Satprem, the Age of Adventures

While Sri Aurobindo may have been a highly educated and trained Greek scholar, Satprem was a Frenchman, a Catholic, born Bernard  Enginger, who participated with the French Maquis movement during World War II; as a young man he also was in the company of the infamous French Surrealists (and the overlapping movement, Existentialism) such as Gide and Malreaux. Mirra Alfassa, later known as the Mother to him, was more than a little acquainted with these ideas and these Frenchmen. She herself, from a small child had trusted her intuition in all matters and was highly perceptive as an adult. The Surrealist movement centered in Paris, her hometown, was something with which she also held acquaintance, an extension of her other natural inclinations. The poets and writers who made the core of this salon are extensive in 20th century French Literature.

Many believed that Alfassa could "read minds," that she was Clairvoyant. She, herself, was without doubt of the importance of her perceptive abilities. Her interests lay in auto-writing, the Dada and  those persons who were influenced by the new social study of psychology and the mind, especially the unconscious mind. Indeed when she first arrived in Pondicherry and found her way into the presence of Aurobindo, she impressed upon him with the activity of her mind and its sheer agility. Upon making the acquaintance of Enginger, later whom she dubbed, Satprem, meaning "true love," she shared parts of her life with him, especially after the passing of Aurobindo in December 1950. Satprem was about age 27 at this time.

Satprem, formerly a French colonial, posted to the French concession of Pondicherry, first came into contact with Auroville while there. He was enchanted; his previous Maquis idealism was re-ignited upon his discovery of the small Auroville community in 1953. Leaving the French Foreign Service, he engaged himself fully with the community, especially with the Mother, for whom he declared himself devoted and completely at her service. A skilled writer, Satprem came to write many of the Mother's suggestions, teaching and ideas into articles and books, published first in French.

However all was not well in Auroville; in 1973, a short time before the Mother's passing, another group of Aurovillians abruptly barred Satprem from seeing the Mother. Later they confiscated many of his manuscripts and assailed his intentions. It seems there was much political intrigue within the Auroville community.

As for his contributions to the general knowledge and fame of Sri Aurobindo, Satprem's participation is without doubt. Dedicating his book, The Adventure of Consciousness to the Mother, Satprem commences  by saying that its publication is intended to acquaint the western reader with the most practical side of the master, Sri Aurobindo... to lead the reader to find the perfect harmony, inner freedom and outer mastery... He writes that  "the age of adventure is over... children in front of death, living beings who do not know very well how they live or where they are going... as always... our best opportunities... leading us to greater light.... before the last adventure that remains for us to explore, ourselves." paraphrased
His book covers topics such as "An Accomplished Westerner," "The Silent Mind," "Consciousness," The Psychic Center," "Sleep and Death," "Oneness," "The Secret," and "The Transformation," all of which are elements of Sri Aurbindo teachings and the work of the Mother, who first relayed them to Satprem.

The Enlightenment Triumphs: Esalen and America

"Esalen: America and the religion of no religion" --by Jeffrey J. Kripal

This article starts well back into history of ideas, for another look to at least the time of the 17th century in Europe. The impact of the Enlightenment, while not a de facto part of the major religions of the world has, in its own time, come into a major success. Success here is termed as the success of the insertion of an idea or ideas so powerful that they change the course of the development of human civilization.
For some of us in modern America who can trace our family and cultural ancestry back to the Europe of the Enlightenment, we will recognize that in the history of the West, and of the beginnings of America, these ideas proved crucial in the formation of the United States of America.

Indeed our Constitution and Bill of Rights hark directly back to Europe, in particular to France and England, as well as Germany. Read in their own context, these documents, for example, are masterpieces of Enlightened thought. And they are our very own, American. Read the US Constitution and Bill of Rights; note the assertions made in those documents as a manifesto of the 'enlightened' thinker.

Some define the Enlightenment period as: Enlightenment is a call for human lives to be directed by rational thought and science, rather than by faith, monarchy or superstition.
The Rationalists, as they are also called, held a strong belief in the power of human reason to change society and free persons for the pursuit of life, liberty and justice.
Individuals were not to be constrained by custom or arbitrary authority; in the world of Reason all was to be proved and solved by science and technology. Religion was to have little, if any, role.

The advent of the American Revolution and the French and English revolutions that followed solidified the presence of this new way of acting, thinking and being in the world.
In his recent book Esalen, by Jeffrey J. Kripal, professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, located in Houston, Texas, examines the early American ideas and attitudes that wrought a society which ultimately came to accept a belief, or a group of beliefs fashioned into a new "American mysticism," some nowadays call Esalen.

True to its heritage the "founders" of Esalen saw that the simple re-arrangement of existing religious bodies and institutions would not effect the great social changes they desired, nor would the universities as a social system, reap the rewards of increased scholarship. Thus writes Kripal, "the approach [of] Esalen as an American mystical tradition has changed the rules of the game." More specifically he writes that "the old rules had to go. Esalen thus chose to operate with modern democratic principles, individualistic values, celebration of science... secular notions of religion as primarily a private affair of personal choice, and creativity and socially liberal agendas... for the past 50 years, Esalen sets out to embody a religion of no religion"

Yet science and technology has not as yet solved human grief or suffering. Indeed a tromp through the 20th century reveals that increased science and technology have led to increased barbarism and killing on the most massive scale in all of human history. Science clearly cannot be the answer to what ails the human race. Curiously, in the thinking of some, "the religion of no religion," is the religion of all religions. Kripal goes on to explain. He says, "in this mystical humanism... one finds in the play of the divine, that, embracing all paths is an effective path." Like buckshot in the dark, one is bound to hit a target.

By refusing to identify with any single truth, and by preferring "a metaphorical or symbolic understanding of all religious language... [Esalen] inhabits a different existential religious position..." Thus a religion of no religion; a religion of all religion. The ideas joined together to form Esalen are without any single historical tradition, beyond Enlightenment; such a deconstructive, revisionist view of human civilization is powerful, even when not fully engaged.

Yet it is deeply American to want as the Constitution reads, a separation of Church and State-- so, "no one captures the flag." In political terms when this notion succeeds, it results in a democratic pluralism in which no one group stands before any other; in religious terms, in a sort of "metaphysical secret," since religion is a private matter per the mythology of Esalen. Thus saying that "we hold our dogmas lightly" is a form of "this same mystical secularism," writes Kripal. This is embodied in the person who holds himself as 'spiritual, but not religious.' Does this person know, or care anything about enlightenment?

Recalling that the drive for religious liberty, in large measure, propelled many American patriots forward, and while some would argue that over the course of the past 300 years, the democratic and egalitarian forms visioned by the American Founding Fathers to free the person from political domination, from tyranny, from monarchy, from state instituted religion, have by and large resulted in some quarters of America, in continuation of the religious notions and practice which preceded the Founding Fathers; in other quarters, it has enveloped a sort of dream, a utopian hope to counter what many presently experience as religion in America today.

Humanists seek pattern, beauty and meaning, wonder within themselves; science, meanwhile, pursues cause, and explanations in the world around the self. In extension of reason or Rationalist thought, faith then is not in their vocabulary. Esalen has dedicated itself, however to the fusing of the spiritual and the scientific, the rational and the wondrous. And yet Esalen seeks to, in the American way, fuse and celebrate the " fullest scope of human knowledge and experience, even and especially, if those mediating fusions were subversive to traditional science and traditional religion. Of course they often were." John Heideger, Esalen teacher, wrote, "all creation reveals meaningful interconnectedness."

Such paradoxes exert a profound understanding of history. In this mind, history is neither linear nor narrative; rather it is creative, re-visioning, some times mysterious, and truly unknowable, setting the stage for the teaching of the new way, the new American history according to Esalen. The American Mormon has done it, the Scientologists have roared onto the American scene along with the Seventh Day Adventist and the Christian Scientists, among others, so why not?
simplemindzen.blogspot.com

Quakers, Shakers and Papists in America

"Je pense, donc je suis." --Rene Descartes, 17th century
French philosopher and mathematician

In entertaining this important subject of the Enlightenment in colonial America, its great influence upon the world then and now, Bryan LeBeau writes in his book Religion in America, that "the period from 1763 to 1789 (1789 = the eve of the French revolution) brought momentous changes to Americans. They "confronted, then overthrew the only government they had ever known, and they established a new government" based on what they hoped would be the beginning of a new society and a new world. The Deists of Philadelphia wished their city to be known as the 'city of brotherly love'. With this optimism and utopian spirit, the United States of America commenced. They trumpeted their handiwork as the new order of the ages.

At the eve of this new republic, many feared that without the stabilization of social organizations such as churches, the fate of the Republic would be undermined if the new republican virtues necessary to the survival of the state were not supported by such assemblies. In the end, organizations not only stepped in to support and characterize the republic but to sustain it as well, forming today's well known American characteristic of spirituality and religiosity.

Dissenters, as they came to be known, were those persons who, in pre-revolutionary America, while participating in the Anglican Churches, established in the New World by the English crown, were those who also held faith in the new age of Reason, in the Enlightened thinking arriving progressively to American shores. Over time, as Anglican Bishops, also colonists in the New World, grew in support of the politics of the Whig party, the political party associated with the Enlightened, free-thinking movement in England, their numbers coalesced into one great mind.

The two 'Great Awakenings' and the Evangelical style of oratory they supported, shaped increasingly into what was to be the American Revolution, against the English politicians and their motives for a church established as an institution of State. Thus not only were they opposed to a protestant king led church-state, but also to the most traditional, more historic Papal led church-state. The dissenters simmered in the Colonies until a further storm in 1774 erupted over the enactment of the Quebec Act, wherein the English Crown recognized "the Roman Catholic Church in the conquered, formerly French territories of Canada". The English government effectively offered persons in those places a 'freedom of religion,' freedom that was not available to English colonists in America.

The perceived tyranny of the Papists, and the Stuart kings' reign had since the 1640's incited strong anti-catholic feeling in the colonies. Protestant thought reinforced Whig politics. Whig ideas resonated through a large swath of colonial society. The appeal of the Whigs was more broadly accepted than that of the Calvinists or the New England establishment. The basic Whig text, John Locke's Second Treatise of Government was widely available. As the church specifically, and religion in general, was at this time a part of the State, politics did and does necessarily enter into the discussion.

In fact, politics is very often a prominent feature of religious practice and affiliation even today. It is somewhat naive to presume that two such great social institutions within society would be permanently divorced, one from the other. In colonial New Jersey, the policy towards Dissenters was more liberal than elsewhere. As a result the Quakers were attracted to the state for the 'free practice of their religion,' William Penn, their leader, wrote that they laid 'a foundation for their liberty as men... that they be brought by their own consent... not by bondage'. Penn in 1670 wrote a passionate appeal for religious liberty, for tolerance and that the force of the state had 'no place in religious conscience'. Penn launched his 'holy experiment,' as he called it in 1681.

Another outgrowth of the Enlightenment zeal were the establishment of the Shakers who trace their lineage back to 17th century France. Known in France as 'Camisards,' they were Protestants who organized as a result of the revocation of the Edicts of Free Practice of Religion by the Crown. Their American foundress, Mother Ann, led a small group of British to New York in 1774, where their group established themselves. In Mother Ann, followers were instructed in the androgynous nature of God, Jesus being masculine and she herself feminine; thus her arrival marked the completion of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Despite their universal views on God, most Shakers were women by the nineteenth century.

All these groups and more directly owe their liberty to ideals of the Enlightenment and the utopian experiment that became America. Yet one significant group was late to establish itself in the English Colonies, the Papists as the English colonists called them, were generally unwelcome. While their ancestors had come to faith largely due to the efforts of Saint Augustine, among others, and due to the Roman occupation of the British isles, the English of the colonial period viewed Roman Catholicism, Papacy, with suspicion.

They wished not to be subject to a foreigner; preferring to be ruled by a monarch of British origins. After the religious wars of England, and the establishment of the Anglican Church of England, most were firmly placed into that political-social orbit. However in England, numerous Catholics remained; unwilling to acquiesce to the Crown, they resolved to reform themselves in the Colonies, like many others. Baltimore, Maryland became their destination and thus in the English speaking parts of the New World, the Papists did install themselves.

Not to be overlooked was the concomitant existence of both a Spanish and French territory within the New World. Initially seeking riches for the Crowns of Spain and France, colonists arrived in the Caribbean and the Americas regions of the New World. With them they brought their Catholic religion, their Latin culture and languages. Thus over time a vibrant Latin society came to exist within the New World. Catholic Christians, unlike their Protestant neighbors, existed in joyous exuberance, establishing communities and social structures beyond churches. In time the city of New Orleans was established at the mouth of the great Mississippi river. New Orleans, Louisiana was destined to become a major port city and commercial center.

It was in the borders of this sovereign territory of France and Spain that the free-thinking conversation continued. Many persons, especially French men and women were in frequent contact with the Old World and travel between the places was routine. With the travelers came the ideas; Pascal in the 1600's wrote brilliant philosophical treatises on various subjects , including Libertarianism (Les Libertines), who were motivated not so much by hostility as by indifference with regard to religion, preferring Reason and science in its place. He also advanced our understanding of Geometry and mathematics, all within the frame of Enlightened thinking.

In 1697, the Encyclopedia, a collected source of knowledge was all the rage. In the France of Louis XIV, there among the higher classes who could afford to read and purchase such books, was Guy Allard, a gentleman of the Royal court. He eagerly wrote and produced some of his own. Officially he was the Court Librarian under the reign of Louis XIV; his post was however hereditary. Keeping the monarch's personal library in order was his task. Today that library is the National Library of France (L'Archive Nationale de France). While smaller in his day, it included works by contemporary thinkers and poets such as Pascal, Descartes, Rabelais, Mme. de Sevigne, Voltaire and others. Within the Royal court structure of the time, persons such as Allard, had the education, the time and the availability of materials from which to construct his own encyclopedia; eventually he wrote 67 volumes.

Recall that the Monarch was acknowledged chief of state and of religion, at this time, throughout the West. Yet the nobility was not without its influence; the relationship between the two developed over time into an interdependency. Monsieur Allard however was like others of his time, free-thinking and quietly republican. He writes in a book published in 1711 that the time has come to look to science, to consider that the state nor the church can provide all the answers. He echoes Descartes' reckoning, "Je pense, donce je suis (I think, therefore I am)."

So he writes in his book about the families of the Dauphine, a region from which Allard derives, that there are many fine men and minds "in this region, who in learning and science, see the advances being made in the intellectual world." He does not mention the sovereign however. Yet reading his words 300 years later, one is struck by the vision he cautiously suggests, that the world can and will function in a new form, that the sovereign is not the Church, and that enlightened thinking will pave the way in the future for a reformed government.

This Frenchman did not live to see the intense revolt which occurred later in the century; he did not see the violence, the wholesale killing within France, the anarchy that republican revolution inspired. Nor did he live to see his grandson, a staunch republican, Armand Allard Duplantier escape to Louisiana, narrowly avoiding the guillotine, and the crazed mobs in Paris. As a signer of the French document, the Rights of Man Armand Allard Duplantier envisioned a new society, like the Americans; his belief was for life, liberty, and brotherhood for all. He supported the ideals of the Frenchman, Marquis de Lafayette. He desired a new, reformed government, with a more equal share in governing for all French people. At this moment, he did not see the excesses of science, the faults of reason, the lack of heartfelt humanity. There was only then the prospect of a better world.