Cults

(Luc Venet:) “The newcomer soon perceives that a sort of test is under way: the test of an unconditional and exclusive adherence. In a flash, he senses that a complete and unequivocal commitment is a necessary prerequisite in order to pursue this relation any further; that he must make a personal sacrifice of fidelity and allegiance, as if he were entering holy orders.
         Without a word of definition, a clearcut choice is being presented: “Here is the Adventure knocking at your door. Open this door in total and absolute acquiescence, disregarding the pettiness of naked reason and of cheap criticism, sensible though it may seem to be. If you can’t or won’t renounce your little self and open up to this greater dimension offering itself before you, then be gone — but know that you would be renouncing the one opportunity to make your life something other than this grey amorphous thing people call existence.”
         Such were the words, as I transcribe them today, that I heard more than 30 years ago, at the beginning of my relationship with Satprem. It was a barely perceptible breath, hardly defined, whose stakes were unknown to me. Yet it was there, very real, and wholly determining of future events.
         As I was perceiving this ‘choice’ before me, I was also quite aware of the somewhat heretical quality of the world that came with it. I was openly courting controversy, perhaps even scandal, by going counter to the proper, established ways. I was enjoined to trample a community of elders underfoot — the Ashram — to which Sri Aurobindo and Mother had devoted the best parts of their lives and efforts — in the name of a ‘higher’ truth that I was to accept without a word or adequate comprehension.
         In my shoes, others might have wavered and argued, but, on the contrary — and this is where the immature human ‘vital’, as Sri Aurobindo would say, came into play — all these obstacles and negatives suddenly appeared to me as irrefutable proof that this WAS the real adventure, the one that bypasses grey, boring neutralities to tread the rugged paths full of pitfalls. I was mistaking adventure for controversy, the battle against oneself for the battle against others. Not to mention that all these ‘enemies’, real or imagined, seem to present an all the more serious picture; they made the whole issue more exciting, credible, and genuine.
         Actually, enthusiasms followed by dramatic reversals are the mark of the human vital. My life flowed like a quiet — perhaps too monotonous — river. But all of a sudden I am seized with a sort of internal frenzy; I feel myself plunging into a world I had not even envisioned an instant earlier, which induces in me a complete reversal of my ways of thinking and feeling. This is obviously the sign that a great force has penetrated and is driving me. While the ways of the mind revolve around reflections, procrastinations, hesitations, and time is an essential factor in the process through which it derives its conclusions, ‘vital’ time is almost instantaneous, and hence fraught with all the risks and vagaries that go with this brusqueness.
         Furthermore, my vital ‘enthusiasm’ concealed from me all the contradictions of my new situation. It prevented me from seeing the narrow Manichean nature of the world I was joining. Without batting an eyelid, I was about to unleash a whole string of muted resentments toward everything everything that conflicted with my new-found religion, all the while claiming to draw from Sri Aurobindo’s vision that embraces everything in its scope. From one day to the next, I had become a staunch little Jihadist: the causes of problems were to be sought (and found) in others, outside myself. I remained forever untouchable within the cocoon of my superior certitudes.
         In the end, the few objections that a more mature and thoughtful mind might have raised were completely swept away by another vital illusion: the unwritten promises of spiritual enlightenment implicit in my new status.”

(Luc Venet:) “There is... more to this ‘vital’ trap. Now that the cage has closed on me and possesses me, with my full consent and participation, I make a kind of psychological U-turn and reverse the terms of the contract by pretending to own it myself. In order to hide the cowardice and servility of my condition, I integrate and take possession of the mechanism that binds me. Henceforth, I will defend it obstinately against all those who would challenge it in any way. Not only am I ready to offer my life to serve my cause — and this may include a physical commitment — but I am also prepared to rise up against those who voice the slightest misgivings or veiled objections against its foundation...”

(Luc Venet:) “My own difficulties with Satprem would in fact be considerably worsened when a real liking for America began to emerge in me and I mingled without restraint with ‘ordinary’ Americans, and in particular with Sri Aurobindo’s American disciples. Although this natural movement of expansion and empathy seems self-evident when one’s life seeks to be founded on Sri Aurobindo’s universality, it was evidently felt by Satprem as an act of betrayal against his private dogma of entrenchment.”

(Mother:) “The beings of the subtle world of the life-force, with which our vital is connected, live and flourish on the worship of their devotees, and that is why they are always inspiring new cults and religions so that their feasts of worship and adulation may never come to an end. So also your own vital being and the vital forces behind it thrive — that is to say, fatten their ignorance — by absorbing the flatteries given by others.”

(Mother:) “Besides, in the invisible world hardly any beings love to be worshipped, except those of the vital. These, as I said, are quite pleased by it. And then, it gives them importance. They are puffed up with pride and feel very happy, and when they can get a herd of people to worship them they are quite satisfied.
         But if you take real divine beings, this is not at all something they value. They do not like to be worshipped. No, it does not give them any special pleasure at all! Don’t think they are happy, for they have no pride. It is because of pride that a man likes to be worshipped; if a man has no pride he doesn’t like to be worshipped; and if, for instance, they see a good intention or a fine feeling or a movement of unselfishness or enthusiasm, a joy, a spiritual joy, these things have for them an infinitely greater value than prayers and acts of worship and pujas...”

“Announcing the advent of a perilous Form

An ominous tread softened its dire footfall

That none might understand or be on guard;

None heard until a dreadful grasp was close.

Or else all augured a divine approach,

An air of prophecy felt, a heavenly hope,

Listened for a gospel, watched for a new star.

The Fiend was visible but cloaked in light;

He seemed a helping angel from the skies:

He armed untruth with Scripture and the Law;

He deceived with wisdom, with virtue slew the soul

And led to perdition by the heavenward path.

A lavish sense he gave of power and joy,

And, when arose the warning from within,

He reassured the ear with dulcet tones

Or took the mind captive in its own net;

His rigorous logic made the false seem true.

Amazing the elect with holy lore

He spoke as with the very voice of God.

The air was full of treachery and ruse;

Truth-speaking was a stratagem in that place;

Ambush lurked in a smile and peril made

Safety its cover, trust its entry’s gate:

Falsehood came laughing with the eyes of truth;

Each friend might turn an enemy or spy,

The hand one clasped ensleeved a dagger’s stab

And an embrace could be Doom’s iron cage.

Agony and danger stalked their trembling prey

And softly spoke as to a timid friend”

(Mother:) “These vital beings, when they manifest on the physical plane, have always a great hypnotic power; for the centre of their consciousness is in the vital world and not in the material and they are not veiled and dwarfed by the material consciousness as human beings are.

Is it not a fact that these creatures are drawn by some peculiar fascination towards the spiritual life?

Yes, because they feel they do not belong to this earth but come from somewhere else; and they feel too that they have powers they have half lost and they are eager to win them back. So whenever they meet anyone who can give them some knowledge of the invisible world, they rush to him. But they mistake the vital for the spiritual world and in their seeking follow vital and not spiritual ends. Or perhaps they deliberately seek to corrupt spirituality and build up an imitation of it in the mould of their own nature. Even then it is a kind of homage they pay, or a sort of amends they make, in their own way, to the spiritual life. And there is too some kind of attraction that compels them; they have revolted against the Divine rule, but in spite of their revolt or perhaps because of it, they feel somehow bound and are powerfully attracted by its presence.
         This is how it happens that you see them sometimes used as instruments to bring into connection with each other those who are to realise the spiritual life upon earth. They do not purposely serve this use, but are compelled to it. It is a kind of compensation that they pay. For they feel the pressure of the descending Light, they sense that the time has come or is soon coming when they must choose between conversion or dissolution, choose either to surrender to the Divine Will and take their part in the Great Plan or to sink into unconsciousness and cease to be.”

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See also

• Secret societies
• Hypnotism