Who does Barindranath Chaki think he is? What lapse of intellectual integrity allows him to believe for one instant that he is qualified to make such pompous pronouncements about Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood and the conditions that the Supermind would employ in the process of his rebirth? This is one of the most outrageous examples of ignorance masquerading as authority I have ever seen. But unfortunately it is typical of what passes for realization in the Integral Yoga community. It is patently obvious that Chaki has no direct experience of what he claims. He has merely cherry-picked some quotations (with no citations) that appear to support his misguided premise and cobbled them together in what he believes to be a compelling argument. But to the discriminating eye, his presentation is factually flawed, wildly contradictory and worst of all, bears no relation at all to what the Avatar IS and the PURPOSE of his manifestation at this particular time in human history. He is as if seeing through a straw, seizing a fragment of an integral whole and completely misrepresenting its meaning and purpose within the larger context of Sri Aurobindo’s work and mission. Instead of sticking to facts, Chaki goes spinning off into the same kind of hyperbolic rant popularized by Tusar Mohapatra, that Sri Aurobindo is beyond all concept, system and order. He is beyond the Gods, beyond the Veda and beyond even his own Avatarhood. What we are left with are Chaki’s fanciful and romanticized notions about the actions of the Supermind and his proffer of the Mother’s speculative comments on Sri Aurobindo’s rebirth which even she cautions not to take as the final word. Chaki’s specious claims about Sri Aurobindo’s rebirth might be compared to a pompous student arguing points with a professor of Calculus, when the student himself has never even bothered to master the principles of elementary Mathematics. The result in both cases is a pretentious and dogmatic assertion of one’s ignorant and uninformed opinion in the face of incontrovertible fact.
In mathematics there is a kind of foundational order, basic elements that you build upon to erect a sound structure of knowledge. The same is true with regard to the Supermind and the way it deploys itself in the material creation. This basic formulaic expression by which the Supermind may be Seen and Measured is called Sanatana Dharma, the ETERNAL Truth. The keys to this eternal Super-logic that reveal the exact timing of Vishnu’s emanations and the dates and purpose of their births may only be discovered in the Vedic scriptures. Thus Sri Aurobindo declares to us that, ‘the Veda was the beginning of our spiritual knowledge; the Veda will remain its end… the Veda remains to us our Rock of the Ages, our ETERNAL FOUNDATION.’ . How then can Chaki reject both the Veda and Vishnu’s Dasavatars as old and limited concepts? Will he explain to us his private revelation of the Veda and its shortcomings or are we to simply take his word on it because he claims to have no vested interest in this matter? It is time to agree with Sri Aurobindo that an INTEGRAL KNOWLEDGE IS THE PATH OF OUR YOGA, not the fanciful speculations of naysayers like Chaki, not the hyperbolic rhetoric of inflated and immature followers that cannot offer real and verifiable facts in support of their claims, only Veda - KNOWLEDGE will suffice. Those who have it will unanimously agree that the Mother’s last word on Sri Aurobindo’s rebirth was contained in the sacred dimensions of her Vedic temple, objective measurements that exclude any possibility of mental speculation about the method and timing of his return to earth. But of course Chaki has rejected that along with the Veda and Sri Aurobindo’s Avatarhood and yet still has the gall to claim he is serving the Truth. This is precisely how Sri Aurobindo’s work gets reduced to what he called a pompous farce*.
*‘A movement in the case of a work like mine means the founding of a school or a sect or some other damned nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the “religions” and is the reason of their failure.’
— Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, pp. 375–376.
Robert E. Wilkinson
Original article: http://allchoice-barin.blogspot.com/2009/10/sri-aurobindo-and-avatarhood-1.html
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