by itself.
I cannot afford to play games; I cannot otherwise than as Jesus Christ has said, “Whatsoever ye do to the least of those my creatures ye do it unto me.” As Abdul Baba “People of the world you are as branches of the tree and leaves of the branch.”
Mehta
Samuel L. Lewis
Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti
World Union
A Movement For Unity And Peace Through Spiritual And Scientific Development
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry-2, India
13 March, 1969
Dear Friend:
Your letters are always interesting and we are glad to acknowledge the latest, dated March 3. Since Julie Medlock’s name is mentioned, she will probably be in correspondence.
We are glad that you have been concerned with our activities because plans are expanding, as the current Focus details. Response from young people in your area will be particularly welcome, for we are convinced that they must take the lead if World Union is to fulfill its promise as a higher force for transformation.
The Mother’s 1969 message “No words—Acts” is indeed the primary directive: those who are open to the light and dedicated to its manifestation will use the ancient device which knows no sect, the quiet smile of Ananda consciousness.
Fraternally,
A.B. Patel
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco,
21st March, 1969
A. B. Patel,
World Union
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry 2, India
Dear Ram:
Your very welcome letter of the 13th is here and I am taking the opportunity to make a carbon for Julie Medlock and also to send her some stamp money. I am so glad you have quoted from Mother’s “No words—Acts.” We are surrounded by all sorts of verbal groups and today the great slogan is “integration” but the groups verbalizing “interaction” are often as exclusive as any of the traditional movements.
Compelled to face one of these so-called “Integration” movements I found, to my dismay, that I seem to be the only Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in this vicinity who is active. The country is full of “experts,” all kinds of “experts” lecturing on Yoga and giving out “degrees” in ?Oriental Culture? and I doubt whether any of them has passed severe tests.
(I do not know whether you are related to the great Villabhai Patel, but when he was here years ago I was the only American admitted into his presence and I have never been invited to occupy the podium in this vicinity for any “Asian” conference?????) Now I am called on by several of the leaders of a quite new type at several universities and possibly more, all working in what is the real “integration,” the relation to verbal “integration” being very dim indeed.
It is too bad that seniors are unable to accept either the moral law (and karma) or hard facts which interfere with their goals. The revolt of youth is taking on new forms because my young friends may be, as they says “We are Sri Aurobindo’s people; they (referring to standard-bearers) are not Sri Aurobindo’s people.
There is s tremendous surge of interest in both communes and Ananda at different levels, exactly as the Gita teaches and exactly is the intellectual standard-bearers cannot comprehend. We have now a publication which is integrating East and West in actually, all in the hands of the young and going forward with zeal and impetus. The older type known as “expert” in Asian culture simply cannot understand, and even less participate. Even at this writing there are meetings going on here in San Francisco and in neighboring communities which are so close in spirit to Sri Aurobindo on one side and to Julie Medlock on another, it is marvelous. But also “it is written.”
What started out to be “Dance of Universal Peace” dedicated to Sri Surendra Mohan Ghose and others has grown into an immense compendium of spiritual dances with ever increasing audiences and perhaps soon to be public. This sort of thing is excluded from older “establishments.” But it is certainly advancing.
I have had a single day of rest this year so far and do not know when there will be another one. Asian sages coming his way regard one as a “guru”; local “experts” on Asia will have none of it. I am sorry because integration means integration, and there are rooms and scopes for everybody in real universe of integration.
As to Ananda. I keep on quoting the Exactitudes and the Upanishads. My constantly increasing following is going on this path—radiant faces, smiling eyes. We have completed a whole compendium of Dervish dances and Mantra dances. One performs the roles of Rama and Krishna and gradually this is reaching the ears of dancing teachers. One only hopes that some few who are in the worlds of religion and so-called “Krishna-consciousness” will recognize actualities. But one must go on. One’s duty is to action and to “God” go the fruits of action. I shall see that you get copies of at least one publication from this region.
Love and blessings.
Samuel L. Lewis
April 8, 1969
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
World Union,
Pondicherry 2, India
Dear Ram:
This acknowledges volume VIII, No.4 of your remarkable issue. To me it is not a question of principles involved but who is going to put them into operation. General secretary A.B. Patel writes (full agreement):
“World Union was established to work for the realization of the high ideal of complete oneness. It believes that modern conditions of life provide propitious circumstances for an endeavor to realize this pristine dream of unity.”
“World Union attempts to make people aware of creative forces of unity and their consequences….”
My whole life has been operative in this general directing, inward and outward but too often has one seen the mountains of words and the failures of those announcing verbally to put into practice what is said. One is not in an awkward position that one has had to take to task another world movement because while its ideals are perfect, in its practices it has fallen back on the same procedures of appalling to name-and-form to lead and “important persons” are given important places regardless of their integrity because of the supposition that this will draw membership and masses. In this case they have summoned a man inimical to most of the real leaders of the real religions of the real world and evidently there is no way to stop it. Or maybe there is.
Karma is karma; moral law is moral law. One has seen one failure after another in verbalized “world movements” which at some point or other stressed some personalities at the expense of their goals and so the goals were not achieved.
The other day there was a picnic of the Indian students of this area. Not a single “expert” on Oriental Culture was there, not even some of your own countryman who have achieved a modicum of fame. The fame for prowess is among others than Asians. And the leader of the affair referred to this one as the “avatar of Dara Shikoh.” One’s whole life has been in the direction of the Moghul Prince and now one has reached the stage that one can no longer sit by and say “yes” to big people who themselves do not know how to say “yes.”
It may be of no importance to you that one’s paper on “Vietnamese Buddhism” was rejected thirty-one times and then stopped because one received a better paper from a Vietnamese Buddhist residing in this country. (You never hear of it either; we have too many “experts.”) But it must be of some import to you to find that one’s efforts to have a paper on “The Religion of the President of India” have been given the same coup de grace and as the President of India is very much alive and is dedicated fully, I believe to the same ideas and ideals that the writer has, it becomes very awkward.
All efforts so far to call attention to the life and work of the Moghul Emperor Akbar have been ignored. And in my personal capacity, continuing and perhaps in the eyes of God fulfilling the efforts of Prince Dara Shikoh, which depends on spiritual awakening and conscious operation of Vijnanavada, to find that not only are these efforts ignored but praise is given to world politicians qua re their worldly positions, I fail to see how this can help the World Union or bring into operation the predictions of Sri Aurobindo and others.
It is not true of leaders that they accept Sri Krishna’s “Praise and blame do not faze me” for praise means acceptance and criticisms, no matter how valuable, mean rejections. Failure is accepted, but never warnings and too many great movements, great for the moment, have disappeared because personalisms are more important than ideals.
This week-end one is going to a seminar to present the report on actual experience into the Divine. One is no longer concerned with the rejections of this by important and unimportant people. To support the themes of universal consciousness on the one hand and then to herald famous people and ignore mystics is hardly the way to come into any New Age.
The Upanishads are very succinct if not clear, on the grades of sentient beings of all ranks. The accommodation of Ananda, predicated in these sacred books, is I believe, an absolute measuring stick for this. But the continuation of manasic outlooks cannot bring about the fulfillment of these greater experiences Aurobindo has been called Vijnanavadin. But I do not see the fulfillment of his life and predictions while the analytical and dialectical methods are used and what is called “integration” excludes spiritual and integrational movements to the past, and present.
You will be sent copy of The Oracle, a local paper, as soon as it appears. It shows what the young people are attempting here. It may show a new ground work. I see nothing in Sri Aurobindo that the evolved souls are necessarily going to appear in India or any other country. Nor do I see anything that older people, who are not so evolved, can forever lay down dictums and premises by which these evolved souls, generally younger in body, can and must work.
My first efforts to send some disciples to you have not been very successful. I am now preparing to send another disciple who is going to India to study dancing and who will be representative of the class working on “Dances of Universal Peace.” These are very real and they come from the transcendental experiences of a living person, not a politician, not a dialectician, not a traditional philosopher. They are dedicated to The Temple of Understanding in Washington and also to Sri Surendra Mohan Ghose and they are demonstrating exactly what the Upanishads promise.
But I cannot omit here references to Fatehpur Sikri and indeed to all the life and work of Emperor Akbar. I am tired of appeal.
The story of Boccaccio from “The Decameron” was also used by the German Lessing in his “Nathan the Wise” and again in my poem “Saladin” which will someday be read, inshallah.
One of the best things in this issue is the remark of Norman C. Dowsett, “Education has to be revised to accommodate the New Consciousness already descended into earth-nature.” God bless you for that. That is to me marvelous, perfect and true. Now what are we going to do about it? A person who is doing is not in the same class as a person who is saying. I feel entirely at home with your ideals; I am not at home with by-passing of history and selectivity despite the verbal and mental support of Vijnanavada.
God bless you,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Cal.
May 24, 1969
Mr. A. B. Patel
General Secretary
World Union
Pondicherry, India
Dear Ram:
In That Day Will the Sun Rise in the West and All Men Seeing, Will Believe—Mohammed
Hare Krishna!
“Allah loves His creation more than a mother loves her children.”
“The lamb and the lion shall lie down together and a little child shall lead them.”
Since one first studied Indian and other Asian philosophies under real spiritual teachers of the very real world, one has hoped to see the manifestation not of that damnable phrase “cosmic truths” but the actualities connoted by Vijnanavada and Anandavada. One sees this same tenor in many of your writers, but there is no evidence that a single one of these has attained the degrees of consciousness as presented by the now by-passed Holy Scriptures revered by the late Mahatma Gandhi; or in another sense, in the voluminous writings of the late Sri Aurobindo.
If Sri Aurobindo was a prophet (he called himself a Rishi) does this definition include, let us say, the late Woodrow Wilson or the late Jan Smuts, or any erudite politician who could turn out delightful phrases like a mint turns out coins, but who showed no evidence of having attained Vijnanavada or Anandavada. Or perhaps I am wrong in my interpretations of Sri Aurobindo and all he did was to introduce the word “Integration” as a mask over the same differentiations, the same exclusions, the same divisions, and the sane dualisms which have not only provoked humanity but have caused our troubles.
No doubt there will be a “New Age” when we can sit by and ignore the Qur’an and the Bible, as above. For there is no question we oldsters want the lion and lamb to lie down together but we will not, we even cannot, let a little child lead us, Jesus Christ has said, “You will find me in little children unto the age of seven years,” So what; We have the word “Integration.” What does it mean? One does not know, but it is like the powerful monarchs raising aloft the banner, “Galilean, thou hast conquered,” and seeing to it that the Sermon on the Mount never becomes a part of human policy.
Hare Krishna! There were 500 flesh and blood young people at the first protest meeting in this city. It did not get in the newspapers. A communist—if you would a “leftist” (whatever that means) —called for Karl Marx and revolution. Six in the audience applauded. Alan Ginsberg arose and chanted Hare Krishna! and the whole audience joined in. We chanted other mantras and others—this is not-news. It is not out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, it is still out of the minds of oldsters, and now this is called “The New Age.”
“They are not Sri Aurobindo’s People; We are Sri Aurobindo’s People.” You will not believe it or can you accept Tat Twat Asi? Can you accept that Brahm is in everybody, even may be everybody? No, the pseudo-advaitins see Brahm in the wild elephant, not in the warring human being. I don’t think old people have changed that much.
When the idea of Auroville was broached the representatives of Sri Aurobindo (???) joined one Dr. Zitko and started their own New Age Foundation. All the “Supermen” carefully selected. They were going to herald in the New Age with money and prestige. They did not need the spiritual development. And the money went down the drain. They forgot to abolish karma and moral laws.
“We are Sri Aurobindo’s People.” It is all very well to abridge “Just not” and to soundly condemn young people with whom one has never associated. Four hundred persons starting a riot became world news. Three thousand young people led by Alan Ginsberg on that same Berkeley campus, but on the campus itself well within the gates, chanted Hare Krishna! Not news, of course, not news. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings come annoyances to the establishments and to the George F. Kennans.
“Rebels without a program.” What is his? Without looking at the other sides, which includes the Hare Krishna side, you have permitted a condemnation of the New Age people. You have permitted an article strictly based on Hegelian dialectics and subjectivisms and the same old folly—”the opinions of the big people who were not there are more important than the experiences of the little people who were.”
I tell you, my friends, we have thousands of Sri Aurobindos, thousands who will have to do their writings in prison. This was the subject of my friend Gavin Arthur recently, one of the old drop-outs. Where was The Divine Life written? Since when does a “prophet” have to sit in the midst of the respectable?
Now we have “Integration.” “Integration” with no reference to the Scriptures revered by Mahatma Gandhi. Never any reference to the great Emperor Akbar who brought all the religions of the world together for the first time. Nor to Dabistan from the Moghul court, nor the works of Prince Dara Shikoh, a martyr to real integration when we use that word in its original sense—all inclusive with no high, no low, no Jew; no barbarian, no Greek in Christ Jesus.
“We are Sri Aurobindo’s People; They are not Sri Aurobindo’s People.” You have chosen Santa Claus, and the people condemned without a voice by a giant politician chant mantrams and more and more of them.
The program laid before Sri Surendra Mohan chose goes on. We have Dervish dance. We have Mantric dances. We have Yoga dances. We dance to the sacred phrases of all religions. We are excluded here by the “Sri Aurobindo” people. We far outnumber them. The New Race is rising and they are not Marxists; they are not even dialecticians like the George F. Kennans of the World. They have chosen God and not Santa Claus. They accept the Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedas, the Gita, the Buddhist scriptures, and not Santa Claus.
Flattery is still loved. Warnings are never heeded, The Baha’i movement built a “universal” temple with all the money and éclat imaginable. Who hears of it now! The Roerich Museum had more money and more éclat and more George F. Kennan. Who hears of that now?
God in his unsupreme folly permitted highly evolved souls to enter Western bodies and they have refused the traditions, the dialectics, the epithets and slogans of yesteryear. They want brotherhood, not the word “brotherhood.” They do not want wars.
Now they are starting new publications. Despite the prestige “environment,” most come from very comfortable homes. They have money, they have ideas, and they, not George F. Kennan, have a program based on brotherhood and integration and not the debasement of these words by very careful selectors who do not wish to disturb. And since the karmic laws and the sanskaras operate, they are disturbed. It is always right for the big people to be disturbed; it is always wrong for little people to disturb.
Remember Sri Aurobindo. His case was identical. I deplore your elevation of Santa Claus. I more than deplore your criticisms of those who walk in Sri Aurobindo’s footsteps. We are going to have All Inclusive Integration. Before God Allah, Brahma, we are. And we are seeing Love and Brotherhood manifesting and kept out of be news. Can you join us? Is Integration another word for One Way streetism?
Bismillah Er-Rahman Er-Rahim. Hare Krishna!
Samuel L. Lewis
World Union
A Movement For Unity And Peace Through Spiritual And Scientific Development
Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Pondicherry-2, India
2nd June, 1969
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis,
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Cal.,
Dear Friend,
Thank you for your stimulating letter of May 24, 1969 which demands thinking and rethinking. I congratulate you on your knack to write stimulating letters whether one agrees fully with their contents or not.
In the letter under reply, while appreciating your comments, it seems that you are not fully acquainted with the aims and functions of World Union. Perhaps you know that we have here Sri Aurobindo Ashram where live an international community of 1600 men, women and children. The inmates of the Ashram are disciples of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and stay here to practice Integral Yoga, to endeavor to rise to a state of Supramental consciousness, and aspire to participate in the creation of a new world, a new race and in the manifestation of Spirit in a perfected matter. We have Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education with students of many faiths and countries who study subjects taught in other educational institutions but entirely a different way. These students are not here necessarily to practice yoga but during the course of their studies they understand the truth which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother represent and read their writings but do not necessarily live according to their teaching. Then we have an International plan of Auroville meant for people who aspire to live a higher consciousness and to realize human unity. The workers and participants in all these three institutions are disciples or followers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
World Union, though inspired by the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and based on two books of Sri Aurobindo The Ideal of Human Unity and The Human Cycle, has membership open to anyone , whether disciple or follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother or not, who believes in human unity and world peace on a spiritual foundation. Among the members of World Union we have Theosophists, followers of Swami Ramakrishna, Swami Sivanand, Mrs. Baily and others. Practice of yoga or realization of Supramental consciousness or reaching the divine consciousness is not the aim or function of World Union. World Union aims and endeavors to realize human brotherhood, world consciousness, world perspective, global civilization, international order based on justice and fair play, world union in which unity in diversity is recognized and freedom is assured, and evolution of United Nations into a world authority based on those principles. If you will appreciate this then I believe you will appreciate why our journal “World Union” is run on the lines which you have found it necessary to criticize.
As an individual has the law of his being the fulfillment of which is “Dharma,” an institution also has the law of its being the fulfillment of which is its “Dharma.” World Union has its own “Dharma.”
I welcome your stimulating comments but I hope that you will appreciate the position of World Union I have endeavored to explain in this letter.
Yours fraternally,
A. B. Patel
410 Precita Ave,
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
June 7, 1969
A.B. Patel
World Union
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry 2, India
Dear Ram:
“The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation—for it survives the longest periods of skepticism and turns after every banishment—is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divinity of Godhead, the impulse toward perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this constant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature preparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be the last—God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.”—first paragraph, Chapter 1, The Life Divine
Your very kind letter of the 2nd of June is before me. Exactly where this fits in to the Taittiriya Upanishad I do not know; in fact I do not see. This leaves me in a quandary. Is the teaching of this Upanishad and other Upanishads true or not true?
The people of manusha see their point of view, defend their point of view, have logic in their point of view. They do not accept the points of view of others. And I am wondering whether you accept the point of view of non-participants in your efforts that Sri Aurobindo was, and even is, Vijnanavadin. He called himself a Rishi. I have accepted him as a Rishi, not as a questionable “Maharshi” which even some of your so-called followers here accept. Nor am I ready to lay aside the teaching that Atman is Brahman.
If I were to speak at a scientific conference, and I have spoken at top scientific conferences, neither the speakers nor those in accord with them nor those opposed to them would have to tell stories of their life nor their backgrounds in order to present facts and conclusions. It is amazing that you my good friend, acting as if you were a spokesman for the super-mental evolution, should dare to assume that I have not been to Pondicherry, that I am not fully aware from both the inside and outside of what you are doing, or that I would dare to make a criticism or suggestion without knowledge.
From what I have seen of the Sri Aurobindo movement in this land—have never let me speak nor even tell them about my visit to Pondicherry etc, etc, etc, nor would they ever let me speak or refer to Emperor Akbar, Fatehpur Sikri, Prince Dara Shikoh, and the book called Dabistan, etc., etc., etc.
Nor would I dare to speak holding to much of the point of view of Shankarachariya if I had not been initiated, ordained, and validated by actual Zen masters who I can name and Sufi Pirs who I can name and the late Swami Ramdas of Kangahad—also by Paul Brunton during the life time of the late Sri Ramana Maharshi. If this background is not enough I can give you more but to so means that before the living God Brahm Ishvara Allah we are accepting dualism and I mean dualism and Tat Tvam Asi is hokum and nonsense and I mean just that.
I have no doubt that many of you are aspiring or think you are aspiring to the super-conscient level. But if those who aspire self-assume the right to reject those who have had direct experiences on the levels you only think exist, teachers and teachings may as well be abolished and aspirants find refuge in the hypocritical term humility.
Before the living God it is very strange that you ask to be accepted while you yourselves do not show how to accept others. India is full of so-called Maharshis, Messiahs, Avatars, and me-ego-me-egos. The same problems persist that belong everywhere to samsara. The same or other, or even better programs and perhaps revelations have been offered, carefully packaged and preserved by “Us special representatives” of whom there are so many today I cannot count them. This is particularly true in India and California. I do not know any law or rule by which the rain and the sunshine and the eternal God is restricted to a certain geography, or the blessings thereof confined to certain individuals or groups.
My secretary is away studying these New Age efforts. I myself am a veteran in this field. As a veteran I do not like to see the same mistakes repeated that I have seen repeated over and over and over. One of my prayers ends, “One single brotherhood in the fatherhood of God.” The International ends “The International Party shall be the human race.” These things did not necessarily come from the super-mental, but I can hardly recognize those that step down to lower levels as representing the super-mental.
I have purposely started to quote Sri Aurobindo. I have not offered a single criticism of the Mother, but if you are daring to put on the same level with Sri Aurobindo or the Mother the work of any group and I mean any group of ahankara-manas politicians, you leave open to a person that does not accept manas-ahankara the right and privilege to offer suggestions and criticisms. And if you are going to place any of the work of the United nations its formers and founders, its officials and its dismal failure alongside The Life Divine you had better consider that the Living God may not agree with you.
It is this Living God whom I believe made mankind in His image and not constitutions formulae, or documents of any kind in His Image. And if you are going to take away the right of dissent from the beginning I am not going to even ask you to consider the operations of karma and the existence of moral laws.
We have offered you before and we offer you still our Dances of Universal Peace. Young people who have never studied Vedas or Upanishads, the Qur’an, the Gita, or the Prajna-Paramita Sutras are coming in ever greater numbers to my meetings to learn these dances. We quote the Names of God. We adore God. we praise God. We are putting into effect the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by raising the levels of potentialities of ananda (joy) and the actual experiences in ananda (joy). We do not need any documentary from the United Nations for this. perhaps we are expanding the Ramdun. We are not making any joke of Gandhi’s so-called non-resistance, leaving out Satyagraha.
If World Union really stands for “human brotherhood, world consciousness, world perspective” then there will be a certain recognition—respect is not required—to those who have more than the vision of human brotherhood, world consciousness, world perspective. All over California, and now spreading into other Western states there are New Age communities arising. They recognize God. They practice Yoga. they do not respect intellectual efforts of the past two generations (and I am older than the past two generations). The recognize the existence of higher facilities manifesting in human beings and not in mere thought forms about human beings.
This is, no doubt, a strong letter. I want the same ideals and I have long had the same goals. I have seen one after another so-called world movements rise and fall. I have participated in many of them. All failed. Not one accepted “Whatsoever ye do to the least of these my creatures, ye do it unto me.” Not one accepted, “A little child shall lead them.”
There is a teaching that “A people without a vision perishes.” I am old enough, if not wise enough, to accept the visions of the young. I am old enough, if not wise enough, to reject the non-visions of elders as divine inspirations. I am enough of a Muslim to accepts “God loves his creation more than a mother loves her offspring.” Offering the young Love and Joy, I am amazed at the response. In fact I shall have to go to another city soon to organize my work which has gotten out of hand. These young people, the Coming Race, predicted also by Bulwer Lytton, H. G. Wells, and others, is not confining its behavior patterns to the dictums or dictations of elders. The thought World State is a thought; it is not an accomplishment. I have been personally involved in the complexes of Vietnam since 1947 or before. It is only recently that I could get a single important person to accept documentary evidence on this point. We prefer wars and wars shall continue so long as eye-witnesses are nuisances to those in love with the word “peace.”
The writer has gone through many of the stages and states alluded to by Sri Aurobindo when he uses the term “super conscient.” The other night it was demonstrated to some of my disciples the reality of God as Saraswati. I am the Flute of Rumi; more than that I am the Flute of Krishna. very demonstrable, but not before those whose eyes and ears and minds are closed. Skepticism breeds skepticism. World Union will never come by those who say “You should accept us but we reserve the right to reject you.”
I shall soon have copied and published the celebrated poem of Abdul Fazl, Prime Minister of Akbar. The very reference to these two men has been a source of annoyance to nearly all of your representatives or presumable representatives I have contacted so far. No organization or order can obliterate the actual work of the Beloved Ones of God who have made their marks in this world. If you are going to follow the methods of Stalin and Mao by blanketing out history, before the Living God Allah Ram, you may guess the consequences. A real lover recognizes all lovers; a real lover also recognizes non-lovers as the Beloved Ones of God.
I have not come to obliterate Puja, to abolish prayer and meditation and Yoga in the name of any order. the United Nations did not begin with prayer and meditation nor are some of the new nations dedicated to God at all, but that does not remove them from their existence in God and the Love, tenderness, Compassion, and consideration to and for them by the Supreme.
Love does not abject negativity. Love does not mean saying yes or no to those who have not skillfulness in their own use of yes or no. Love is all considerate, all embracing. the Bodhisattva takes an Oath—and I have taken this Oath—to consider the whole race, all sentient beings; and I mean the whole race, all sentient beings, including me and thee and a multitude of mes and thees.
Here we do the walk of Avalokitesvara (Kwan Yin) and of Rama, of Krishna, of Moses, of Jesus, Mohammed. We are working on aspects of dances of Shiva. Qur’an says that the Light of God is neither of the East nor the West. I tell you my friend that the super-mental consciousness is neither of the East nor the West. I pause at this point because I have been summoned to a meeting of other people who believe they are also on the threshold of the super-mental consciousness.
Sunday Morning. Last night was spent at a colloquium of young people. Over a dozen seeking answers. No bland or blind assumptions were accepted. All points of view were fully expressed without any personal or personality allusions or recriminations. A surprisingly large number of those present seemed to have gone deeper into Asian scriptures and philosophies than many of the well-known “experts” or important(!) personalities who are so often quoted as if God Allah Brahm paid ever special attention to them. Several of those present were deeply imbued with Vedantic teachings. At least one woman there was born in Darjeeling and lived in Vietnam. Some of us faced the complexities of Vietnam, starvation, mal-nutrition, etc., without accepting pat phrases as even quasi-solutions. I think nearly all of us would have accepted the questions and search for answers the way that Buddha did. I relate this as news. I relate this as one of a myriad of examples today of small groups of small people who are ignored by those fortunate enough to be able to send literature afar. Literary emphasis alone does not seem to solve much. The main difference was whether people are important or ideas are important. The majority took the view that people are the most important and that possibly God loves human beings more than ideas which came from just certain sources.
The bible stresses that out of insignificant Bethlehem Ephrata came the light of the world. Modern science accepts that out of insignificant uranium and radium came tremendous unveiling of the secrets of nature. The sciences do not decry the little people. Morality can never catch up with science until moralists also recognize little people and potentialities or actualities that come from them. I myself am not yet willing to lay aside the Biblical “and the little child shall lead them.”
Once during the evening it was necessary to bark and bark out loud. But the chair having seen the celebrated Indian musician Asoka Kaqir and the writer rush up and embrace each other in a public place, ruled that this person has done more than discuss love, he had expressed it. Real love does not decry intelligence or wisdom. One of my poems is entitled, “One eye, Two eyes, Three eyes, and a Thousand Eyes.” The last two allude to ajna and sahasrara. The world is not going to advance when person without awakened so-called higher faculties are denied and decried by those without such faculties awakened. A gold-miner dare not ignore gold; a diamond seeker would not overstep precious stones; but the literati clinging to apparently noble words have full right apparently to ignore, by-pass, and even deride the very ones who exemplify what they are talking about. And this was the gist of the discussion of these young people, and others. Recognition cannot remain a one-way street and find its way into the heart of God.
All love and blessing,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave,
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
22 August, 1969
A.B. Patel
World Union
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry 2, India
Dear Ram:
Your letterhead has the admirable heading: A Movement for Unity and Peace through Spiritual and Scientific Development. Period.
The Life Divine begins: “The earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation—for it survives the longest periods of skepticism and turns after every banishment—is also the highest which his thought can envisage. It manifests itself in the divinity of Godhead, the impulse toward perfection, the search after pure Truth and unmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. Period.
Page 152: “That apprehending consciousness, the Prajnana, places, as we have seen, the working of the indivisible All, active and formative, as a process and object of creative knowledge before the consciousness of the same All, originative and cognizant as the possessor and witness of its own working….” Period.
Whatever is written, and much has been written, I personally do not countenance the rejection of the teaching of Sri Sanakaracharya and denied in practice, that the divinity is in human beings while asserting and asserting very strongly that this same divinity may manifest in specialized institutions of this same imperfect humanity. I say “imperfect humanity” because in practice there is the rejection both of Sankara and the above quotations from the late Sri Aurobindo and any Yoga, any Yoga that places the institutions coming from mankind as superior to the divinity of mankind is bound to fail. And you can win all the arguments and that is all that will be won—including the adamant refusal to give any consideration whatever and whatsoever to the inspirations of human beings in whom the Vijnanavada and Anandavada are active.
On the positive side, the inspiration of Dance of Universal Peace, now grown into Dances of Universal Peace, snubbed and sidetracked and the proclaiming of the majesty of Santa Class and the semi-divination of human beings as superhuman programs but these programs so fitted and arranged hardly exemplify the above or other quotations from the late Sri Aurobindo.
And the tragedy of seeing Brahma in the white elephant and never in the warner will only mean the repetition of another failure, well financed and well advertised such as the Baha’i movement, the Theosophists, the Roerich Museum, etc., etc, etc. All who flagrantly denied the stand of Sankara or the saying of Jesus Christ, “whatsoever ye do to the least of these, my creatures, ye do it unto me,” only means that another will be added to the list of failures in human history because the God-in-man, in practice is ignored. And one had to write another letter today to another institution to which also Dances of Universal Peace were to have been dedicated and the same snubs which one has endured through a long life, all ignoring Sankara; all ignoring Jesus; all place the institutions of man, or as you are doing, the folk-lore of man above the Divine Inspirations and prajnana.
This city has recently seen another conference on Asian philosophy, dominated by one of your own worthies; flanked by a number of highly educated Europeans and two Asian Christians. Asian non-Christians were not particularly welcome and the sessions, verbally dedicated to mysticism and meditation were actually dedicated to cocktail drinking and plenty. Yet this was lead by one of your own worthies and it is very welcome that there are movements which demand a higher morality from their own “ins” than from others. And so all fail and will continue to fail.
As warnings are of no avail; and as in practice one ignores the teachings of Sankara; and the deeper teaching that Atma is Brahm (to be applied only to the respectable, whomsoever they are) it was not surprising that one has been visited by an ever growing number of Americans who follow their fellows here, “They are not Sri Aurobindo’s people; we are Sri Aurobindo’s people.” These young Americans have money, land and vitality and have concluded, rightly or wrongly, that Auroville is not an integrative community and that it is not fulfilling the promise, “A Movement for Unity and Peace through Spiritual and Scientific Development—the first item being to extol Santa Class and the next not be mention “God” at all.
There are a growing number of these young Americans and they have called on this person who has made a deep study of the scriptures of the world; and on top that has had the spiritual realization, confirmed by Sufis, Yogi Saints and Zen Masters, confirmed from actual experience and fact and still pooh-poohed by money seeking organizations so that in fact, in fact, Rama, the search is for funds and not for divinity; and for leadership, not spiritual realization.
There may be nothing noble in my preferring a group of rising, well-endowed young Americans who accept the hard fact of the divine experience to worldly prestige and wish me to lecture on mysticism, Yoga, and to demonstrate the above-referred to “Dances of Universal Peace” than to send moneys abroad to any group more concerned with Santa Class than with “God” and with the institutions of man (in fact) to the institutions of God. And it has been put so plain that one is seriously considering throwing in one’s lot with these young Americans, many of whom show signs of spiritual awakening, howsoever you define it.
This was not my wish. But after all your presumed representatives in this country, contrary to Prajna and Prajnana, joined a certain Dr. Zitko in a similar attempt which landed and ended in a dismal failure. And all efforts of manas-shankara will so end. And some of us are looking to the higher developments let us say, as depicted in the Upanishads, than the ego-proclaiming superiority of intellectual and social people without regards to spiritual development and enlightenment. But evidently the sins of the “in” groups are always to be forgiven and the “out” groups are called on to repent. But when the cards are reversed and an “out” group establishes itself as an “in group” because of spiritual enlightenment –and no Santa Claus—what can be done? “Unless the Lord Buildeth the House they labor in vain who build.” Now we have the young Americans. One is inclined to join them. Already they have accepted “Dances of Universal Peace” (previously offered to you); and one’s own mystical attainments and knowledge’s. Have you any alternative suggestions?
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
World Union
A Movement For Unity And Peace Through Spiritual And Scientific Development
September 27th, 1969
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis,
Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti,
410, Precita Avenue,
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Dear friend,
I have before me your kind and instructive letters of 7th June and 3rd Sept. 1969.
Let me frankly state that I do not see the aim and purpose of your letters which I have studied carefully. I do not see why you bring in so much of religious terminology and spiritual discussions. Particularly I do not see why you bring in Sri Aurobindo in your writings in the manner you have done.
I dare say you are older than two generations, have read well of the spiritual literature of the East and the West, and have a good command of language to state your points of view. Personally, I would like to mention that I am perhaps as old as you are, if not older, and have seen many aspects of life in a practical way to understand that this world is moving or evolving from imperfection to perfection; from division to unity; from untruth to truth; from darkness to light; and from ignorance to knowledge. I also understand that this world has life at various grades from worm to God-hood, and that there are millions of planes between inconscient and super-conscient, the two ends of this life, and each plane has its own rules and regulations governing existence, progress and further evolution. I admire your endeavor to remain in clouds only. It seems to me that one has to act in regard to any movement according to the needs of the persons whom we approach for the acceptance of the ideals we wish to make effective. To give you one simple instance, ego helps large number of people to grow, while obstructs the path of a spiritually advanced soul. If you preach removal of ego prematurely to an unevolved being, the result will be that he may sink into tamasic attitude, and may fall back in the evolutionary ladder. While for a spiritually advanced soul ego will bar his further progress unless he rejects it completely. One can say in the same way that desire is necessary for the evolution of many, while it bars the progress of a few, who have already entered the spiritual region.
One may also say that similarly reason is a necessary equipment to live life and progress for many, while it will bar the further progress of a few enlightened soul. So in all humility I suggest to you that the work of World Union is different from the work of the Practice of Yoga, or an endeavor for Moksha.
I haven’t understood why you state that we are not interested in your “Dances of Universal Peace” and are unwilling to learn about them. So far, we do not know what it is in the absence of adequate information from you. As World Union we are interested in Peace and Human Unity. But we approach the subject at the present state with ideas and ideals which would change the hearts and minds of man, so that a human being will treat the other human being as a brother and not as a Westerner or Easterner or Hindu or Muslim or Christian and one will be completely free from all barriers of caste, creed, race, religion, nationality or ideology. We in World Union attempt in our own humble way to promote this work without creating confusion in the mind of an average person by learned discourses of spiritual writings old or new, and of the East or the West.
If any higher Force offers to me if I would have 12 members of World Union who live a life of oneness and unity—or one million members who intellectually accept the ideal of human unity, but do not live it, I would prefer to have one dozen members. Moreover, the work of World Union is to educate the people that the aim should be a world union of free and independence nations in which unity in diversity will be the largest principle in life, and freedom its corner stone, and in which no nation will be subordinate to another though some may exercise a greater natural influence. Therefore you will see that in our endeavor we cannot ignore the stage the collective life of humanity has reached so far, for the purpose of creation of an international organization and we cannot ignore the United Nations, its achievements, its defects, its failures, its potentialities, and its growth to be a World Union of free and independent nations.
I do not understand why you adopt an attitude of criticism and condemnation only against others, state that others want money only and want to satisfy their ego, and want to ignore others. As you claim to write from a high spiritual level, I would like to draw your attention to what I understand necessary for progress in the spiritual life. One should not find faults with others, but view what others do with love, goodwill, understanding and sympathy. Fault-finding, gossiping, criticism, opinions, judgments and condemnations are not ingredients of true spirituality. I had not replied your letters for a long time because I thought that it would add to unnecessary misunderstanding between us, but as you have stated in your letter of 3rd Sept. 1969:
“Further cooperation is impossible because of your own terms and failure to exemplify your own slogans.”
I considered it necessary to express frankly what I feel about your letters. At no time have I asked you to fulfill any terms and conditions so that we may cooperate together for a common cause. At no time have I claimed that we will go on explaining all one writes in our Journal, Focus or otherwise. We endeavor sincerely and earnestly to write what we consider necessary to educate an average man to accept the ideal of human understanding and to endeavor to live up to it. I hope that you will accept my assurance that I have attempted to state what I have felt. Again I would emphasis that I do not claim the vast reading you have, and the power of expression you possess and perhaps the spiritual progress you have made. I am merely a humble aspirant for a higher life, higher consciousness, and have take up the work of World Union as a part of my Sadhana. I am 72 years old.
Yours fraternally,
A. B. Patel
World Union
11th December, 1969
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis,
Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti,
410, Precita Avenue,
San Francisco,
California, 94110 U.S.A.
Dear friend,
My letter of 27th September 1969 crossed yours of October 3, 1969 and a copy of your letter dated 8th October 1969 to Anand Ashram, Pondicherry.
I hope that you have received my letter of 27th September 1969 and took it in a friendly manner I attempted to convey what I felt right.
I must repeat again that I am no match with your vast reading, high ideals and spiritual grasp. However I would like to mention very humbly two things. If this earth and the life on it are constantly evolving and moving from imperfection to perfection, ignorance to knowledge, untruth to truth, darkness to light and if one accepts that the present universe is not a full manifestation of the Divine but there is an unmanifested universe waiting to manifest by a process evolution, it will not serve truth if we accept the past of this world or the human race as complete or final outcome of the evolutionary process. One has to assume or accept that something more and greater will manifest in course of time and the life as we see it now will be exceeded under the pressure of the future evolution and the facets of Infinite Truth experienced by even great spiritual lights are not final and the future spiritual lights of the world will manifest and express other facets of the Infinite Truth.
It has also to be accepted or understood that in the past endeavor the individual rose to higher regions of spirituality but there was no collective endeavor for rising to the higher level of consciousness.
Perhaps these-two aspects need emphasis in view of what you have been stating in your letters which has rightly or wrongly left an impression on my mind that you quote the past as if it cannot be exceeded in future and you overlook that until the last man rises to the higher level of consciousness the work on earth is not done or complete.
In spite of different approaches or attitudes by you and me for spiritual endeavor and work in the world I do not see why we should not remember that as all rivers flow to the ocean, all sincere and earnest endeavors serve to lead us to a higher state of consciousness.
With best regards,
Yours fraternally,
A. B. Patel
Mr. A. B. Patel
World Union International Centre
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry, 2 India
Dec. 20, 1969
Dear Ram:
I very much appreciate your letter of 11th December. The Infinite Truth has not changed. With all the courses of history both in earlier times and now with its flood of “Sadgurus,” “Avatars,” etc., I see no alteration to Sanatana Dharma. But I am sick and tired, hard-felt sick and tired at the progress given to and by intellectuals and their utter disdain of the common man who might be a Kabir in disguise, or not in disguise, nor will there be any World Union with the rejection of “Tam Twat Asi” or Brahm is Atman. So long as personalities assume leadership, leadership with the rights of their egos to reject any self-realized souls, I do not see what goal can be attained, and I absolutely refuse me another experience like that of the Roerich Museum and countless “world-saving groups” any and all of when practice noblesse oblige and the rejection of the little people who may have had under God’s Grace experiences of Divine Union and Yogic attainment, by which I mean attainment.
At one of the colleges here we are discussing the modern movements, and it is regrettable that Sri Aurobindo and his work have not even been mentioned! Many rival movements have at least been mentioned, for they, with all their faults and virtues, at least recognize the common man and the hard-facts of actual history. Your representatives in this country have either never granted the writer an interview of have looked down upon him as an inferior person. Let me tell you, that Dr. Radhakrishnan never acted that way with this ego; Dr. S. J. Chatterji of Calcutta never acted that way with this ego; and when the great Villabhai Patel, whom I assume was your kinsman, was in this city years ago, this person was the only American to be granted an interview. Then there was not a token of dualism, much less the sham of advaita. And when a person with my self-reputed backgrounds and development cannot reach anywhere, what do you think of the common man of this or any other nation? Where do they stand?
Certainly I want World Union. But I want World Union which includes the facts of history and the living humanity, actualities, not projection of any subconscious. Besides this, if one were to put the super-conscient into a word it would be Heart. This disdaining of persons with accomplishments by people who have no accomplishments will never establish any kind of union. Place before these leaders problems such as that of Vietnam, Palestine, Nigeria, and South Asia and they run to cover. Place before them the problems which brought forth the grand meditations and the grand illuminations of Lord Buddha and they mumble.
The conditions on which I will join with World Union have nothing to do with my ego at all. I refuse to reject and by-pass the historicity of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent; Emperor Akbar, Prince Dara Shikoh; and more recently the late President Zukair Hussein. The all-inclusive is all-inclusive, and must be all inclusive, and “Whatsoever ye do to the least of these my creatures, ye do it unto me.”
The Dances of Universal Peace have come out of akasha, or if you will Alaya Vijnana, and no nonsense. And not rejection by any smart intellectual is going to stop the movements of the cosmos itself. And what is far more concern to me, for I cannot help seeing, and I mean seeing it, it is your elevating in one of your publications a Santa Clams while by-passing Yogic attainment by anybody and everybody outside the present so-called World Union. Indeed we have to go elsewhere to get accepted. The well known statement of Abu’l Fasl etc. We do not accept any by-passing by anybody, Whosoever, whatsoever, of the efforts of Fatehpur Sikri. Equally, we would join and must join whole-heartedly, any group that follows in the general direction pointed out at Fatehpur Sikri.
In other words we have two obstacles, and I believe they are both on your part:
a. Your placing Santa Claus above historical and archetypal Saints, Sages, and Rishis.
b. The establishment in places of leadership in a so-called World Union of personalities who insist on their own ego-prowess instead of the brotherhood of man.
I wish to call to your attention a recent issue of “The Bridge” published by the Indian Students Association of this vicinity. It has an excellent article on “Communal Harmony in India.” It is on the basis of such an article and its philosophy that India could extend spiritual and social leadership to the world. It is not on the basis of rejecting historicity or the actualities of the late Villabhai Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, and President Hussein, that we can build a better world.
I must repeat, to me to super-mental consciousness means the Heart consciousness. I accept no derivations from Sri Aurobindo which contradicts the teachings of the Upanishads. I find nothing in his teachings affirming analysis, emotionalism, dualism, of ahankara-manas interpretations of the Gita or any Scriptures. The awakened heart feels the sufferings of all mankind. When your representatives of this land reject both personality and the glorious Bodhisattvic Oath, to me they are not fit to lead any World Union. But I no longer care to deplore—we are out to act. The youth of America is rising in multitudes, re-incarnated Indian souls who have brought out of the cosmos scads of elements of Sanatana Dharma. The outlooks are those of humanity, brotherhood, and heart. It should not even be necessary to mention these things in this letter.
The very principle of the idea of Yoga without any God is to me anathema. Superficially, this is what is happening today. Among leaders. When anything is substituted for spiritual awakening, that thing is under karma. It is karma- bound. Jesus said “Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth will make you free.” The qualification of love, the limitation of love, the defining of love—these are not Love.
It is not only as an individual, it is not only as a group or group-leader this is being written, but also with a certain degree of advise and warning. Here we make compassion a value; here we make human consideration a value; here we make tenderness and love values. Here we do not make Santa Claus a value. We are ready, willing and able to work with any group which has a cosmic outlook, actual cosmic outlook.
With all love and blessings,
Samuel L. Lewis
Mr. A. B. Patel
World Union International Centre
Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry, 2 India
Dec. 24, 1969
Dear Ram:
I am reminded of an event that took place on Christmas Eve in another part of the country over twenty years ago. I was living alone in an ashram in an another part of the country, the nearest neighbor over of mile away. For factors outside my ken no one had sent me either food or presents (these were adjusted later) and the nearest neighbors who had invited me to dinner, disappeared. There was I alone in the woods without, and at that moment the heavens opened and Jesus Christ manifested with a world mission. What happened afterwards has been the usual, but I do not believe it will ever happen again: all the good people, all the presumable devotees, etc., stood almost solidly against this mission. It was concerned with bringing peace in Palestine.
Much earlier in life under comparable circumstances there was a similar experience, but in this city San Francisco. There I took the written notes and showed them to the then-living Dr. Henry Atkinson, head of the World Church Peace Union. He said to me to my amusement, “Mr. Lewis, I have been around the world three times; I have met every king, every prime minister, every potentate, and you are the first man to have brought me what I wanted.” This was in 1928.
Dr. Atkinson laid out plans of studies to acquaint myself with the religions of Asia, which before God I have done, but which before leadership-complex people is nothing but claim. Dr. Atkinson’s successors refused even to give me an interview. The same with the clergy almost all over, except the Quakers. The same with those pretending to believe in universal religion, (excepting the Sufis and Vedantists). The Same with the so-called representatives of Sri Aurobindo.
Why is it that prominent people will accept any pretensions to scientific discoveries without a demur or murmur, and refuse adamantly to accept testimonials of the inner life. When Phillip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen appeared, I got up and danced for joy. This is a New Age, I said, in which the same psychological attitudes will be taken toward successful adventures within as with successful adventures without. This is happening. It is happening especially in the colleges and universities. It is not happening in the cults, in the foundations, in the leadership-complex movements including the late fiasco of the “Integral Yoga” with Dr. Zitko in Arizona. “Unless the Lord buildeth a house, they labor in vain who build.”
I accepted Sri Aurobindo because of internal evidence. This internal evidence has been snubbed if not rejected, by some, but not all, followers of Sri Aurobindo. There is indeed in San Francisco a Swami who claims to be a disciple of Sri Aurobindo who does not reject this person, but has rejected to so-called official groups. His stand is simple; Yogic experiences consist of experiences in yoga and not in lectures of exhortations.
A number of years ago Dilip Kumar Roy came to San Francisco. He had the usual “humility.” Refusing to see anybody excepting on his own terms. He lost his money. He lost his prowess. He was at his wits’ ends. Then he did something which none of the “humble” people never do: he sat at this person’s feet, actually. There is such a thing as Prajna. I am not going to argue about it, but the practical rejection of Prajna makes it impossible for any great movement, spiritual or commercial, to succeed.
This particular incident was also followed exactly as the moral law of the universe would indicate—I was later stranded at Poona and Dilip Kumar Roy came to my assistance. There is a moral law, and it does not consist of sermons on the subject. It manifests in the actual behavior between man and man.
To me the neglected poet Kabir was in many ways a Prophet. He spoke of the streets and byways being filled with Shivas, and the world went on just as it always did. Science is ahead of religion today. Science accepts the worth of everything. One of the best examples is the ultramicroscope. The ultramicroscope accepts, whatsoever ye do to the least of these my creatures, ye do it also unto me. Religions and cults, whatever their words, whatever their worthiness, do not accept this. That is why I have been lecturing on “Every valley shall be exalted and every hill laid low.”
It was only in recent years that I came upon a very odd thing: Exclusive Integration. We have it all around us today. In our race riots, in our social agitations, in the several wars and there are wars going on on the face of the earth. Prominent people talk about peace as if it were a piece of cheese. While the “World Union” runs around with a nice phrase. I am next adding to my contacts here a Sufi (of all things) from Palestine.
As I have always stood for the internationalization and de-politicalization of all Holy cities, I stand before the Living God that the divine inspirations which originally brought this to both my inner and outer consciousness, stand. I may have to go beyond” Dances of Universal Peace” into working out in a literary form the same proposals written in 1928. Fortunately, my closest spiritual colleague is having a book published in which a whole chapter is devoted to this unknown person. But I have long felt like Mohammed in the cave, that when you have God with you, you have a majority. My lectures on Krishna, the neglected Negro cowboy, are drawing hilarious responses. Every mystic I have ever met, of every school, has accepted that the relation between human being to human being is the same us the relation between the multifarious cells of the body to human personality and function. It is no longer a question of appealing for acceptance of personality. It is a question of whether people who claim can live up to their claims.
Ever since I met the young men who returned from Pondicherry saying they would build their own Shangri-La in this land, I have seen more and more wonders from American people. “Cosmic Humanism” of Oliver Reiser has not only interested me, it has excited me. It has even destroyed a degree of calmness into ecstascial bewilderment. I get no such feeling from any of the materials from Auroville, but I do get such feeling from many of the materials from New Mexico.
Deep down we have to come to human understanding and love. I cannot demand that mankind accept my mystical experiences. It is in my poetry, it is in my Darshans, and it is in manifestations of using Universal Kind in operation. But it is not an ego claim. It is part of the demonstration that the oversoul of Emerson and the supermind of Sri Aurobindo, are real, not projections of articles and sermons by persons who have not experienced them.
I am now ready to work on my next cosmic poem. It will stand. The real author is God.
Love and Blessings,
Samuel L. Lewis
P.S. The article enclosed that this person is capable of understanding and points of view, but it also shows by actuality of events that your colleagues unable to accept what this person is doing.
World Union
21, Jannath
New Delhi
May 31, 1970
Respected dear Mr. Lewis,
Thank you very much for your letter of ten 24th March 1970. This long delay in acknowledging your letter is due to my serious illness for which I had to be hospitalized from 31st January, 1970 to 7th May, 1970, as I had to undergo an operation for the removal of prostate gland, which turned out to be almost fatal at one stage, but for the kind efforts, including our Prime Minister’s assistance to get the medicine overnight from Germany, has saved my life. Behind all these, I believe, it was all due to Divine Grace that has helped me to pass over this crisis. I have returned home from the hospital on the 7th May, 1970, not yet fully recovered from the shock which I have passed. Still convalescing. That is why I could not reply to your letter also. No doubt, it will take some time before I am able to regain my normal strength, but with God’s grace and best wishes of friends like you, I hope that I shall regain my normal health soon.
What you have state in your letter, whatever can be the opinion of others, I find I am in general agreement with you—India has a spiritual message, it is true—but it does not necessarily follow that the message will be delivered through an Indian. Like you, I also take the world view and I find the spiritual message of India in which I believed, and still believe, is being realized as predicted and worked out by many people all over the world and you are one of them. We are organizing a “World Parliament of Youth” and perhaps you have got some literature concerning this conference. I really find that we have no exclusive plan but we do want that the younger generation should come forward with their new ideas and suggestions so that a new world may be born out of this chaotic condition through which we are passing presently.
I also agree with you that in the past many depended on the personalities, but today I can clearly see, as you have said, what Sri Aurobindo predicted and also H. G. Wells and others predicted, which is being manifested today through the youth of the world all over. Our “World Union” does not believe working in isolation. We do believe that all over the world a new spirit should manifest which in fact is being manifested through various people, institutions, and the people who can come close to each other and collaborate with each other, in a friendly and sympathetic way. Dances of the Universal Peace of which you have written has inst been presented publicly and has been recorded by the TV, etc. I shall be glad to know something more about this, if possible. Let me assure you that you are not working in isolation. There are good many people and I am one of them who really think and have great regard and attach great importance on the work which you are doing.
As I have mentioned that we are organizing “World Parliament of Youth” in Pondicherry, there will be another conference on Scientific Yoga, which has been initiated by Swami Janardan with collaboration of Christopher Hills in London, to be held in Delhi, sometime in December 1970. Swami Janardan will be sending you a few literatures to you shortly, concerning this conference. I hope you have already received our literature from World union Pondicherry concerning the “ World Parliament of Youth” to be held in Pondicherry sometime between 27th December 1970 and 1st January, 1971. If not, please write directly.
Hope you are doing well. With my loving regards,
Sincerely yours,
Surendra Mohan Ghose
21, Janpath
New Delhi
A Movement for Conscious Participation in Our Evolution Toward Unity
July 8, 1970
Dear Mr. Lewis,
I am very glad to receive your letter dated June 15, 1970 written from New Mexico, together with its enclosures, and thank you very much for the same. I am really very glad that you have started your work as spiritual leader heading a group of young people who are really spiritual seekers. Further I am delighted that spiritual leader like you have seen through your spiritual eye that the whole country-side is full of spiritual seekers—exactly the type of humanity predicted by Sri Aurobindo, H.G. Wells and others.
About another remarks of yours, I do not know any leader of Sri Aurobindo movement in your country who appears not to recognize other pre-sages etc., However, if there is anybody, I can simply say that my understanding of Sri Aurobindo is quite different from theirs. Believe me, what I have written to you about the World Union is really true. I am working with that spirit and I do not consider that I am responsible for anybody’s activity. From the minutes of the proceedings of World Union or World Council meeting you will find the authenticity of what I have stated about the spirit behind “World Union” activity as true and you will never find anything to suggest that the World Union stands in isolation. Let me make it very clear to you that although you believe in universality yet because of our mental limitations and our activity being confined only in a limited sphere to make it clear that there is enough scope for others also to work in the same direction in their own way without creating any misunderstanding between ourselves. I liked very much the underlying free and frankness expressed throughout in your letter. It may be that “World Union” cannot take upon itself the plan of work or the program on which you are working, but let me assure you that there is no misunderstanding from my side to the line of your activity you have mentioned in your letter.
Let us try to understand each other also recognize the facts that we are working with a very limited resources. Moreover that super mind has not yet manifested itself. The May issue of “Mother India” quotes a saying of the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry—said in reply to a question—“The great mistake has always been to oppose these partial discoveries instead of unifying them in a supreme harmony. That is why humanity is still groping in the dark. Sri Aurobindo has come to reveal that this supreme harmony exists and to show us way the way to discovered it”.
I leave it there.
I am indeed grateful to you for your suggestion that something which you have dedicated to me. Personally I believe that I am a very small man and I do not consider myself worthy of any such thing. Even then I feel grateful because of this thought that came to you and I thank you very much for that. I am sorry to learn that you have got a rebuff from me. If there was anything in my letter which could create that feeling in you, I sincerely apologies. But from my side, I have again gone through the letter replied to you, I do not find anything which could be interpreted as rebuff. Even then, I apologize if I have offended you, and I hope, you will excuse. I am sorry, I cannot agree with your views about Christopher Hills. You and I may have different views about different persona and their opinions, that does not mean that you and I cannot appreciate each other. I am glad to learn that financially you are in a very good position and you have got many disciples around you. You must be very happy. That shows that you have Divine backing. Again thank you for writing a long letter to me with very kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
Surendra Mohan Ghose