Devotion, Yes… Religion, No.

Sri Aurobindo is one of the most respected freedom fighters from Bengal and also a poet, philosopher, and yogi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My Facebook Page, since a few weeks, keeps showing almost every day more photos of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, diligently posted there by well-meaning devotees, who, as part of various groups dedicated to those two extraordinary Pioneers of Conscious Evolution, express their devotion to them in that way. Every time a new photo is posted on my Facebook Page, it is welcomed by hundreds of ‘Likes’ saluting it.
Although I have no objection of course to the intention, I have noticed in myself a growing sense of unease, to the extent that recently I was anxious  before opening my Facebook Page, and feeling some irritation too, towards the persons who have included me in this or that group, with as a result this flooding of my page.
Why anxious and irritated? Looking within, I found I felt my page was beginning to resemble a religious page, and I didn’t like that at all.  I certainly don’t want people who stumble upon this Facebook Page to think immediately, ‘Oh, this must be a member of some new religion about this Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, whoever they are’.
I guess it is also the mostly adoring comments that in the end bother me. I remember how Sri Aurobindo and Mother themselves felt all this adoration was all right, but too often it was actually laziness, to the point that Mother one day wrote:
‘Why do people want to adore? It is much better to become.”
This is what they really expect from us all who love them:  not that we content ourselves with adoring them, but that we follow on their steps, each one in our own way, going as far as we can during this lifetime in the same evolutive direction they have opened up for Humanity as a whole.
I wish so much that this blog would inspire people, including those who are already what is called ‘devotees’ , to use this more as a kind of collective blog, to communicate more with me, to report their own feelings or perhaps similar experiences, to ask questions about specific points, whatever!… Not necessarily all the time, but at least from time to time…
So, about my Facebook Page, what would I like?…
I too love those photos of Sri Aurobindo or Mother, they touch me as much as they do all of you. A photo now and then will be fine. But the persons who come to my blog should rather get the feeling that we are a big bunch of human beings, all intensely active in our own evolutive process, at whatever stage each one may happen to be, rather than getting the impression that we are merely starting a new religion…! I am sure all of you will agree on this, so let’s try to find a better way to manifest what we are and what we want to become.