Hindu Gods and the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

What Sri Aurobindo and the Mother intend now is a New Creation and hence the need to go beyond the gods. They have served their purpose and still have a role perhaps in a section of humanity.  Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did not deny their benevolent role.  It is only for the aspirants of the New Creation that the word was given to go beyond. It is in a sense the great and grand fulfilment of the Sanatana Dharma which started with a seeking for Light and Truth and God and Immortality and kept its core spirit intact while always ready to change its outer forms.

There are two sides of any spiritual truth, for that matter of any truth, – the outer, external aspects and the inner core. The outer is ever in a process of change. It is like a shell that shelters the flame. But a time comes when the shell itself needs to change because the flame has grown. Religions which do not or could not do that tend to degenerate over time as we indeed see with most world religions.  It is the unique strength of Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma that it has known how to modify its outer structure to allow for a greater manifestation of the Spirit within.

Let’s take a look. In the Vedic period there is a ritualistic side and an esoteric one. The ritualistic preserved the formulas of truth in an outer body suited to the age and the temperament.  But the spirit was kept intact by the yogis and living gurus. Then towards the later part when ritualistists or कर्मकांड became prominent the seers freed the core of Vedas and gave birth to the great Upanishads. In fact the Upanishads went on to say that men are the cattle of the gods. One of the Upanishads (Mundaka) relegated the three Vedas (fourth was not yet there) to lower knowledge and the realisation of Brahman as the higher. Even Jena points towards that. As a result the outer rituals slowly started taking a back seat until Sri Krishna gave the Gita liberating the truth completely from the inner trappings. He gave an intrinsic sense to यज्ञ,  कर्म,  पूजा everything. He even differentiated between Vedvada (ritualistic interpretation of the Vedas) and the inner Truth of the Divine. Finally the gods of the Vedas (Indra, Vayu, Agni) were modified into inner psychological truths (to their original aspect) so much so that we hardly find the kind of यज्ञशाला (yagyashala) of the ancient type. The gods also changed especially with the Tantra, Indra was relegated to an inferior heaven while Vishnu became the Lord, Rudra was restored to the original Shiva. Later the two sects began to quarrel for supremacy, giving birth to the Shakta cult, the worship of Shakti, the Divine Mother in whom all the gods were reconciled.

So if we see the historical perspective it is obvious that Hinduism not only survived but evolved in each age due to its innate ability to adapt and change, bringing in new elements and integrating them by modifying the old. This is exactly what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have done. They have released the gods from the temple grounds and reinstalled them in the heart of man. The ritualistic worship of the tantra changes into worship of the four aspects of the Divine Mother by inculcating certain psychological qualities such as calm, wideness, strength, straightforwardness, harmony, beauty, true love, perfection which are the demands of the Age with its stress upon the Religion of Humanity.