A Personal Manifesto and Answer

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Personal Manifesto

A PERSONAL MANIFESTO AND ANSWER

TO PATRIZIA NORELLI-BACHELET

RUNNING HEAD: Personal Manifesto

David Johnston

A PERSONAL MANIFESTO AND

ANSWER TO PATRIZIA NORELLI-BACHELET

Introductory Remarks

It is some time since I visited you at Skambha, but not so far in the distant past that I can’t recall with some clarity the events that took place there and shortly afterwards. In addition I have a written record of your synopsis of events through your missile, The Supramental Manifesto 3 and later e-mails directly concerning me (Norelli-Bachelet, 2003). You seem to have no reservation in maligning me in public to your inner circle of devotees, something that you would unhesitatingly personally sue over, if I judge from your past actions and some of the e-mails you had sent out during your MAC campaign. From my point of view, however, what is more important than even considering such action, is the full realisation that you are willing to create and formulate a public image about me to people who personally know me that is biased and full of falsehood. The image you have of me is, I assure you, false and based solely on your projections of who I am.

This brings me to the real issue between us over the years that I have been loosely associated with you and your so-called supramental path. From my point of view, there never has been any effort on your part to understand me or to sympathetically get to know anything real about me. I use the word sympathetically advisedly because in my understanding of the word it means the ability “to feel and suffer with” another person, something one would expect from any Eros-related feeling person let alone a realised being and Avatar. It has taking me 22 years to fully admit that, so obvious, truth. Thus, right up to the end, you still confuse me with Robert Wilkinson and then put me in a mixed bag with David Hogg as well. The irony is that you, who claim to be the Divine Individual, have a decided penchant for devaluing the individuality of the person in front of you. This, incidentally, is only one of the ways I have experienced this unpleasant phenomenon.

For one thing, during my stays at Skambha, I have been made aware of how you control events and personal relationships, even where and with whom natural expressions of humour can take place. They can’t, for God’s sake, take place between me and the local villagers! I always put it down to the Guru knows best, after all she claims to be the Don Juan of Perumalmalai. But as far as I am concerned this has nothing to do with my integrity or, for that matter, allowing for the natural workings of the Supermind in everyday life that you always talk about. The villagers and I always get along well for a good reason, because we like each other, much to the benefit of my psyche and I trust theirs as well.

On the subject of humour, you always “humorously” referring to your close disciples as “kiddies” is, in my opinion, more than anything else a not so subtle put-down. At least that is the way I always experience it. But this fits your unfortunate metaphor of you as the central sun, with which you identify, and your disciples as planets around the sun (Norelli-Bachelet (Thea), 2003, pp. 63-65, passim). In my mind the more appropriate metaphor would be that everybody is a sun of which they can potentially become conscious. Moreover there is also the black sun, or the shadow sun that is attributed to Martanda, as you know. What this means to the average human being psychologically is that there is typically a lot of shadow in one’s life, even well beyond one’s personal psychology, about which one needs to become gradually more conscious. If not, it comes out in an obsessive way or, otherwise, by way of possession. It can come out, for instance, in explosive reactions of anger, power-driven manipulations, expressions of fear and anxiety, all of which I experience with you.

The suggestion, in your writing, if not your actual claim, that you live under a shadowless sun does not bear scrutiny judging by your actions. There is simply too much that speaks of an untransformed nature, especially in your dealings with people and the oft-observed fact that your ego is the seat of anxiety and even fear. Here I am referring to the dream you recorded in The Supramental Manifesto 3 (Norelli-Bachelet, 2003, pp. 2,3)as well as your extremely anxious reaction to cockroaches, centipedes and the like (Norelli-Bachelet (Thea), 2003 pp. 73, 74). Then there was that time when I first came to Skambha that I innocently asked you if you had ever read Rider Haggard’s (1978) She, especially because of the reference to her as the Kore. To my utter amazement, you impulsively whipped around a full 180 degrees as if I had caught a mouse that swallowed a canary. I suspect I did. It is difficult to understand this reaction otherwise. All this could be sympathetically understood were you to present yourself as a normal vulnerable human being. But you don’t. You present yourself rather as living directly under the supramental sun, proceeding from “light to greater light” with no apparent intervening or existential shadow. You also ironically often claim to be the embodiment of Durga, the Grand Dame of courage and fearlessness, which such behaviour belies.

You, and everybody involved with you, justify your commanding style because you are, after all, the embodiment of Durga and that is the way she operates. But, I can tell you, that does not sit well with me and has always got in the way of forming any kind of decent relationship at all between us. Even at the beginning of this MAC adventure, you hammered me and others by e-mail for sitting on our tamAS[S] and for not being able to fulfil your simplest of requests, as you put it. What nonsense! There was confusion alright, but I know everybody was trying their best, and, if anywhere, the confusion emanated from the hills of Kodai, and definitely not here. Then there was the one-sided e-mail proclamation based on my sending you some material on Marketing that I could learn from you how to stop mentally planning life and to open to the synchronistic workings of the supermind. That too is incredible nonsense, as I can’t remember when my life or the way I function has ever been planned, even before getting involved in yoga and Jung’s path of individuation. In itself, these episodes are not worth recording, but they exemplify how I perceive you always treat people, which is, from a commanding position of power, without any sympathetic connectedness whatsoever. I know you can be charming, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with what I am talking about.

The sardonic way you talk about people, for example Clement, even mock people, I always find to be distasteful. Now you are doing it with me. How else can I take the challenging comment by e-mail to your inner circle that I have now resolved to make an authoritative assessment of the work. The truth is I make no claim whatsoever to having any ability or authority to assess this matter at all. All I can ever pretend to do is to subjectively comment on my relationship to you and the work with as much integrity as I can muster.

During this trip to Skambha I decided to not shy away from you in any way, something I tended to do in the past, and accept the full impact of your being. I was also fully involved in MAC, accepting your manner of proceeding, despite the fact it sometimes made me cringe. Your way is definitely not my way and I can thank my involvement with MAC to fully realise that. With you, as you admitted to me during my first visit to Skambha, there is no Venus because of the work, as you call it, despite the fact she is well constellated in your horoscope. As far as I am concerned, however, Lakshmi [Venus] is an essential element when dealing with people, as she is the Goddess that brings intimacy and harmony amongst them. Yet, from my experience with you, she is nowhere to be found, despite your contention that you, as the Third Principle of the avataric line, are the very embodiment of Harmony (Norelli-Bachelet, 1981, p.107, passim).

In the process of being involved with you it became obvious to me that, with you, it is a one-way street. There is no meaningful discussion with you, none at all. My mounting frustration that you falsely put down to a need to test you and the new way, was really a much more simple and human phenomenon, and that was the frustration about getting into the conversation, so much did I feel inundated by your deluge (Norelli-Bachelet, 2003, p. 2). When you made the observation that my “vital is repressed” and I replied that it may have to do with my being at Skambha, you ignored that completely and came to the conclusion that it had something to do with my difficulties back home with my psychological practice. You also said that you have difficulties that are 100-fold my difficulties but that you are sustained, I can’t recall exactly how ---presumably by your inner relationship to the Mother and your mission. The distinct lack of sympathy expressed by you and the implication that I don’t have any such relationship that amounts to much, at any rate, is blasphemous. What do you know about my relationship to the Mother? Nothing, as far as I am concerned.

Now by your manifesto and later consolidated by e-mail, I have been discharged from your supramental boat, unlike your faithful disciples that are more surrendered to the Divine Will than anybody else concerned about the Matrimandir (Norelli-Bachelet, 2003, passim). I was apparently a member of this select group, albeit on the periphery, but no longer. As a matter of fact, I don’t any such attachments, one way or another. Not only that, but any allusion to being amongst an exclusive divinely chosen group of people always makes me feel very queasy. What is important to me is my own integrity and accepting myself for who I am and where I am, along with all my limitations. What is also important for me is my experience of truth to the extent of my capacity and not some idealistic abstraction. If the Mother sees fit to put me onto a supramental boat one day that is another thing altogether, but it is, at the moment, the least of my worries.

You clearly believe that doing clerical work for MAC puts one in an exalted state of surrender and on the ship of Truth. Others, like me, regardless of our nature and talents, are otherwise relegated to an inferior position in the eyes of the Goddess of the New World. So, as you said to me during an early meeting during this recent visit, I am a psychologist for the sake of earning money, but the true work involves my being a member of MAC. The latter alone puts me on the new way in a New World. That is such pathetic nonsense! Whatever I do has, for years, been in the spirit of Karma yoga and essentially a way of discovering who I am and surrendering myself to a greater Self. Whether or not I am accessing a New World or not is between the Mother and myself. In principle, however, as far as I am concerned there is no reason not to believe that one can follow the Divine Will and be involved in the new creation elsewhere than at Skambha, working for MAC or somehow being on the periphery of your work.

All I know is that my life has taken me on a winding path to a place that seems to me to be far removed from any normal cause and effect pre-destination I can imagine. I also know that the Mother initiated me and that, since then, my psyche has been open to influences from the psychic being and the Self in a way that involves action and the world. Whether or not it has anything to do with any kind of officially declared new way is immaterial to me.

As a matter of fact your own reasoning around Pablo, who you understand to be a fully integrated and integral person, could justify my doing the work I am doing and being involved in my version of a path dedicated to wholeness of being. You see him as doing his present work as a witness to the business, economic and political life of our time. That, in many ways, is exactly what I do. Over my adult life, I have, at my level of understanding, been a witness to the business, economic, psychological and social and, to some extent, political life of our zeitgeist. As far as I am concerned, however, Sri Aurobindo was already such a witness in a superlative fashion, well ahead of the game in understanding the nature of unfolding life as expressed, for example, in his Social and Political Thought (1971a, passim). In addition, being a witness is only part of the task, the other part being engagement in life, ethical deliberation, active surrender to the Mother, and responsible decisions. After this last visit, however, I came to realise that, in your opinion, the only way to do the real yoga of the new way is either to work at the centre, at Skambha, or to be involved in Skambha work like MAC, even if it is at the periphery.

Over the years I eventually came to the conclusion that I won’t get anywhere with you talking about Jung. I eventually accepted the fact that, as you say, you haven’t read much Jung and therefore weren’t competent to discuss him in relationship to the yoga. I found this disappointing because discussing him in relationship to your yoga would have helped make things understandable for me.

Moreover I would have provided the information you needed to make any kind of comparison.

I never approached you with the attitude of “test[ing]” you or “test[ing] this new way” (Norelli-Bachelet, 2003, p. 2) but of seeking simple understanding. When you challenged me on the nature of my understanding of the symbol after reading my essay, September 11,Archetype of the Apocalypse and the Birth of a New World: Meaning for Individual and Society(Johnston, 2002) I immediately e-mailed you explaining what I understood the symbol to be. There was no reply from you. There was no reply from you either, when I brought your attention to the fact of Jung’s (1965) experience of the marriage of Heaven and Earth resembling the one you suggest in The Hidden Manna (Norelli-Bachelet, 1976, p.p. 259-261) is a sign of supramental realisation. For some reason, you would not or could not consider the possibility of bringing Jung into the supramental equation, although I described his experience to you. You did not, and probably could not, tell me where the vision came up short either. It has never been a question of testing you, but of eliciting a decent dialogue in service of understanding.

But now I understand it is not only a question of Jung and his path of individuation, but even the path of Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother come up short as far as you are concerned. The Integral Yoga is old according to you. I was always under the illusion that it was necessary to be co-incidentally on their path, or a certain way into it in order to appreciate your, what you call, supramental yoga. But when I innocently managed to burst into your well fortified environment to ask you the question on how your yoga dovetails with the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (1970e) and the Mother, especially with regards to the triple transformation, you waffled, once again to my utter astonishment. I tried to help you along by saying, well, there must be a relationship with the psychic being in your yoga. You seemed to concede that there was although, by then, with all your skating around, it began to seem questionable to me. Now, you clearly indicate that your “new way” integrates the “Old Field” (Norelli-Bachelet, 2003, p.5) of the Integral Yoga, while “sphericalising” (ibid. , p. 6) the “linear ascent and descent” (ibid. , p.4) model of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. In the process you believe you provide “a method to bridge” the past through the present to the future (ibid,p. 6).

However, in your manifesto, there is no mention of the psychic being or the psychic transformation, so central to the Integral Yoga not only for individual transformation per se, but also in terms of more conscious Eros and feeling relationships with others and the community. Yet, according to the Mother, “the psychic change is the change that puts you in contact with the immanent Divine, the Divine who is at the centre of each being and of whom the psychic being is the sheath and expression (The Mother, as reported in Dalal, 2002 p. 24).” For Sri Aurobindo (1970a, p. 295), this immanent Divine is “a spark of the Divine fire in life and matter.” This is the same immanent Divine you relate to as the Fourth Principle and Agni, and yet strangely enough, not as the soul spark (Norelli-Bachelet, 1981, p. 69). What the Mother and Sri Aurobindo say here is not old or outdated, but a reflection of an eternal truth. What you say is misleading.

Finally, I must tell you that I couldn’t believe what I was reading in the hand written letter you had given to me the morning of my departure. For one thing you said you could no longer help me, basically because of my involvement in the Integral Yoga. You also implied that Arindam Basu could now be my guide, in reference to the fact I told you I was planning to see him when I visited the ashram on my way back to Canada. The truth of the matter is that it was only in order to pay my respects and express my gratitude to him for how much he helped me to understand the yoga when I lived at the ashram. In fact, we spent a pleasant hour together over tea. He is not a guide for me, nor will he ever be, for one reason because we have some differences of opinion, especially over Jung. Even while I was at the ashram I never considered him as a guide per se but as a highly educated disciple and teacher of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s yoga, with his own subjective approach to it.